Benghazi Report

emergency rescue plan-so that the length of the attack alone does not dictate the rescue or survival of Americans. Understanding that the State Department bears ultimate responsibility for the safety of Americans serving in diplomatic facilities abroad, General Dempsey should have ensured that plan was in place, but he failed to do so.

A strong military leader would also have ensured that his commanders in the field were fully aware of all United States personnel, including CIA personnel, who were located within their areas of responsibility. Yet, the Committee has confirmed that General Carter Ham, as the Commander of U.S. Africa Command, was not even aware there was a CIA annex in Benghazi at the time of the atta-cks.

We are puzzled as to how the military leadership expected to effectively respond and rescue Americans in the event of an emergency when it did not even know of the existence of one of the U.S. facilities. The fate of United States personnel serving in dangerous areas ofthe world should not rest on ad hoc rescue operations, no matter how heroic, simply because the United States Government and its civilian and military leaders have failed in their collective responsibilities to provide security and potentially life-saving assistance.

Continued Fall-out from No Detention Policy As we learn from the errors and failures surrounding Benghazi, we believe one critical area of national security policy must be reexamined and changed by this Administration. President Obama and his Administration must end their efforts to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay and must develop a clear, cogent policy for the detention and interrogation of suspected terrorists. Since the President ordered Guantanamo' s closure in 2009, we have witnessed a dangerous tendency to either not detain terrorism suspects or to conduct all-too-brief intelligence interrogations, followed by the inevitable reading of Miranda rights and appointment of counsel which often ends the interrogation. Amazingly, the same Administration that has demanded the closure of the state-of the-art detention facility at Guantanamo has vigorously路embraced the use of floating prisons for conducting brief intelligence interrogations overseas. This approach is not only at odds with the spirit of the Geneva Conventions, but it fails to recognize how good intelligence collection can work if given the time to do so.

Intelligence collection and criminal prosecutions can work hand-in-hand, but we should not sacrifice intelligence collection simply because of the political 12