U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she takes responsibility for security at the American diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, where Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans died in an attack last month. 
 
 U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she takes responsibility for security at the American diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, where Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans died in an attack last month. Monica Langley has details on The News Hub. Photo: Reuters. 
 
 "I take responsibility," Mrs. Clinton said in a recent interview in her office. "I'm the Secretary of State with 60,000-plus employees around the world. This is like a big family…It's painful, absolutely painful." 
 
 Enlarge Image Close AP Secretary of State Clinton said she took responsibility for security in Benghazi. Above, in Lima, Peru, on Monday. 
 
 On Monday, in Lima, Peru, she also told television interviewers that she accepts the blame, adding that security at America's diplomatic missions overseas is her job, not that of the White House. 
 
 Her comments come as Republicans, including presidential candidate Mitt Romney, criticize the Obama administration for its handling of the security before the attack by extremists and its explanations afterward. 
 
 She also spoke in advance of the second presidential debate, which will occur Tuesday night. Both security arrangements in Benghazi and the administration's differing explanations of whether the attack was the result of mob violence caused by an anti-Muslim video or a calculated terrorist strike were the subject of disagreement in last week's debate between Vice President Joe Biden and Rep. Paul Ryan, the Republican vice presidential nominee. 
 
 U.S. Government Reaction to the Benghazi Attack Follow some of the administration statements on the Libya attack. View Interactive More photos and interactive graphics 
 
 At the debate, Mr. Biden said the White House wasn't aware of requests for additional security at diplomatic installations in Libya, an account that Mrs. Clinton's remarks appear to confirm. 
 
 In her comments to CNN in Peru, Mrs. Clinton said President Barack Obama and Mr. Biden weren't involved in security decisions at the consulate in Benghazi. "I want to avoid some kind of political gotcha," she said. 
 
 The State Department scaled back U.S. security staff in Libya in the months before the attack, despite requests for additional personnel, former U.S. security officials told Congress last week. 
 
 In the interview with The Wall Street Journal, Mrs. Clinton said she is working hard "to run an effective investigation to get to the bottom of what happened" in order to prevent such security lapses in the future. 
 
 Yet, she added, "We will do our very best to think through the best security possible, but we can't keep people behind 20-foot walls and expect them to do their jobs…Americans need to realize our civilians serving our country are putting their lives on the line…in this inherently risky and dangerous world." 
 
 After the Sept. 11 attack, Mrs. Clinton grieved with the family members of the four Americans killed in Libya, as well as their colleagues at the State Department. She has also in some instances prodded other countries to step up their defense of other U.S. posts abroad, particularly those subjected to demonstrations around that time. 
 
 Mrs. Clinton said Ambassador Stevens's death has been especially hard on her because she handpicked him for the job. 
 
 "I sent Chris Stevens to Benghazi at the height of the Libyan conflict [during the Arab Spring]," she said. "He was eager to go and was very effective. I recommended him as ambassador." Mr. Stevens's father has recently said his son's death shouldn't become part of the political debate during the presidential campaign. 
 
 The political fallout from the attacks and deaths has extended beyond the presidential campaign to Capitol Hill as well. 
 
 At a contentious congressional hearing last week, House Republicans skewered the White House and the rest of the administration but went light on Mrs. Clinton and actually praised her for her attempts to clarify what happened in Benghazi. 
 
 In the days before the hearing, Mrs. Clinton made personal calls to the lawmakers to show that she was taking responsibility, an administration official said, which seems to have deflected criticism from her. 
 
 Despite the tragedy, Mrs. Clinton insisted that the Obama administration's support of the Arab Spring had been appropriate as countries experienced a "burst of revolutionary energy" recently. "It would be a contortion of who we are not to support freedom," she said. "Democracy is hard. It's a never-completed journey." 
 
 At the same time, Mrs. Clinton said she was encouraged when Libyans a few days after the attack in Benghazi protested in support of "our four colleagues" and against the violence directed at the U.S. consulate. 
 
 If there is going to be political damage for the Libyan tragedy, Mrs. Clinton may well be the most capable within the administration to withstand it. 
 
 With an approval rating at about 70%, she has already said she will leave as secretary of state at the end of the president's first term. 
 
 Write to Monica Langley at monica.langley@wsj.com 
 
 A version of this article appeared October 16, 2012, on page A1 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Clinton Accepts Blame for Benghazi. ||||| Story highlights "What I want to avoid is some kind of political gotcha or blame game," Clinton says 
 
 "I take this very personally," she says 
 
 Diplomats need security but "can't hang out behind walls," she adds 
 
 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday tried to douse a political firestorm over the deadly assault on a U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya, saying she's responsible for the security of American diplomatic outposts. 
 
 "I take responsibility," Clinton told CNN in an interview while on a visit to Peru. "I'm in charge of the State Department's 60,000-plus people all over the world, 275 posts. The president and the vice president wouldn't be knowledgeable about specific decisions that are made by security professionals. They're the ones who weigh all of the threats and the risks and the needs and make a considered decision." 
 
 But she said an investigation now under way will ultimately determine what happened at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, where Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed on September 11. 
 
 "I take this very personally," Clinton said. "So we're going to get to the bottom of it, and then we're going to do everything we can to work to prevent it from happening again, and then we're going to work to bring whoever did this to us to justice." 
 
 The attack took place in the eastern Libyan city that was the cradle of that country's 2011 revolution. Obama administration officials initially blamed a mob inflamed by a U.S.-produced movie that mocked Islam and its Prophet Mohammed, but later said the storming of the consulate appears to have been a terrorist attack. 
 
 Photos: Photos: Attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi Photos: Photos: Attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi Attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi – Attackers set the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, on fire on September 11, 2012. The U.S. ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, and three other U.S. nationals were killed during the attack. The Obama administration initially thought the attack was carried out by an angry mob responding to a video, made in the United States, that mocked Islam and the Prophet Mohammed. But the storming of the mission was later determined to have been a terrorist attack. Hide Caption 1 of 22 Photos: Photos: Attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi Attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi – Obama and Clinton stand at Andrews Air Force Base as the bodies of the four Americans killed are returned on September 14. Hide Caption 2 of 22 Photos: Photos: Attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi Attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi – A desk sits inside the burnt U.S. mission on September 13, two days after the attack. Hide Caption 3 of 22 Photos: Photos: Attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi Attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi – Damage is seen inside the U.S. mission on September 13. Hide Caption 4 of 22 Photos: Photos: Attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi Attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi – A lounge chair and umbrella float in the swimming pool of the U.S. mission on September 13. Hide Caption 5 of 22 Photos: Photos: Attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi Attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi – Demonstrators gather in Libya on September 12 to condemn the killers and voice support for the victims. Hide Caption 6 of 22 Photos: Photos: Attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi Attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi – U.S. President Barack Obama, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on September 12, makes a statement at the White House about Stevens' death. Hide Caption 7 of 22 Photos: Photos: Attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi Attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi – A burnt vehicle is seen at the U.S. mission in Benghazi on September 12. Hide Caption 8 of 22 Photos: Photos: Attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi Attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi – People inspect the damage on September 12. Hide Caption 9 of 22 Photos: Photos: Attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi Attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi – A small American flag is seen in the rubble on September 12. Hide Caption 10 of 22 Photos: Photos: Attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi Attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi – A man stands in part of a burned-out building of the U.S. mission on September 12. Hide Caption 11 of 22 Photos: Photos: Attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi Attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi – Smoke and fire damage is evident inside a building on September 12. Hide Caption 12 of 22 Photos: Photos: Attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi Attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi – Half-burnt debris and ash cover the floor of one of the U.S. mission buildings on September 12. Hide Caption 13 of 22 Photos: Photos: Attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi Attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi – The U.S. mission is seen in flames on September 11, the day of the attack. Hide Caption 14 of 22 Photos: Photos: Attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi Attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi – A protester reacts as the U.S. mission burns on September 11. Hide Caption 15 of 22 Photos: Photos: Attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi Attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi – A vehicle and the surrounding area are engulfed in flames on September 11. Hide Caption 16 of 22 Photos: Photos: Attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi Attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi – Flames erupt outside of a building on September 11. Hide Caption 17 of 22 Photos: Photos: Attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi Attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi – A vehicle burns during the attack on the U.S. mission on September 11. Hide Caption 18 of 22 Photos: Photos: Attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi Attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi – Onlookers record the damage from the attack on September 11. Hide Caption 19 of 22 Photos: Photos: Attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi Attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi – Onlookers walk past a burning truck and building on September 11. Hide Caption 20 of 22 Photos: Photos: Attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi Attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi – A vehicle sits smoldering in flames on September 11. Hide Caption 21 of 22 Photos: Photos: Attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi Attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi – People duck flames outside a building on September 11. Hide Caption 22 of 22 
 
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 With criticism growing, Vice President Joe Biden said during last week's vice presidential debate that the White House did not know of requests to enhance security at Benghazi, contradicting testimony by State Department employees that requests had been made and rejected. After the debate, the White House said the vice president did not know of the requests because they were handled, as is the practice, by the State Department. 
 
 "In the wake of an attack like this, in the fog of war, there's always going to be confusion," Clinton said. "And I think it is absolutely fair to say that everyone had the same intelligence. Everyone who spoke tried to give the information that they had. As time has gone on, that information has changed. We've gotten more detail, but that's not surprising. That always happens." 
 
 She added, "What I want to avoid is some kind of political gotcha or blame game." 
 
 "I know that we're very close to an election," Clinton said. "I want to just take a step back here and say from my own experience, we are at our best as Americans when we pull together. I've done that with Democratic presidents and Republican presidents." 
 
 Her remarks drew a quick response from three Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee, including ranking member John McCain. 
 
 Clinton's statement of responsibility was "a laudable gesture, especially when the White House is trying to avoid any responsibility whatsoever," the Arizona senator said in a joint broadside with Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire. However, they added, "The security of Americans serving our nation everywhere in the world is ultimately the job of the commander-in-chief. The buck stops there." 
 
 Stevens, State Department computer expert Sean Smith and security contractors Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods died in the Benghazi assault, which State Department officials now say was the work of dozens of armed men. 
 
 Clinton also described a desperate scene in the State Department during the hours of the attack, as staff tried to find out what had happened. 
 
 "This was a many-hour ordeal that we were all involved in, and I was deeply concerned as you would obviously assume, to hear about an attack," she said. Not only was the picture coming out of Libya murky, but also, "Then we couldn't find Ambassador Stevens, and we were trying desperately to figure out what happened to him and to Sean Smith and to the others who were there." 
 
 Clinton said her mission now is to make sure such an attack will never happen again, and also to ensure the work of American diplomats won't be stopped even in dangerous areas like Benghazi. 
 
 "We can't retreat. We have to continue to lead. We have to be engaged," she said. "We can't hang out behind walls." She said Stevens, who came to Benghazi on a cargo ship to start building ties with rebel leaders during last year's revolt, "knew that more than anybody." ||||| NEW YORK -– Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made big news Monday night by telling CNN that she accepts responsibility for security at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, at the time of the deadly Sept. 11 attack. 
 
 For weeks, the Obama administration has been dogged by questions over its initial explanation for the attack -- that it was prompted by anger over an anti-Islam video on YouTube -- and over security at the compound prior to the assault which killed U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. 
 
 "I take responsibility," Clinton said Monday during a trip in Peru. "I'm in charge of the State Department's 60,000-plus people all over the world, 275 posts. The president and the vice president wouldn't be knowledgeable about specific decisions that are made by security professionals. They're the ones who weigh all of the threats and the risks and the needs and make a considered decision." 
 
 While Clinton's statement was news to most of the world, it apparently wasn't to the Wall Street Journal. 
 
 On Monday night, the Journal's Monica Langley reported that Clinton made a similar comment to her in a recent interview. That comment had not previously been published. 
 
 "I take responsibility," Clinton told the Journal. "I'm the Secretary of State with 60,000-plus employees around the world. This is like a big family … It's painful, absolutely painful." 
 
 Clinton sat for an interview with the Journal last Wednesday and there was no embargo preventing the paper from publishing any part of it, a State Department spokesman told The Huffington Post 
 
 While the interview may have been conducted as part of an upcoming profile of Clinton, it's common for news organizations to extract timely material for a news story. Given that Clinton gave this interview on the same day as a congressional hearing on security at the consulate -- and as criticism over the administration's response gets amplified on the campaign trail -- it clearly had news value. Indeed, the Journal led Tuesday's print edition with the comment. 
 
 A Wall Street Journal spokeswoman declined to comment on the paper's newsgathering. 
 
 Coincidentally, the Journal decided to publish a portion of last week's Clinton interview Monday, the same evening the Journal's editorial board decided to criticize the secretary of state in an editorial in Tuesday's print edition for ducking questions on Benghazi. Traditionally, the editorial board does not collaborate with news reporting, but the timing is ironic nonetheless. 
 
 The Washington Post's Erik Wemple caught the Journal editorial shortly after it was posted and noted that it was tweaked after the CNN interview was published. ||||| Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday embarked on her first overseas trip since last month's deadly attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya, traveling to Peru for a conference on women's empowerment amid the lingering political drama in Washington over the Obama administration's handling of the incident. 
 
 FILE - In this Oct. 2, 2012 file photo, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks at the State Department in Washington. Clinton headed to Peru Monday, where she will talk about women's empowerment.... (Associated Press) 
 
 Clinton arrived for the long-planned women's event in Lima after another weekend of criticism from Republicans over the Obama administration's initial explanation of the Sept. 11 attack and security at the consulate in Benghazi, where the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans died. 
 
 Her arrival coincided with a call from the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., for Clinton to answer more questions about what was known about the security situation in Libya in the period leading up to the attack as well as the State Department's priorities on paying for and protecting diplomatic missions abroad. 
 
 Ros-Lehtinen took issue with State Department officials who called the assault on the Benghazi consulate by many dozens of heavily armed militants "unprecedented." She argued that the threat of such an attack, particularly on the anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001, "cannot be news to anyone" after strikes on other U.S. diplomatic missions over the past two decades. 
 
 "How can anyone consider such an attack to be unprecedented?" Ros-Lehtinen asked Clinton in a letter released by the congresswoman's office in Washington. 
 
 Her questions came after numerous Republicans took to the Sunday talk shows to criticize the administration for its changing explanations of the attack and response to it. 
 
 Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a long-time point man for the GOP on national security issues, accused President Barack Obama's aides of deliberately covering up the details of the attack so that voters couldn't question Obama's handling of the war on terror. 
 
 Graham said he believes the administration knew within 24 hours of the assault that it was a coordinated militia attack and was not tied to other anti-U.S. protests across the Middle East. According to Graham, the administration suggested otherwise so voters wouldn't think al-Qaida remained a threat. 
 
 "They're trying to sell a narrative, quite frankly, that (the) wars are receding and that al-Qaida has been dismantled," said Graham, a member of the Senate Armed Services emerging threats and capabilities subcommittee, in an interview on CBS "Face the Nation." 
 
 "And to admit that our embassy was attacked by al-Qaida operatives ... I think undercuts that narrative," he added. 
 
 Clinton has vowed a full and open investigation on the incident. The administration initially described the attack as a more violent version of the protests that broke out across North Africa and the Middle East over a California-produced film that ridiculed the Prophet Muhammad. Administration officials amended those statements days later to call it a terror attack, likely by al-Qaida-linked militants, because they said intelligence became clearer in the aftermath. 
 
 In Peru, Clinton is meeting with President Ollanta Humala and attending a conference on "Women as the Drivers of Social Growth and Inclusion." 
 
 She returns to Washington on Tuesday.
– With the White House facing pressure over security before the 9/11 Benghazi attack, Hillary Clinton has taken the blame. "I take responsibility," she said in a CNN interview last night in addressing the consulate strike that killed US Ambassador Chris Stevens. "I want to avoid some kind of political gotcha," she added. President Obama has been under fire since Joe Biden said in the VP debate that the administration knew nothing of requests to boost security at the Benghazi mission. State Department employees contradicted Biden, and the White House explained that the vice president didn't know about the requests because they were handled by the State Department. Clinton made her remarks yesterday on a diplomatic trip to Peru, her first since the Libya attack, the AP reports. But Clinton had actually taken responsibility for the security problems in an interview with the Wall Street Journal last Wednesday—but the Journal didn't publish her comments until last night, despite the fact that there was no embargo keeping it from doing so, the Huffington Post reports. "I take responsibility," Clinton said in that interview. "I'm the Secretary of State with 60,000-plus employees around the world." It's odd that the Journal held the comments, writes Michael Calderone for HuffPo, especially considering Clinton made them on the day of a congressional hearing on Benghazi security.