WASHINGTON, November 28 (RIA Novosti) - The US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice – considered a favorite to replace Hillary Clinton as the next US Secretary of State – headed back to Capitol Hill Wednesday in a continuing effort to smooth simmering tensions over her account of the deadly Sept. 11 attack on the American Consulate in Benghazi.
"She always delivers the party line, the company line, whatever the talking points are,” said Republican Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee in an interview with The Associated Press.
“I think most of us hold the secretary of state… to a whole different level. We understand that they're going to support the administration, but we also want to know that they are independent enough, when administration is off-base, that they are putting pressure,” he added. “I think that's what worries me most about Rice."
Corker and another Republican, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, are both scheduled to meet with Rice Wednesday.
At issue is Rice’s public contention just after the attack that it was triggered during a protest of an anti-Muslim YouTube video, statements that turned out to be inaccurate, and which she says were based on the intelligence available at the time.
Many Republicans contend the White House didn’t want to risk the political fallout from a terrorist attack in the final days of a tightly-contested presidential campaign.
Rice and Acting Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director Michael Morell met with her three most vocal Republican critics on Tuesday, Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Kelly Ayotte.
“While we certainly wish that we had had perfect information just days after the terrorist attack, as is often the case, the intelligence assessment has evolved,” Rice said in a statement after the meeting.
“We stressed that neither I nor anyone else in the Administration intended to mislead the American people at any stage in this process, and the Administration updated Congress and the American people as our assessments evolved.”
But the closed-door session did little to ease their concerns about Rice’s inaccurate account of the attack in which Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed.
"It is clear the information she gave the American people was incorrect when she said that it was a spontaneous demonstration triggered by a hateful video," McCain said. "It was not, and there was compelling evidence at the time that that was certainly not the case."
“Bottom line, I’m more disturbed than I was before,” Graham told reporters.
McCain, Graham and Ayotte issued a defiant statement late Tuesday that made it clear just how contentious the issue remains.
“We are disturbed by the Administration’s continued inability to answer even the most basic questions about the Benghazi attack and the Administration’s response,” they said.
“Beyond Ambassador Rice’s misstatements, we continue to have questions about what happened in Benghazi before, during, and after the attack on our consulate — as well as the President’s statements regarding the attack.”
Senate Majority Leader, Democrat Harry Reid defended Rice in a statement, saying, “I am shocked that senators would continue these attacks even when the evidence – including disclosures from the intelligence community about the information she presented – have made it clear that the allegations against Ambassador Rice are baseless, and that she has done absolutely nothing wrong."
Graham and Ayotte said they would seek to block Rice if she is nominated to replace Clinton as Secretary of State. McCain told Fox News he would be “very hard pressed” to support her.
