Mike Pompeo seeks to defund program named after envoy killed in Benghazi – By Martin Pengelly (The Guardian) / Feb 16 2020
Move would eliminate a $5m initiative honoring Christopher Stevens who died in 11 September 2012 attack
Mike Pompeo rose to prominence during investigations of the deadly attack on a US facility in Benghazi in September 2012. Now, as Donald Trump’s secretary of state, he is pressing to defund a diplomatic initiative named for the US ambassador who died there.
Foreign Policy reported the move, contained in the 2021 state department budget proposal, to eliminate a $5m contribution to the Stevens Initiative.
Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans – Sean Smith, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods – died after a crowd attacked a US outpost in Benghazi, a port city in northern Libya, on 11 September 2012.
Republicans in Congress investigated aggressively, at one point subjecting Hillary Clinton, secretary of state at the time of the attack and a presidential candidate at the time of the investigations, to an 11-hour grilling before a House committee.
Pompeo, then a Tea party-backed congressman from Kansas, played a prominent role, accusing Clinton of putting “political expediency and politics ahead of the men and women on the ground”.
Continue to article: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/16/mike-pompeo-chris-stevens-benghazi-attack
