Foreign Policy, J. Christopher Stevens | featured news

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Wednesday she took responsibility for not adequately protecting U.S. personnel in the Sept. 11 attack on a U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya that resulted in the killing of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

It was six weeks ago on Tuesday that terrorists attacked the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Now, CBS News has obtained email alerts that were put out by the State Department as the attack unfolded. Four Americans were killed in the attack, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday vowed to pursue a full accounting of the deadly attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi "wherever that leads," but cautioned that it could take time for a complete picture to emerge.

Leaders of a House committee said Tuesday that U.S. diplomats in Libya made repeated requests for increased security for the consulate in Benghazi and were turned down by officials in Washington.

The presidential campaigns and their allies began the week with aggressive attacks on the candidates’ records ahead of the first presidential debate on Wednesday. In an opinion article published Monday in The Wall Street Journal, Mitt Romney accused President Obama of foreign policy failures, saying that the president had allowed the nation’s influence to atrophy by “stepping away” from American allies overseas.

The White House criticized Republican claims that President Obama called an ambassador's death a 'bump in the road." White House press secretary Jay Carney said Obama was referring to Middle East unrest in general, and called the GOP claim "both desperate and offensive."