Fox News:
The decision to keep U.S. personnel in Benghazi with substandard security was made at the highest levels of the State Department by officials who have so far escaped blame over the Sept. 11 attack, according to a review of recent congressional testimony and internal State Department memos by Fox News.
Nine months before the assault that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others, State Department Under Secretary Patrick Kennedy signed off on an internal memo that green-lighted the Benghazi operation.
The December 2011 memo from Jeffrey Feltman — then-Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs (NEA) — pledged “to rapidly implement a series of corrective security measures.” However, no substantial improvements were made, according to congressional testimony to the House oversight committee from Regional Security Officer Eric Nordstrom.
Nordstrom said the Benghazi operation never met the rigid standards set out by the Overseas Security Policy Board  — which according to the State Department website “is an interagency body created to assist the secretary” in carrying out security obligations under a 1986 law.
“We did not meet any of those standards with the exception of perhaps the height of the wall,” Nordstrom testified
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What’s clear is that Benghazi was not referred to as a consulate in the “Action Memo for Under Secretary Kennedy” by Feltman. The omission may have exempted it from mandatory physical security standards.
In fact, the recently released “talking points” emails show that the State Department was insistent that the White House not refer to Benghazi as a consulate. Instead, policy adviser Jacob Sullivan said it should be called a “mission” or “diplomatic post.”
Both Kennedy and Feltman signed the Dec. 27, 2011 memo titled: “Future of Operations in Benghazi.”
The document also indicates that the CIA and State Department operations were separate, undercutting reports that the Benghazi mission was a cover for the agency’s activities which included the rounding up of loose weapons after the fall of the Libyan dictator. The action memo notes that the “State presence cannot be accommodated at the annex and the current State facility is not large enough to permit co-location.”
The Sept. 11 attack killed Stevens, as well as Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith, and former Navy Seals Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods.
The action memo revealed other State Department goals in Benghazi. It said: “The team will be able to monitor political trends (Islamists, tribes, political parties, militias) and public sentiment regarding the ‘new Libya,’ as well as report on the critical period leading up to and through Libya’s first post Qadafi election.”
But the Benghazi site never met the rigid standards set out by Overseas Protection Security Board, which haunted Nordstrom.
Nordstrom repeatedly expressed his deep security concerns and noted Benghazi was still “undefined” in  emails with his superiors seven months before the attacks.
In February 2012, he wrote that “while the status of Benghazi remains undefined, DS (Diplomatic Security) is hesitant to devout (sic) resources and as I indicated previously, this has severely hampered operations in Benghazi.”
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