Caught On Both Sides

A sad, weird coda to our 9/11 commemoration discussion. After a year of exploitation by congressional Republicans, State Department staffers who wanted to commemorate the one year anniversary of the attack that killed Amb. Chris Stevens and three others in Benghazi, Libya were forced to hold their own unofficial memorial in the State Department lobby. We heard about it from a State Department staffer who worked with Stevens in Libya who was understandably disappointed that State declined to hold any memorial or even send anyone to the informal gathering. State Department spokesman Alec Gerlach pointed to the degree of politicization of the event as one reason why no official event was held.