Fox News Edits Clinton Testimony To Claim She Never Addressed Benghazi Monitoring

Fox News cropped footage from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's Benghazi testimony to claim she didn't address questions about the extent of monitoring by the state department during the September 11, 2012, attacks. In fact, unedited video of the hearing shows that Clinton not only addressed the issue, it backs up her statement that there was no real time video monitoring of the attack.

On Fox News' America Live, homeland security correspondent Catherine Herridge claimed that during the January 23 hearings on Benghazi, Clinton “made no mention” of reports that the State Department was monitoring the attack in real time. Herridge further claimed that Clinton did not address a statement by deputy assistant secretary of state Charlene Lamb, who reportedly stated she was in audio communication with officials on the ground in Benghazi. After making these claims, Fox aired a portion of the hearings:

But unedited video of the hearing shows that Clinton was responding to a question that directly referenced Lamb. In the portion of the testimony preceding Fox's video, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) asked Clinton specifically about Lamb and in the portion following the video, Clinton discussed Lamb's statement:

Fox has continued to push the myth that there was real time video being monitored by the State Department during the September 11 Benghazi attack. The Washington Post's Erik Wemple explained that the closed circuit television system in place at the compound did not have the capability to be viewed outside of the compound.

The Huffington Post explained how the narrative of real time monitoring of the attack was mischaracterized by a reporter who “rather quickly managed to twist” the initial reports on the Benghazi attack into false claims of real time monitoring. Lamb's testimony buttressed those of Clinton in during the hearing:

When the attack began, a Diplomatic Security agent working in the tactical operations center immediately... alerted the annex U.S. quick reaction security team stationed nearby ... and the Diplomatic Security Command Center in Washington. From that point on, I could follow what was happening in almost real-time, Lamb explained.