In this task, you are given a text of many news articles seperated by special token "|||||". Your task is to summarize them.


  
 U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice on Capitol Hill on Wednesday for her meeting with Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine). (Win McNamee/Getty Images) 
  
 U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice returned to Capitol Hill on Wednesday for a fresh round of face-to-face meetings with her Republican critics, and once again failed to find the public support she would need to secure her confirmation to serve as the next secretary of state. 
  
 As with meetings she held Tuesday, Rice discussed her role in the Obama administration’s response to the Sept. 11 U.S. consulate attack in Benghazi, Libya, specifically comments she made five days afterward regarding the origins of the assault. Rice’s involvement in the administration’s response is complicated by the fact that President Obama is reportedly considering her to succeed Hillary Rodham Clinton at the State Department. 
  
 Rice met Wednesday morning with Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who is the ranking member on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which is investigating the Libya attack. She also met with Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. 
  
 After a 75-minute meeting with Rice, Collins told reporters: “I still have many questions that remain unanswered.” 
  
 Collins said she was “troubled” that Rice, in her role as U.N. envoy, “decided to play what was essentially a political role at the height of a contentious presidential election campaign” by appearing on five political talk shows to present the administration’s position. 
  
 Collins also noted that Rice was working at the State Department in 1998 — and was the assistant secretary for African Affairs — when U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed. Requests for additional security at both outposts had been denied and Collins said she asked Rice on Wednesday whether she had been involved in those decisions. 
  
 “She [Rice] said she would have to refresh her memory, but that she was not directly involved in turning down the request,” Collins said. But the senator said Rice must have been aware of the requests. 
  
 Collins demurred when asked if she would be able to support Rice if she is nominated by Obama to serve as the next secretary of state: “I would need to have additional information before I could support her nomination. She’s not been posted yet, our homeland security committee investigation is ongoing, there are many different players in this and there’s much yet to be learned. So I think it would be premature for me to reach that judgment now.” 
  
 For his part, Obama on Wednesday once again voiced support for Rice. Asked by reporters during a White House Cabinet meeting whether he still supported his U.N. ambassador, Obama said: “Susan Rice is extraordinary.” With that, the rest of his Cabinet applauded. 
  
 “I couldn’t be prouder of the job that she’s done,” he added. 
  
 Back on Capitol Hill, Corker said Obama should nominate whoever “he thinks is best suited” to serve as his next top diplomat. 
  
 “I am asking the president to step back away from all that’s happened and take a deep breath and to nominate the person that he really believes is the very best person to be secy of state for our country, regardless of relationship,” Corker said. 
  
 But Corker said he remains troubled by the administration’s response to the Libya affair: “Whenever I’m in contact with anyone who has anything to do with either the intelligence, the communication, anything involving the way Washington itself has handled Benghazi, whenever I’m around anybody who’s had any close relationship, I will say that emotion within me rises tremendously.” 
  
 Corker said so much of the GOP’s attention has focused on Rice “because she ended up being the spokesperson five days later.” 
  
 This item has been updated since it was first published. 
  
 Rosalind S. Helderman and David Nakamura contributed to this report. 
  
 Follow Ed O’Keefe on Twitter: @edatpost 
  
 RELATED (from 1998): 
  
 At the State Department, Susan Rice has trained her sights on U.S. African policy ||||| In just two quick meetings on Capitol Hill, Susan Rice may have blown up any goodwill she had with the very senators she’ll need for confirmation if she’s ever tapped as the next secretary of state. 
  
 Over the past two days, four key Republican senators have emerged from private meetings to blast the United Nations ambassador’s explanation about what happened during and after the deadly attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. 
  
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 reset Collins: 'Troubled' by Rice Obama calls Rice extraordinary 
  
 (PHOTOS: Susan Rice's career) 
  
 It’s not clear what Rice said behind closed doors to anger all these senators, but it’s obvious the meetings went badly and this was hardly a nominee-in-waiting charm offensive. 
  
 Even Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, just the type of moderate Republican who might help break a filibuster on a nomination, said there were still too many questions about why Rice incorrectly characterized the Sept. 11 assault in five Sunday talk show interviews as the result of spontaneous protests at the same time the Libyan president was calling it a terrorist attack. 
  
 “I don’t understand why she would not at least qualify her response to that question,” Collins told reporters after emerging from a 75-minute, closed-door meeting with Rice. 
  
 (PHOTOS: What they're saying about Susan Rice) 
  
 The Wednesday meeting in a secure briefing room in the Capitol basement came a day after a similar sit-down Rice had with three key voices on foreign policy and defense issues went terribly wrong. GOP Sens. John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Kelly Ayotte, all members of the Armed Services Committee, said they were more “troubled” about the Benghazi affair than they had been before their meeting with Rice. 
  
 And Graham and Ayotte went so far as to say they would place a hold on her possible nomination. 
  
 “If she were nominated tomorrow, I would hold her because we still have questions that have not been answered,” Ayotte told POLITICO on Wednesday. 
  
 McCain, the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee and Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential rival, hasn’t been as explicit. But one GOP senator told POLITICO Wednesday that McCain, Graham and Ayotte were so incensed after their powwow with Rice because they felt she was not being straight or candid with them about Benghazi. 
  
 Rice acknowledged this week that she had mistakenly described the attack as something spontaneous rather than premeditated. But she said neither she nor anyone else in the administration intended to mislead the public. 
  
 President Barack Obama defended Rice on Wednesday, just as he did at a news conference two weeks ago. 
  
 “Susan Rice is extraordinary,” Obama said at the start of his Cabinet meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at his side and Rice seated at the end of the table. “Couldn’t be prouder of the job she’s done.” 
  
 Both Clinton and Rice gave updates on tensions in the Middle East during the meeting. ||||| Sen. Bob Corker (Tenn.), the presumptive incoming ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, declined to explicitly criticize Susan Rice after meeting Wednesday morning with the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. 
  
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 Corker, whose panel would have primary jurisdiction if President Obama tapped Rice to become the next secretary of State, pledged he would not prejudge her possible nomination. 
  
 A day after Corker said Rice would make a better chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee than secretary of State, he explained that he did not intend to steer Obama away from picking Rice. 
  
 Corker said he would fairly consider Rice's nomination, if Obama chooses her to lead the State Department. 
  
 “I know that at some point I may play a semi-important role in who the next secretary of State may be,” he told reporters. 
  
 “Whoever the president nominates, I certainly plan to sit down and give a full hearing to, as I’ve said from Day One, regardless of who that nominee is,” he said. Corker promised to “weigh in heavily” when the nomination is made. 
  
 However, he suggested the president try to step back from the intensifying debate over Rice and contemplate who would be the best person to succeed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. 
  
 “I’m asking the president to step back away from all that’s happened and take a deep breath and to nominate the person that he really believes is the very best person to be secretary of State for our country, regardless of relationship,” he said. 
  
 He said the Senate holds the secretary of State to a higher standard than other Cabinet members. 
  
 Corker said he is unhappy with the FBI’s and CIA’s handling of the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and its aftermath. 
  
 “I’m very disappointed in the entire apparatus here,” he said. 
  
 Earlier, Sen. Susan Collins (Maine) became the latest GOP senator to raise questions about Rice. 
  
 After an almost two-hour meeting with the ambassador, Collins said she's unconvinced by Rice's explanation of her role after the attack. 
  
 “I continue to be troubled by the fact that the UN ambassador decided to play what was essentially a political role at the height of a contentious presidential election ... by agreeing to go on the Sunday shows to present the administration's position,” said Collins, the top Republican on the Homeland Security Committee. 
  
 Collins, a centrist Republican who would be a key vote for Rice if she is nominated, also said she is concerned about Rice's role in denying security requests prior to the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Africa. 
  
 Collins's statement comes after three key Senate Republicans — Sens. John McCain (Ariz.), Lindsey Graham (N.C.) and Kelly Ayotte (N.H.) — said Tuesday they were “more troubled” than ever after meeting with Rice. 
  
 — Julian Pecquet contributed |||||
Susan Rice didn't have much luck yesterday convincing John McCain and others that her initial Benghazi response was an honest recitation of the best information available. So maybe she'd fare better today with the moderate Susan Collins? Not so much, reports Politico and the Washington Post. “I still have many questions that remain unanswered," said Collins, adding that she thinks the UN ambassador “decided to play what was essentially a political role at the height of a contentious presidential election campaign." Collins noted that Rice worked at the State Department in 1998 when the Kenya and Tanzania embassies were bombed, and she said Rice should have been aware of the "eerie echo" between those terror attacks and what happened at the consulate in Benghazi. Collins' comments don't bode well for Rice's chances of becoming the next secretary of state, though the Hill notes that another GOP senator with whom she met, Bob Corker, pledged to keep an open mind. Rice, though, isn't just taking heat from the right: Maureen Dowd sounds skeptical of the Benghazi affair in her New York Times column today.