Definition: In this task, you are given a text of many news articles seperated by special token "|||||". Your task is to summarize them.
Input: House Republicans pressed State Department officials at a hearing Thursday on why they initially claimed the Sept. 11 attacks in Libya were caused by a spontaneous protest instead of terrorists. 
  
 Democrats shot back, accusing their GOP counterparts of engaging in a partisan show at the House Foreign Relations Committee hearing. 
  
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 reset Kerry: Clinton wanted to testify Allen West: Hillary caught ‘Benghazi flu’ 
  
 Two deputy secretaries of state – Thomas Nides and William Burns – faced a feisty panel of lawmakers as they tried to explain measures that are already underway to fix the breakdowns at Foggy Bottom outlined in a critical report this week. 
  
 Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) said in light of the attacks and what she called a “systematic failure” of security, she had no “confidence in [the State Department’s] assessment in what went wrong and what actions are needed to prevent a repeat.” 
  
 She asked Burns and Nides why the administration had allowed Ambassador Susan Rice to go on Sunday news shows and say the attack was a result of a protest over an obscure movie on YouTube. 
  
 Burns said that both the President and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton quickly asserted that there had been a terrorist attack in Benghazi but it “was not clear the next day” who had conducted the attack and how it came about. Additionally, Burns said, there were several simultaneous protests around the world that made it difficult for intelligence officials to get a clear picture of what happened. 
  
 “It did take the intelligence community some days to determine what was inaccurate…I’m sure our colleagues in the intelligence community wish they could have cleared up those inaccuracies sooner,” he said. 
  
 As for the talking points, Burns said those were approved by the CIA, and he believed the agency had already briefed members. 
  
 Ros-Lehtinen also criticized State for spending money unwisely and said if department officials intended to blame “its long string of failures on inadequate funding, then perhaps it should take a closer look at the money that is being lavished on global climate change, culinary diplomacy, and other favored projects.” 
  
 Congressman Steve Chabot (R-Ohio) called the explanation from the White House “ham-handed at best and a cover up at worst.” 
  
 Democratic members were equally upset, but their anger was mostly directed at their Republican colleagues. 
  
 Retiring Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.) said his alloted time for questions might be his “final six minutes” to speak in his 30-year career in Congress. 
  
 “I’d like to apologize to the deputy secretaries,” he said. “You have been brought here as a ruse. You are being used…for partisan and political purposes.” 
  
 “My great fear as I leave here is we’ve become a partisan, bickering, bunch of grousing old people trying to exploit whatever we can,” he added. 
  
 It was the second hearing Thursday examining the attack that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens; earlier in the day the Senate Foreign Relations Committee had its own session. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was scheduled to appear but was unable to do so because she is recovering from a concussion. 
  
 “We learned some very hard and painful lessons in Benghazi,” Burns said Thursday. “We are already acting on them. We have to do better. We owe it to our colleagues who lost their lives in Benghazi.” 
  
 Nides said a State Department task force has endorsed 60 specific action items from a list offered by the so-called Accountability Review Board. The panel, led by Ambassador Thomas Pickering and former Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, released a report Tuesday that was harshly critical of State’s actions preceding the attacks. Nides testified that many of the board’s recommendations would be implemented before year’s end, and that progress would be underway on all of its suggestions before a new secretary of state takes over. ||||| Protesters climb a fence surrounding the U.S. embassy in Sanaa Sept. 13, 2012. Hundreds of Yemeni demonstrators stormed the U.S. embassy in Sanaa in protest against a film they consider blasphemous to Islam. (MOHAMED AL-SAYAGHI/REUTERS) 
  
 The State Department pledged Thursday to bulk up security at diplomatic posts in dangerous areas in response to the fatal attack on a lightly guarded compound in Libya, as one top official acknowledged that “we fell down on the job.” 
  
 In several hours of questioning before the Senate and House foreign affairs committees, department leaders said bureaucracy and tight budgets combined to shortchange security at frontline posts. 
  
 The sessions were billed as examinations of an independent investigation’s findings about what went wrong in the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi, that killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya. The report issued this week recommends additional money for embassy security along with a hard look at a State Department habit of miserliness that the report said was born of repeated budget cuts. 
  
 Congressional Republicans focused on security lapses exposed by the assault and on whether the Obama administration deliberately played down the terrorist origins of the attack. 
  
 Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is asking Congress for an additional $750 million to hire about 150 more security officers, a deputy said. She had been scheduled to testify Thursday about the outside investigation but canceled because of an illness. She said she will testify in January. 
  
 1 of 8 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad Caption U.S. Ambassador to Libya John Christopher Stevens is the eighth American ambassador to die in the line of duty since 1950. Here are the others. John Christopher Stevens, in Libya -- Sept. 11, 2012 Stevens was a career diplomat and Arabic speaker known for his smile and determination. He and three other Americans were slain in an attack upon the U.S. Consulate in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi. Ben Curtis/AP Buy Photo 
  
 The Pentagon has agreed to send about 225 more Marine guards to medium- and high-threat diplomatic posts, Deputy Secretary of State Thomas R. Nides told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. 
  
 “We need to learn from this,” he said. 
  
 Clinton’s other senior aide, Deputy Secretary William J. Burns, told a House committee later that the department will be “relentless” in trying to follow through on investigators’ recommendations to keep diplomats safer. 
  
 “We clearly fell down on the job with regard to Benghazi,” he said. 
  
 House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) suggested that the State Department might do better to examine its priorities before asking for more money. 
  
 “We cannot expect the same bureaucracy at State, whose management failures are now manifest, to objectively review the department’s organization, procedure and performance,” she said. “Nor can we have any confidence in their assessment of what went wrong and what actions are needed to prevent a repeat.” 
  
 The Accountability Review Board report on the attack released Tuesday found that “grossly” inadequate security and reliance on local militias left U.S. diplomats and other personnel vulnerable. 
  
 In hearings looking into the attack on the United States mission in Libya, lawmakers said reduced funding of the State Department was one factor in the inadequate security there. (The Fold/The Washington Post) 
  
 The State Department security chief resigned Wednesday in response. The department said three other managers will be disciplined. 
  
 Clinton’s launch this year of a flashy initiative to send American celebrity chefs on goodwill tours abroad seems especially misplaced in a time of tight budgets, Ros-Lehtinen said. 
  
 That prompted an angry retort from Rep. Gary L. Ackerman (D-N.Y.) who is retiring after 30 years in Congress. He apologized to Nides and Burns for “being used as foils to the conflicting intentions of some people on our committee and others in Washington, for partisan political purposes.” 
  
 “My great fear as I leave here is that we have become a partisan, bickering bunch of grousing old people trying to exploit whatever we can to our own political advantage,” Ackerman said. “We’ve become a group of small people with press secretaries. We’ve become people who want to exploit any kind of national calamity to our political advantage.” 
  
 Ros-Lehtinen cut him off at the end of his allotted time for opening remarks. 
  
 “Mr. Ackerman, we all aspire to your purity,” she said with apparent good humor. “The flesh is weak.” 
  
 Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio) said the Accountability Review Board’s report glosses over the security failures in Benghazi and lets the Obama administration off the hook. Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.) then gestured to Johnson and other Republicans and mocked them as conspiracy theorists. 
  
 Feigning a prosecutorial style, Connolly demanded to know whether Nides and Burns had been at secret meetings where the White House banned the word “terrorism” until after the presidential election and worked out how to “lie” about the attack. 
  
 “No such meeting,” Burns said with an embarrassed smile. 
  
 The Senate hearing earlier Thursday quickly centered on the question of money and how much is needed to protect U.S. diplomats in challenging environments worldwide. 
  
 Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) said some in the State Department did not “see the forest for the trees” as security conditions worsened in Benghazi. 
  
 “There were clear warning signs that the security situation in Libya had deteriorated,” before Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens traveled to Benghazi in September, Kerry said. “We need to do a better job of ensuring a free and open dialogue among ambassadors, their embassy security personnel and officials in Washington, where decisions on security staffing levels and funding are made.” 
  
 Kerry, widely expected to be President Obama’s choice to succeed Clinton in Obama’s second term, did not identify any individuals at fault. Instead, he said Congress bears responsibility for stinting on foreign affairs budgets. He welcomed the recommendation of independent investigators to spend $2.3 billion annually for a decade to upgrade overseas operations. 
  
 Congress has cut some funding for embassy security, and the State Department has pared back upgrades to save money. Both Democratic and Republican senators urged the department on Thursday to ask for what it really needs. 
  
 “Maybe the next secretary of state can help with this,” said Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), a wry reference to the speculation that Kerry will be appointed. ||||| WASHINGTON — State Department officials promised on Thursday to carry out quickly the recommendations of a review board to beef up security for the foreign service and urged Congress to provide more money to protect American diplomats. 
  
 The promises came during a Senate hearing into the handling of diplomatic security in Benghazi, Libya, before a deadly attack on a diplomatic outpost there that led to the deaths of four Americans, including the American ambassador. 
  
 “We have to do better,” Deputy Secretary of State William J. Burns said in prepared testimony to the Foreign Relations Committee. On Tuesday, one department official resigned and three others were relieved of their duties after a scathing report was released by an inquiry panel led by Thomas R. Pickering, a retired diplomat. 
  
 In an opening statement, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the committee’s chairman, said that Congress “also bears some responsibility” to provide adequate financing for diplomatic security. He noted that the board’s report called for spending $2.3 billion a year in the coming decade to protect American Embassies and offices abroad. 
  
 Mr. Kerry and Mr. Burns said it was important to find ways for diplomats to get out among the people, even in dangerous countries. 
  
 “We do not want to concertina-wire America off from the world,” Mr. Kerry said. 
  
 Mr. Burns said that “diplomacy, by its very nature, must sometimes be practiced in dangerous places.” 
  
 “Chris Stevens understood that as well as anyone,” he said, referring to the ambassador to Libya who was killed along with the three others in the Sept. 11 attack. “Chris also knew that every chief of mission has the responsibility to ensure the best possible security and support for our people.” 
  
 Mr. Burns and Thomas R. Nides, another deputy secretary of state, told the committee in prepared testimony that the department had “already begun to fix” the “serious, systemic problems” identified in the Pickering report. The two men testified in place of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is recovering from a concussion. 
  
 Mr. Nides said the department accepted “every one” of the report’s 29 specific recommendations. He mentioned, for example, the addition of hundreds of Marines to protect foreign missions. His office is leading an effort to put them into effect “quickly and completely — and to pursue steps above and beyond the board’s report,” he said. 
  
 Dozens of specific actions are already under way, several will be completed within weeks, and all will be in motion “by the time the next secretary of state takes office,” he said. 
  
 Mr. Kerry is the leading candidate to be replace Mrs. Clinton as secretary of state, after the withdrawal from consideration of Susan E. Rice, the ambassador to the United Nations, after criticisms of statements she made following the attack on the Benghazi outpost. 
  
 Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee, was skeptical about claims of progress, saying that rarely are the recommendations of review boards like the Pickering panel fully implemented. 
  
 “The culture of the State Department is one that needs to be reformed,” he said. 
  
 But Senator Bob Menendez, a Democrat of New Jersey, said one reason for weak security was that Congress had not provided as much money as the administration has sought and the Pickering panel recommended. 
  
 Pleas for more money come as Congress and the administration face broad spending cuts next year, whether or not a resolution is reached soon in the continuing fiscal impasse. 
  
 At a second hearing on Thursday afternoon, Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, the chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, scoffed at the calls for additional spending, saying that poor decisions rather than a lack of money were the problem in Benghazi. 
  
 “If the State Department intends to blame its long string of failures on inadequate funding, then perhaps it should take a closer look at the money that is being lavished on global climate change, culinary diplomacy programs and other favored projects,” she said. “This money could have been used for providing diplomatic security, including hiring additional personnel and providing them with adequate equipment and training.” |||||
Output:
Two of Hillary Clinton's top deputies went before a Senate panel today to take their lumps over the department's security shortcomings in the Benghazi attack, reports Politico. Two quotes sum up their main message: "We learned some very hard and painful lessons in Benghazi," said William Burns. "We are already acting on them. We have to do better.” "Clearly, mistakes occurred," said fellow deputy Thomas Nides. "We need to figure out how to make sure this does not happen again." He added that the department is working quickly to put into place recommendations from a critical independent report. Republican Bob Corker seemed to give them the most grief, sounding a little skeptical about promises of reform, reports the New York Times, he said. ”The culture of the State Department is one that needs to be reformed." He also made what the Washington Post calls a "wry" reference to the elephant in the room: “Maybe the next secretary of state can help with this." The comment got no response from panel chairman John Kerry, widely expected to replace Hillary Clinton. Nides and Burns also testify before a House panel today.