Zine El Abidine Ben Ali latter measures were clearly aimed at keeping Ben Ali in office; he faced having to give up the presidency in 2004. He was duly reelected in 2004, again by an implausibly high margin—this time 94 percent of the vote. Tunisia under Ben Ali had problems with human rights violations, such as freedom of the press, highlighted by the official treatment of the journalist Taoufik Ben Brik, who was harassed and imprisoned for his criticism of Ben Ali. Under Ben Ali, Tunisia consistently ranked near the bottom of most international rankings for human rights and press freedom. On 25 October 2009,
Hillary Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State but she avoided specific issues of U.S. aid and when elections should take place. President Obama was reportedly unhappy with U.S. intelligence agencies following their failure to foresee the 2010–2011 Tunisian uprising and the downfall of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali as well as the Egyptian protests. Responding to criticism that the State Department had failed to see the developments in Egypt coming, Clinton defended the U.S. in an interview on Al-Arabiya, saying "I don't think anybody could have predicted we'd be sitting here talking about the end of the Mubarak presidency at the time that this all started." Reflecting