Susan Rice meets with three GOP Senate critics

United States Ambassador Susan Rice speaks during a meeting on Syria in the United Nations Security Council on Thursday, Aug. 30, 2012. (Bebeto Matthews / AP)

 

Story by NBCNews

Written by Tom Curry, NBC News national affairs writer

NBC News’s Andrea Mitchell, Luke Russert and Frank Thorp contributed to this story

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President Barack Obama’s United Nations envoy Susan Rice, a possible nominee to be secretary of State, was set to meet Tuesday morning with three of her Senate Republican critics: Sens. John McCain of Arizona, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

All three have signaled that they would likely oppose Rice if Obama selects her to replace Hillary Clinton at the State Department.

The trio of senators has assailed Rice for saying in TV interviews five days after the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that the violence was due to an anti-Islamic video circulated on YouTube, a theory provided to her in “talking points” prepared by the Central Intelligence Agency that conflicted with the intelligence that the CIA had gathered after the event.

In a hint of Rice’s clout and the White House’s intention to armor, Acting CIA Director Mike Morrell will accompany her on her Senate meeting.

McCain told NBC News that Rice called him to request Tuesday’s meeting.

Asked last week about McCain's criticism of her, Rice said, "I do believe some of the statements he has made about me are unfounded and I look forward at the appropriate time to have a chance to respond."

McCain said on Fox News Sunday he was open to hearing directly from Rice: “I'd give everyone the benefit of explaining their position and the actions that they took. I'd be glad to have the opportunity to discuss these issues with her.”

He added that he had other questions for Rice, such as, “Why did she say that al Qaeda has been decimated in her statement here on this program? Al Qaeda hasn't been decimated. They're on the rise. They are all over Iraq. Their training camps are in Libya. They are all over Syria. They are on the rise everywhere in the Middle East. So, there's a lot of questions that we have for Ambassador Rice…”

Ayotte said Monday, "If President Obama nominates her for secretary of State, I would hold the nomination until sufficient answers regarding the Benghazi attack were given, then judge based on those answers.”

The Senate has not rejected a nominee for a Cabinet position since 1989 when it voted down President George H.W. Bush’s nomination of John Tower to be secretary of Defense. Unlike that case, the Senate is now controlled by the president’s own party.

In the Sept. 11 assault on the consulate, Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, Glen Doherty, Tyrone Woods and Sean Smith, were killed.

“I don’t trust her,” Graham said of Rice two weeks ago at a Capitol press conference, calling her “more a political operative than she is anything else when it comes to Benghazi.”

Last week Graham sent Obama a letter saying, “We have now learned that the talking points provided to Ambassador Susan Rice on or around September 15 describing the assault on our consulate in Benghazi were disconnected from the actual intelligence. According to numerous sources, including CIA Director David Petraeus and the CIA station chief on the ground in Libya, the perpetrators of the attack were identified to be al Qaeda-linked militia almost immediately.”

Graham told Obama that by the time Rice spoke on five Sunday TV talk shows on Sept. 16, “the classified intelligence clearly refuted the scenario she described.”

He asked Obama to explain why Rice was chosen to explain the attack to the American people. 

“Why wasn’t someone with firsthand knowledge of the attack on our Consulate, or firsthand knowledge of the administration’s response during the critical hours our consulate was under attack, selected for this opportunity?”