Hillary Clinton opens up about Benghazi: 'I've lost more sleep than all of you put together'

Hillary Clinton testifies before a panel on the Benghazi attacks.

(Image credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

published 22 October 2015

After nearly three hours of being on the defensive at the Thursday hearing before the House Select Committee on Benghazi, Hillary Clinton finally got a chance to open about the personal toll the saga has taken on her. "I've thought more about what happened than all of you put together," Clinton said, her tone becoming genuinely somber for one of the first times in the hearing. "I've lost more sleep than all of you put together. I have been racking my brain for what more could have been done, or should have been one."

She called the manner in which the House Benghazi Committee talks about the attack — and, as Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) put it, the accusation that she "interfered in Benghazi and let people die" — "deeply distressing." Clinton noted that it hasn't always been this way: "People [once] rose above politics, a Democratic Congress worked with a Republican administration to say what have we learned. Similarly when we lost more Americans, the bombings in East Africa, again, the Republicans and Democrats worked together."

"I would like us to get back to those times," Clinton added.