US News

Pol outrage at bogus State ax

Congressional leaders were up in arms yesterday after learning that senior State Department officials remained on the payroll after the agency said they had resigned over the botched security at the Benghazi consulate

“It is appalling that the State Department would try to deceive the American people about having held officials accountable for security failures that cost four brave lives,” Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chair of the committee on oversight, told The Post.

Issa was reacting to a report in yesterday’s Post revealing that the officials will merely switch jobs and not “resign,” as State Department officials initially claimed, over the Sept. 11 Benghazi-consulate attack, which left four Americans dead, including Ambassador Chris Stevens.

Last week, the independent Accountability Review Board, led by former Ambassador Tom Pickering and ex-Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen, found that the four officials had “demonstrated a lack of leadership and management ability” because numerous security concerns in Libya had not been handled properly.

In response, the four officials were supposedly moved out of their jobs.

Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland had said Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had accepted the resignation of Eric Boswell, the assistant secretary for diplomatic security.

But the spokeswoman didn’t mention that Boswell retained his role as director of the Office of Foreign Missions. His 2011 salary was $155,000, records show.

“If public reports are true, it is disgraceful and deceitful that senior officials at State who ignored multiple pleas of help from our consulate in Benghazi continue to have any influence over our foreign policy,” said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

“While I have asked State Department officials several times for clarification on this administrative matter, they remain silent,” she said, adding, “These high-ranking officials were among those responsible for the failures in leadership and management at State regarding the . . . attack.”

She called the misleading statements “smoke and mirrors.”

The State Department declined to comment.

Additional reporting by Josh Margolin