BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will be in Beverly Hills tonight to accept an award honoring her public service while a group holds a rally nearby to urge her to make another White House run.
Clinton will receive the inaugural Warren Christopher Public Service Award from the Pacific Council on International Policy at a gala at the Beverly Wilshire hotel.
The award will be presented hours after a hearing in Washington, D.C., of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which is scheduled to hear testimony from State Department official Gregory Hicks regarding the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya.
Congressional Republicans told The New York Times the testimony would show that Clinton and President Barack Obama did not do all they could to stop the attack, which claimed the lives of U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, State Department official Sean Smith and two CIA security officers.
The award being presented to Clinton is named after the career lawyer and diplomat who served as secretary of state during President Bill Clinton’s first term.
A one-time chairman of the law firm O’Melveny & Myers, Christopher also led the so-called “Christopher Commission,” which probed the management of the Los Angeles Police Department following the videotaped police beating of Rodney King.
Before that, Christopher was deputy secretary of state during the Carter administration and was awarded the Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, for his role in negotiating the release of 52 American hostages held in Iran. He died in March 2011 at the age of 85.
The Christopher award honors “the public service of others whose work reflects his distinctive leadership qualities,” according to the Pacific Council.
Clinton stepped down as secretary of state in February. She accepted the post after falling short in her bid to win the Democratic nomination for president in 2008.
In the keynote address that she plans to deliver as she accepts the award, Clinton will discuss “broad foreign policy issues,” including the policy pivot to Asia as the United states, now out of Iraq, disengages itself from Afghanistan, global women’s empowerment issues, and the West Coast’s role in global affairs, according to a Pacific Council statement.
As Clinton is being honored, a group called “Ready for Hillary 2016” will hold a rally outside the Beverly Wilshire hotel to urge her to run for president in 2016.
According to organizers, the group is “the nation’s premier organization urging Hillary to run for president while laying the groundwork for her potential candidacy.”
