(MCT) — WASHINGTON — Republican lawmakers failed to open new lines of inquiry into the deadly Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. mission in Libya despite back-to-back grillings Wednesday of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton for a fuller explanation of the administration’s response to the much-debated terrorist assault.

Testifying weeks before she is expected to leave office, Clinton emphasized in consecutive sessions before the House and Senate foreign policy committees that there was a “rapidly changing threat environment” in North Africa, citing the recent terrorist attack in Algeria and growing instability in Mali, Nigeria and elsewhere.