Kerry clears 4 State staffers put on leave over Benghazi attack to return to work

Secretary of State John Kerry has cleared four U.S. State Department employees to return to work who were put on administrative leave following the State Department's internal investigation into the deadly 2012 attack on U.S. diplomatic posts in Benghazi, Libya.

In a statement released Tuesday, a senior State Department official said Kerry had carefully studied the findings of the agency's Accountability Review Board (ARB), and "reaffirmed its finding that no employee breached their duty or should be fired but rather that some should be reassigned."

Following the ARB investigation into the incident, then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton placed Diplomatic Security Chief Eric Boswell, security officials Charlene Lamb and Scott Bultrowicz and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Maghreb Region Raymond Maxwell on administrative leave. They continued collecting their government paychecks during their leave, but have remained in employment limbo until this week.

Boswell resigned his position in December 2012, just months after the Sept. 11 attack which left U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three American security personnel dead.

Maxwell told The Daily Beast on Monday that he was informed of his reactivation in a memo from the State Department.

"No explanation, no briefing, just come back to work. So I will go in tomorrow," the website quoted him as saying.

The State Department official's statement Tuesday said all four State employees would return to work, but did not detail their new assignments.

Maxwell, it emerged during his year of leave, is also a prolific poet. He spent some of his downtime writing provocative verses -- some of which include scathing commentary on the post-Benghazi fallout and implications that he felt he was made a scapegoat.