According to him, he was ‘relaxing in his villa watching tv’ and missed two phone calls from the Ambassador. Basically he either ignored or didn’t hear his phone ringing. Seems like a lapse in judgement to me. The only big problem I see, based on this testimony, is the ridiculous amount of bureaucracy in the State Department, Department of Defense, and CIA. How many phone calls had to made before they could reach someone with the authority to do something? Seems to me that just getting the big picture required phone calls to a, b, c, d, e, f, and g then getting authorization to do something required phone calls to h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, and p which then had to filter back down from o to a.
In terms of why Mr. Hicks was demoted; at the very beginning of his testimony he said that he was ‘relaxing in his villa watching television’ when he missed TWO urgent calls from the Ambassador. He was too busy watching tv to answer the Ambassador’s phone calls and didn’t even notice until someone barged into the room to tell him that the consulate was under attack. That seems like a good place to start.