Susan Rice to meet John McCain in bid to defuse Benghazi row "My concerns are obviously that she told the American people things that were patently false, that were not true," Mr McCain said, confirming Tuesday's meeting, which stoked speculation Ms Rice is the frontrunner for the nomination. Several leading Republicans have vowed to oppose Ms Rice's elevation to become America's top diplomat at all costs, but Mr McCain, the party's 2008 presidential nominee, has softened his criticism in recent days. Republicans singled out Ms Rice because she appeared on Sunday political talk shows five days after the Benghazi attack and said it was the "best assessment" of the US government that the strike was not pre-planned. Ms Rice said the assault appeared to have started from a "spontaneous" reaction by protesters angry at an amateur anti-Muslim video made on American soil, as had been the case in an earlier assault on the US embassy in Cairo. President Barack Obama's administration subsequently admitted the attack had been carried out by militants linked to Al-Qaeda, and State Department and FBI probes are currently under way to find out what happened. Ms Rice appeared to be largely absolved of blame when the office of the Director of National Intelligence confirmed the terms "Al-Qaeda" and "terrorism" had been removed from the "talking points" brief she was given. Current US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is expected to leave office early in the New Year but Mr Obama has kept everyone waiting to see whether he is willing to name Ms Rice and risk a potentially tricky Senate confirmation process if Republicans dig in. The other main contender for the role is thought to be Democratic Senator John Kerry, the influential chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who lost the 2004 presidential election to George W Bush.