WASHINGTON -- Drawing on his own perspective as the son of a Foreign Service officer, Senator John F. Kerry on Thursday made an impassioned plea for what he said his father called “foreign policy outdoors” – the need for American diplomats to interact extensively with foreign populations despite the risks.

“We have to be on the ground outside the wire reaching out to those people,” Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said as he opened a hearing to receive testimony on the State Department investigation into the terrorist assault that killed the US ambassador and three others in Benghazi, Libya, in September.