Clinton State Department swept sex scandals under the rug
Joe Newby
October 21, 2013
On Sunday, the New York Post published an explosive article in which it says that critics are charging the State Department with sweeping sex scandals under the rug.
According to records, staffers allegedly involved in salacious scandals were either allowed to retire or given cushy jobs.
“The first few days after the revelation, there was a whole lot of barking going on,” Damon Mathias, a lawyer for Aurelia Fedenisn, a former investigator with the department’s inspector general who leaked an internal memo citing probes that were derailed by senior officials under then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, told the Post.
“Nobody’s barking anymore. As a concerned citizen, what the hell is going on here?” Mathias asked.
According to the memo, Ambassador to Belgium Howard Gutman and members of Clinton’s security detail hired prostitutes, but were given little more than wrist-slaps, the Post said.
In June, the Post revealed allegations that that former Naples Consul General Donald Moore "romped with call girls and had torrid affairs with Italian employees."
The allegations, however, have not hurt Moore, who is currently an instructor at the Air War College in Montgomery, Ala, a position that a college spokesman said is paid for by the State Department.
The Post observed:
“In a case filed with the department’s Office of Civil Rights, former consul officer Kerry Howard claims Moore harassed her after she tried to expose his hanky-panky at the Naples office.
“
Howard’s lawyer, Lawrence Kelly, is asking the IG to investigate allegations of financial misconduct and accusations that Moore had an affair with a language instructor.”
What about other employees listed in the IG report?
According to the Post:
•Chuck Lisenbee, a former Beirut security officer who was being probed for allegedly sexually assaulting local guards, is now a special agent in Washington for the Office of Diplomatic Vehicles, Enforcement and Outreach, according to a State Department phone directory. Agents were only given three days to investigate the allegations against him, according to the memo.
•Brett McGurk — a former senior adviser to the ambassador to Iraq — was appointed the deputy assistant secretary for Iraq and Iran in August, according to the State Department Web site. He was President Obama’s nominee for ambassador to Iraq but withdrew after his extramarital affair with a Wall Street Journal reporter was exposed.
•According to the memo, investigators never interviewed McGurk because Clinton’s chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, intervened.
•Gutman was allowed to retire in July. A State Department investigator found Gutman solicited “sexual favors from both prostitutes and minor children,” according to the memo. The IG’s Office is reviewing the charges and the department’s procedures and plans to release a followup report.
State Department spokesman Alec Gerlach, however, called the charges "baseless."
“We await the findings of [the new] report, and we believe that given our knowledge of the facts, some may well regret sensationalizing baseless allegations in ways that hurt innocent people,” he said.
Clinton, a possible Democratic Party candidate for the 2016 election, made headlines when she famously told a Senate panel investigating the Benghazi terror attack, "What difference, at this point, does it make?!"
examiner.com |
