AP
The Washington Examiner has followed up on a previous report exposing the Clinton State Department’s efforts to cover up alleged misconduct with new details about some of the “most egregious” examples of investigations thwarted by agency staff, and the frustration felt by investigators:
The eight cases mentioned in the memo included an incident in which at least five members of Clinton’s security detail allegedly solicited prostitutes in a number of countries while on official travel, including on trips to Russia and Colombia. A diplomatic security guard was permitted to continue overseeing Clinton’s security operations at a Moscow hotel after allegedly soliciting prostitutes “despite obvious counterintelligence questions,” the memo said.A top official in the bureau of diplomatic security “reportedly told [an investigator] to shut down the four investigations” into the accused security guards, three of whom received one-day suspensions before being transferred to other assignments.
Another case involved a regional security officer in Lebanon who was alleged to have sexually assaulted local embassy staff, and who had a “long history of misconduct allegations” at his other posting in North Africa and the Middle East. Officials looking into the matter were given just three days to investigate, after a State Department official described the inquiry as a “witch hunt.” An inspector general’s report published in 2014 noted that investigators “encountered resistance” from senior State Department officials, who exhibited “undue influence and favoritism” in the case.
Perhaps the most egregious of the episodes involved “an ambassador in Belgium” who in May 2011 was accused of “ditch[ing] his protective security detail in order to solicit sexual favors from both prostitutes and minor children,” according to an inspector general’s memo. A subsequent review found
a number of flaws in the subsequent probe of the Belgian ambassador.“[Diplomatic security] assigned an agent from its internal investigations unit to conduct a preliminary inquiry. However, two days later, the agent was directed to stop further inquiry because of a decision by senior department officials to treat the matter as a ‘management issue,’” the Linick report said.“The ambassador was recalled to Washington and, in June 2011, met with the undersecretary of state for management and the then chief of staff and counselor to the secretary of state. At the meeting, the ambassador denied the allegations and was then permitted to return to post,” the report continued. “The department took no further action affecting the ambassador.”
Patrick Kennedy, the State Department’s undersecretary for management, told the inspector general’s office that he declined to pursue the Belgian matter further because “solicitation of a prostitute … was not a crime in the host country.”
Before becoming Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton successfully defended a child rapist she (most likely) believed to be guilty.
