Hillary Clinton says she learned about these 8 separate State Department scandals from media reports. Of course. cnn.com/2013/06/11/pol…
— jimgeraghty (@jimgeraghty) June 11, 2013
◼ link - Ashley Fantz and Jill Dougherty, CNN
The timeline surrounding the allegations places the incidents during former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's tenure, opening the possibility that a widening scandal might taint both her record and her possible political aspirations. Clinton has also taken heat for the department's response to the September 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya.
Regarding the latest allegations, CNN was provided the documents by a lawyer for a whistle-blower who is a former senior inspector general investigator.
They include:
An active U.S. ambassador "routinely ditched his protective security detail in order to solicit sexual favors from both prostitutes and minor children," the memo says. The ambassador's protective detail and others "were well aware of the behavior," the memo asserts. When a diplomatic security officer tried to investigate, undersecretary of state for management Patrick Kennedy allegedly ordered the investigator "not to open a formal investigation."On Tuesday, Nicholas Merrill, a spokesman for Hillary Clinton, said Clinton was completely unaware of any of the investigations mentioned in the Office of the Inspector General's reports and memos, including the case involving her personal security detail allegedly soliciting prostitutes.
A State Department security official in Beirut allegedly "engaged in sexual assaults" against foreign nationals working as embassy guards. The security official, the Office of the Inspector General says, was also accused of committing "similar assaults during assignments in Baghdad, and possibly Khartoum and Monrovia." The office's memo says that an inspector general's investigator who went to Beirut to try to conduct an investigation was not given enough time to complete the job.
• A member of Clinton's security detail allegedly "engaged prostitutes while on official trips in foreign countries." The inspector general's agent assigned to investigate "concluded" that the "prostitution problem was endemic."
• In Iraq, an "underground drug ring" may have been operating near the U.S. Embassy and "supplying" drugs to State Department security contractors, but an agent sent to investigate the allegations was prevented from completing the job.
"We learned of it from the media and don't know anything beyond what's been reported," Merrill told CNN in a written statement.
◼ Hillary’s Sorry State of Affairs - .A. MILLER and GEOFF EARLE, New York Post Correspondents
◼ Discussion at Lucianne
