CBS News is reporting on an Inspector General’s report on a series of scandals involving Hillary Clinton’s State Department. The most troubling aspect of the OIG report, according to CBS, is the extent to which senior State Department officials have tried to quash investigations of wrongdoing. Mrs. Clinton is not specifically named in the CBS report:
CBS News’ John Miller reports that according to an internal State Department Inspector General’s memo, several recent investigations were influenced, manipulated, or simply called off. The memo obtained by CBS News cited eight specific examples. Among them: allegations that a State Department security official in Beirut “engaged in sexual assaults” on foreign nationals hired as embassy guards and the charge and that members of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s security detail “engaged prostitutes while on official trips in foreign countries” — a problem the report says was “endemic.”
The memo also reveals details about an “underground drug ring” was operating near the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and supplied State Department security contractors with drugs.
These allegations are reminiscent of the Secret Service prostitution scandal.
Aurelia Fedenisn, a former investigator with the State Department’s internal watchdog agency, the Inspector General, told Miller, “We also uncovered several allegations of criminal wrongdoing in cases, some of which never became cases.”
In such cases, DSS agents told the Inspector General’s investigators that senior State Department officials told them to back off, a charge that Fedenisn says is “very” upsetting.
“We were very upset. We expect to see influence, but the degree to which that influence existed and how high up it went, was very disturbing,” she said.
In one specific and striking cover-up, State Department agents told the Inspector General they were told to stop investigating the case of a U.S. Ambassador who held a sensitive diplomatic post and was suspected of patronizing prostitutes in a public park.
Crazy as it may seem–why would a 70 year old lady want to run for president?–Hillary Clinton is obviously campaigning for her party’s 2016 nomination. Her stewardship of the State Department–the only significant executive position she has ever held–will be a key issue in the primary and general election campaigns. At the moment, with these revelations coming on top of the much more serious Benghazi scandal, not to mention the generally disastrous events that have taken place in the Middle East over the last four years, her tenure is looking hard to defend.
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