Ex-officer Kerry Howard
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In the latest black eye for the scandal-ridden State Department, a whistleblower claims she was run out of the foreign service after complaining about a consul general’s alleged office trysts with subordinates and hookers.
Kerry Howard says she was bullied, harassed and forced to resign after she exposed US Consul General Donald Moore’s alleged security-threatening shenanigans in the Naples, Italy, office.
As the post’s community-liaison officer, Howard was charged with keeping workplace peace and advising higher-ups on the state of morale, but when she revealed allegations about her boss, State Department officials swept it under the rug, according to an Equal Employment Opportunity complaint she filed with the department’s Office of Civil Rights.
“It’s cover-up after cover-up. It’s absolutely hideous,” she told The Post. “When our diplomats disrespect the Italians by hiring and firing them because they have seen too much — or use them for ‘sex-ercise’ — we have to question why we have diplomats abroad at taxpayer expense.”
Howard is just the latest whistleblower to allege that Hillary Rodham Clinton’s State Department allowed sexual misbehavior to continue unchecked.
Last week, The Post reported that Aurelia Fedenisn, an investigator at the department’s inspector-general office, wrote a memo outlining eight cases of supposed sexual misconduct, but that they were removed from an IG report.
The allegations included US Ambassador to Belgium Howard Gutman soliciting prostitutes, including minors, and at least seven agents in Clinton’s security detail hiring hookers while traveling with her to Russia and Colombia.
The soap opera in Italy unfolded in the fall of 2010, when Moore became the Naples consul general after serving in the same capacity at the US Embassy in Port au Prince, Haiti. As a senior foreign-service officer, Moore could make as much as $179,700 a year, State Department data says.
Within days, he allegedly bedded a consulate employee, a single mom who fell in love with him.
Howard detailed the alleged affair in certified letters to members of Congress, including California Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, in December, said Howard’s lawyer, Lawrence Kelly.
“More and more intimate details of their relationship became common knowledge,” Howard wrote, adding that the staffer became pregnant and wanted to keep the baby, but that Moore insisted she get an abortion.
“She informed anyone within earshot that she had had the abortion and had her tubes tied at his instruction,” Howard wrote. “Morale continued to sink as this soap opera played out in our workplace on a daily basis.”
With the affair rumors swirling, Howard’s supervisor, Pamela Caplis, instructed Howard to keep quiet, Howard claims.
“I have already informed Frankfurt,” Caplis allegedly said in what Howard claims was an attempt to head off the complaint.
Still, on a February 2011 trip to Rome, Howard told the US Embassy’s management officer, Frank Ledahawsky, that morale was “very bad” because of the alleged affair.
“We have to save his career,” Ledahawsky allegedly said.
Shortly after the meeting, Moore was allegedly called to Rome and ordered to end his relationship with the employee.
Howard thought her troubles would be over, but she became a target instead.
Howard, who made about $16,000 annually in her part-time position, said that her office was moved five times without notification and that she was excluded from meetings and forbidden from attending a staff photo-op with Sen. John McCain.
Howard says Caplis grilled her for the names of staffers speaking about Moore’s relationships and, in one meeting, screamed she was a “backstabber.”
Colleagues ganged up on her, and one State Department security officer told her, “You better be careful, because they are out to get you,” according to Howard’s affidavit in the Office of Civil Rights investigation.
Howard said the situation got even uglier when Moore became her direct supervisor in February 2012 after Caplis was reassigned.
“Try not to be so perfect, and try to be less present in the consulate,” Moore warned, according to Howard’s affidavit.
Meanwhile, bachelor Moore began a relationship with another subordinate, and “continued a pattern of other relationships which threaten the security of the consulate,” the affidavit said.
“The female visitors to the consulate, if they are logged properly, will provide a starting point for a broader inquiry,” she hinted.
Howard was clearer, however, in a recent memo to Feinstein.
“It is also now known that the consul general entertains prostitutes, escorts and married women in his residence during the day during work hours,” she wrote.
“These women enter and leave the consulate via the front entrance . . . His household staff are required to clean his bathroom and change his linens after each woman leaves.”
Only Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-Ky.) office replied to Howard’s letters.
In an e-mail, Rand aide Brett King wrote: “I received your message this morning regarding actions at the Consulate in Naples, Italy. Do we have your permission to share this information with other government agencies?”
Howard resigned in May 2012.
“I was left with no choice,” she said in her affidavit. “I was forced to leave or suffer continued harassment and humiliation.”
Two months later, she filed the Equal Employment Opportunity complaint. Kelly said an independent investigator is close to concluding her probe, which included affidavits from seven former Italian consulate employees.
Moore is still assigned to Naples. His office referred questions to the State Department, which declined to comment.