Months after whistleblowers accused the State Department of covering up employee sex scandals, most of the cases have been ignored or swept under the rug, critics charge.
Records show that staffers were given cushy jobs or allowed to retire, and watchdogs say the feds have hardly bothered to investigate since the shenanigans came to light this past summer.
“The first few days after the revelation, there was a whole lot of barking going on,” said 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.
“Nobody’s barking anymore. As a concerned citizen, what the hell is going on here?”
The bombshell memo detailed accusations that former Ambassador to Belgium Howard Gutman and members of Clinton’s security detail hired prostitutes, but were given little more than wrist-slaps.
The Post also revealed allegations that former Naples Consul General Donald Moore romped with call girls and had torrid affairs with Italian employees.
But the alleged dalliances seem to have not hurt Moore’s career.
He left his post as Naples consul general in June and now teaches at the Air War College in Montgomery, Ala. — a position paid for by the State Department, according to a college spokesman.
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.
Here’s what has become of other employees named in the IG memo.
- 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.
The State Department is calling the misconduct 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,” said department spokesman Alec Gerlach.