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The White House’s Link To The Secret Service Prostitution Scandal
Canada Free Press
Although it verges on resembling a slogan, the Obama administration is embroiled in yet another scandal. The story involving Secret Service agents busted for hiring prostitutes during an official trip to Cartagena, Colombia in 2012 has re-emerged.
The original scandal broke when one of two dozen agents on the detail failed to pay one of the prostitutes for her services. All of the agents were punished or fired. But as the paper reveals, former White House presidential advance team member and volunteer Jonathan Dach not only registered a prostitute as his overnight guest, but White House officials were aware of it. Moreover, they allegedly attempted to sabotage the Inspector General office’s (IG) investigation.According to the Washington Post,“senior White House aides were given information at the time suggesting that a prostitute was an overnight guest in the hotel room of a presidential advance-team member—yet that information was never thoroughly investigated or publicly acknowledged.” That revelation stands in stark contrast to denials made by Obama administration officials, who repeatedly insisted that no one from the White House was involved.
The Secret Service reportedly shared the information on two different occasions with with top White House officials, including former White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler. Both times those officials conducted interviews with Dach. Both times they concluded he had done nothing wrong.
While this was occurring, a separate investigation conducted by the IG’s office of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for a Senate committee looking into the scandal discovered additional evidence, courtesy of records, along with eyewitness accounts from people who had accompanied Dach in Columbia. The lead investigator in the case subsequently told Senate staffers that pressure was brought to bear from his superiors in the offices of then-acting Inspector General Charles K. Edwards. “We were directed at the time … to delay the report of the investigation until after the 2012 election,” lead investigator David Nieland told Senate staffers, according to three unidentified people with knowledge of his statement. Nieland further revealed those superiors told him “to withhold and alter certain information in the report of investigation because it was potentially embarrassing to the administration.”
Edwards countered at the time, telling Senate staffers that changes to the report were part of the normal editing process and that he was trying to maintain the focus on DHS employees. In a summary lettersubmitted to Congress in September 2012, he reveals that his investigation “did find a hotel registry that suggests that two non-USSS personnel may have had contact with foreign nationals.” But because his investigation was limited to DHS personnel, he “did not conduct any additional investigation into this finding and has made no determination related to these individuals because they are not DHS personnel.”
Reposted with permission
