State Department officials interviewed only one of multiple available witnesses and failed to collect other important evidence concerning allegations that a U.S. Ambassador solicited a prostitute.
The ambassador, who was not named in the report, was suspected in May 2011 by embassy security staff of having “solicited a prostitute in a public park near the embassy,” according to a report by the State Department inspector general.
Department officials “assigned an agent from [the] internal investigations unit to conduct a preliminary inquiry.
However, two days later, the agent was directed to stop further inquiry because of a decision by senior department officials to treat the matter as a ‘management issue,’” the IG said.
The ambassador was recalled to Washington and confronted with the allegation. He denied the allegation and was allowed to return to his post at the U.S. embassy.
Time Magazine reported Friday that the subject of the investigation was U.S. Ambassador to Belgium Howard Gutman.
Gutman was an early contributor to then-Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, giving $4,600 on March 29, 2007, according to FEC records.
He also contributed that amount to Obama’s chief rival for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton, on Nov. 24, 2008. He had also contributed to her 2000 campaign for senator from New York.
The decision to end the internal investigation was “based on the limited evidence collected,” the IG said, and department officials told the IG in 2013 “that the preliminary inquiry was appropriately halted because no further investigation was possible.”
Not so, the IG said, because “additional evidence, confirming or refuting the suspected misconduct, could have been collected.”
Only one “of multiple potential witnesses on the embassy’s security staff had been interviewed,” the IG said, and the department’s internal agent “never interviewed the ambassador.”
Other problems with the handling of the allegations included the fact the department “did not follow its usual investigative protocol of assigning an investigative case number to the matter or opening and keeping investigative case files.”
No records were kept of the department’s handling of the allegations, the IG said.
The unnamed ambassador is a political appointee, not a member of the career foreign service.
Relegating the allegations to an internal management review “could impair the IG’s independence and unduly limit [the department’s] and IG’s abilities to investigate alleged misconduct,” the IG said.
Go here to read the full report.
Mark Tapscott is executive editor of the Washington Examiner.
