Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff at the State Department played a role in covering up allegations that an ambassador had solicited prostitutes on the job, but it was papered over in a review of a botched inspector general probe published in October 2014.
The public version of the inspector general report suggests it was Patrick Kennedy, the undersecretary for management, who swept the allegations against Belgian Ambassador Howard Gutman under the rug in 2011.
But an internal version of the same report obtained by America Rising through the Freedom of Information Act and shared with the Washington Examiner reveals chief of staff Cheryl Mills’ hand in protecting Gutman from an emerging internal probe.
While the public report only briefly mentions the fact that Mills attended a June 3, 2011 meeting with Gutman and Kennedy in Washington regarding the prostitution case, the internal version suggests Mills conducted the questioning of the ambassador.
Gutman had allegedly frequented a section of the 30-acre public park — across the street from the U.S. embassy complex in Belgium — that was “known for prostitutes and other illicit activity.”
The ambassador’s “interest” in the illicit section of the park was “common knowledge” among members of Gutman’s security team, the report said.
But after Gutman told Kennedy and Mills at the Washington meeting that he entered the Belgian park “in order to blow of steam” and explained that he “likes to take walks alone,” the two reportedly allowed Gutman to return to his post and shut down the investigation into his actions.
No State Department record of the June 3 meeting with Mills exists, the inspector general found.
Gutman went on to serve as the ambassador to Belgium for two years after the incident.
The internal report said a diplomatic security investigator was never permitted to interview the ambassador and was only able to conduct one interview with a single member of Gutman’s security team before “the agent was directed to stop any further inquiry.”
The investigator was informed by upper management that he was not to conduct any additional interviews that “would raise the attention of this matter” and to simply jot down everything that had been gathered in the two days the investigation had been open and prepare a memo for “seniors” in the agency.
That memo is the only surviving record of the probe, the watchdog found.
The decision to end the investigation was made by Kennedy, according to the internal report.
Over the previous two years, diplomatic security had investigated 13 different prostitution cases involving lower-ranked officials. The inspector general “found no evidence that any of those inquiries were halted and treated as ‘management issues’ by senior officials,” as was the case with Gutman.
Kennedy made the probe a management issue rather than a criminal investigation shortly after the allegations came to light.
The incident raises questions about Mills’ activities under Clinton given evidence that Mills also interfered to shield the nominee for ambassador to Iraq from an unrelated investigation during Clinton’s tenure.
Mills has been a close confidante of the former secretary of state since Bill Clinton’s days in the White House.
Her personal involvement in high-level State Department cover-ups raises additional questions about whether Clinton was aware of what her chief of staff was doing at the agency she oversaw.
For example, Clinton’s public schedule for the day of the Gutman meeting shows the secretary of state would have been in the building while Mills and Kennedy were speaking with the embattled ambassador.
A political appointee, Gutman had bundled half a million dollars for Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
