Top State Department staff under Hillary Clinton allegedly blocked an investigation into the president’s nominee for ambassador to Iraq.
The ambassador-designate, Brett McGurk, was accused of engaging in inappropriate behavior with a reporter from the Wall Street Journal and funneling her information he was not authorized to disclose.
McGurk withdrew his name from consideration for the ambassadorship in the face of a growing scandal over emails that revealed his extra-marital affair with the reporter, Gina Chon. His relationship with the journalist prompted concerns among Republican lawmakers, although the extent of the internal cover-up of his conduct was not then known.
McGurk is presently one of President Obama’s key advisers on the Islamic State, having survived the scandal in 2012 with the help of higher-ups in the Bureau of Diplomatic Security.
An inspector general memo dated October 23, 2012 and obtained by the Washington Examiner alleges Cheryl Mills, chief of staff to then-Secretary Clinton, prevented investigators in that bureau from speaking with McGurk.
“[The special investigations division] never interviewed McGurk, allegedly because Cheryl Mills from the Secretary’s office interceded. Without that interview, [special investigations division] has been unable to close the case,” the memo said.
“Email from Mills reportedly shows her agreeing to a particular course of action for the case, but then reneging and advising McGurk to withdraw his name from consideration for the ambassadorship,” the document continued.
A former official with the State Department’s office of inspector general said Mills was briefed about the situation “as a courtesy” by staff in the bureau of diplomatic security. The former official requested anonymity to speak candidly.
McGurk withdrew his name from consideration in June 2012.
The “assumption was that [Mills] had tipped him off” to the impending investigation, the former official said.
Peter Van Buren, a former foreign service officer and career diplomat who served in the State Department for 24 years, said there were “powerful rumors” circling at the time that suggested McGurk’s missteps in Iraq were part of a larger pattern of behavior.
“There were rumors inside the State Department that the investigation into McGurk’s actions in Iraq was squashed at the very highest levels,” Van Buren told the Washington Examiner.
Van Buren retired from the State Department in 2012 after a lengthy legal battle with the State Department over whistleblower disclosures he made in a book about his time in Iraq with the agency from 2009 to 2010.
During his nearly quarter-century at the State Department, Van Buren said he saw a variety of management styles from the secretary’s office as agency leadership shifted.
“I think what a lot of State Department people felt was that previous secretaries were focused more on protecting the institution and, by extension, themselves,” he said. “Whereas the Clinton people were 90 percent concerned about protecting Hillary and maybe 10 percent concerned about protecting the institution.”
Although the investigation was eventually closed in July 2013, speculation that he was about to be named to another high-level position involving Iraq began swirling months earlier.
McGurk is presently Deputy Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL.
His high-profile role puts him at the forefront of the conflict with the Islamic State. For example, he appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday to announce the government’s intention to equip tribal fighters in Iraq to support their fight against the Islamic State.
McGurk’s affair with Chon, to whom he is now married, became the subject of public scrutiny after a 2012 “computer hacking incident” in Baghdad resulted in the publication of racy emails back and forth between the two while he was in line to be the next ambassador to Iraq.
The leaked emails suggested at the time the two had a sexual relationship. But they also suggested the ambassador-designate may have given sensitive information to the reporter.
The communications show McGurk asked Chon to text him on his Blackberry because texting was a “better way to engage in sensitive deliberations” than emailing from his government address.
Several messages between McGurk and the Journal reporter suggested he used his position to provide Chon with access to Iraqi sources.
“The emails were labeled Sensitive But Unclassified, and allegedly the reporter drew from the emails in writing articles about a proposed Status of Forces Agreement and the U.S. military withdrawal date,” the October 2012 inspector general memo said. “Some of the information may have been cleared for release, but other information reportedly was not.”
None of the allegations against McGurk made it into a February 2013 inspector general report detailing potential problems with the structure of the bureau of diplomatic security.
However, McGurk’s case appeared alongside several others in earlier versions of the same report. The heavily-edited documents have raised new questions about the independence of Harold Geisel, the temporary inspector general for all four years of Clinton’s tenure.
Geisel was replaced by permanent Inspector General Steven Linick just 16 days after filing an affidavit in federal court in an attempt to keep the inspector general documents from leaving the State Department.
Linick reviewed the allegations of interference laid out in the controversial drafts and highlighted McGurk’s case as one that had indeed been subjected to pressure from above.
The public version of Linick’s October 2014 report downplayed the notion that Mills had interfered in the McGurk probe. That report “found no evidence of any undue influence by the Chief of Staff/Counselor,” which would have been Mills.
But a nonpublic version of the same report obtained by the Examiner reveals Mills took steps in June 2012 to protect McGurk as the scandal over his affair with Chon grew.
Mills approved a letter written by former ambassadors in support of McGurk days after the sensitive emails leaked online, the nonpublic version said.
A day after members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee called for McGurk to be stripped of his nomination, Mills “was advised by the assistant secretary for legislative affairs that…securing the nominee’s confirmation was going to be a ‘long shot.'”
“On the next day…the Chief of Staff [Mills] spoke to the nominee, who agreed that the nomination should be withdrawn,” the report said.
By August of that year, McGurk was in talks with Mills “and others” about his “willingness to continue to serve as an adviser to the U.S. ambassador.”
Months later, McGurk and Mills mulled the possibility of moving him to a position in the White House.
The nonpublic report discovered the investigation had “slowed to a stop” when the investigator in charge was unable to secure an interview with McGurk.
“The agent was not given a reason for the delay in the interview of the nominee,” the document said.
After a top diplomatic security official, Eric Boswell, inexplicably impeded an interview of McGurk, “that delay brought the investigation to a temporary standstill,” the published report said.
A State Department spokesperson confirmed McGurk was interviewed by the bureau of diplomatic security before the case was closed in July 2013, months after Clinton and her staff had left the agency and more than a year after the probe began.
Records suggest that interview took place in November 2012, long after the impropriety first came to light.
Boswell, who resigned the next month over his alleged role in the failures that led to the Benghazi terror attack, told inspector general staff that he had stalled the interview because McGurk was being considered for the White House job. If McGurk had moved to the White House, Boswell said, the investigation would have been shifted to the FBI.
Linick’s team said that “rationale…was not justified.”
“Much of the delay was attributable to inaction by [Boswell],” the nonpublic report said.
This story has been updated to reflect information taken from newly-obtained documents.
