Jay Carney was careful to parse his words as he deliberately misled reporters in his April 23, 2012, White House briefing: “There have been no specific, credible allegations of misconduct by anyone on the White House advance team or the White House staff.”
The former White House spokesman was discussing the sex scandal that had just occurred in Cartagena, Colombia. Several members of the Secret Service and the U.S. military would be fired or disciplined for bringing Colombian prostitutes back to their hotel rooms, creating a situation in which presidential security could be compromised.
As for any involvement by White House personnel, the key word in Carney’s denial was “credible.” Credibility, it turns out, is in the eye of the beholder.
As the Washington Post reported this week, White House staff simply chose not to believe that a member the White House advance team — Jonathan Dach, the privileged son of a major donor to President Obama’s campaign — had brought a local prostitute back to his room. Despite documentary and eyewitness evidence gathered by investigators, they also chose not to investigate the charge beyond two conversations with him in which he denied wrongdoing.
The White House has argued, incredibly, that it preferred not to look into this potential minor breach of presidential security because Dach was not technically a White House employee (he was a volunteer working per diem) and because prostitution is legal in Cartagena.
The allegations against Dach would not have been that damaging, but Obama administration officials apparently decided they were serious enough to start interfering in the subsequent investigation. Shortly after the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security began his investigation and briefed Secretary Janet Napolitano, his investigators reportedly were ordered “to withhold and alter certain information in the report of investigation because it was potentially embarrassing to the administration,” and “to delay the report of the investigation until after the 2012 election.” Investigators in his office who objected to these conditions suffered retaliation and were placed on administrative leave.
Dach has since been appointed a policy adviser in (we are not making this up) the State Department’s Office of Global Women’s Issues. His father, a former lobbyist who gave $28,500 to help Obama in his 2008 election, is now a senior adviser helping to implement Obamacare in its second year.
White House interference with an independent investigation, whether to avoid political embarrassment in an election year or just to protect a wealthy donor, raises deep and troubling questions. Obama’s promise to have the “most transparent White House” has already become punch line, perhaps, but it is stunning that there could be a cover-up — complete with career-ending punishments meted out to honest investigators — of something this small.
It leaves to the imagination what Team Obama is doing to keep the public in the dark about more serious matters.
