{"id":55708,"date":"2014-10-09T08:45:11","date_gmt":"2014-10-09T12:45:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=55708"},"modified":"2014-11-18T13:42:30","modified_gmt":"2014-11-18T18:42:30","slug":"is-anyone-really-surprised","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=55708","title":{"rendered":"Is Anyone Really Surprised?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Remember the 2012 Secret Service prostitution incident<\/a> in Columbia?\u00a0 You know, that incident where of Secret Service personnel were later fired (or otherwise disciplined) for cavorting with prostitutes or related bad behavior?<\/p>\n

Remember that the White House at the time flatly and repeatedly denied any White House involvement?<\/p>\n

Do I really need to spell it out?\u00a0 Turns out that senior White House aides were indeed apparently aware of the matter early on. And there are indications that a volunteer (but politically well-connected) member of the White House advance party may have indeed been involved.<\/p>\n

The Secret Service informed the White House Counsel at the time, Katherine Ruemmler, and other Presidential aides of what had happened.\u00a0 Informed, as in provided them firsthand accounts and information from hotel records concerning what had happened and who appeared to be involved. She and other White House staff “conducted an internal review that did not identify any inappropriate behavior on the part of the White House advance team”.<\/p>\n

Interesting.\u00a0 Then why did the DHS IG investigators working the case apparently come to a different conclusion?\u00a0 And why did the lead DHS IG investigator assigned to investigate the incident, David Nieland, say he was directed by more senior DHS IG officials to delay the report of his investigation until after the 2012 Presidential election?\u00a0 Ya know, for some reason I just don’t think that delay was ordered to ensure a more comprehensive, better investigation.<\/p>\n

Oh, and Nieland also says that he was directed<\/p>\n

\u201cto withhold and alter certain information in the report of investigation because it was potentially embarrassing to the administration.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Curiously enough, it appears that the IG investigators believed that there was indeed possible involvement by at least one White House aide – but when they raised questions concerning this, they were put on administrative leave in apparent retaliation for doing so.\u00a0 It’s also curious that the DHS Acting Inspector General, Charles K. Edwards, later “resigned amid allegations of misconduct stemming in part from the dispute”.<\/p>\n

The Washington Post<\/span> has a damn good and longish article on this cover-up<\/a> today.\u00a0 It’s definitely worth reading to see the details.<\/p>\n

For some reason reading that article makes me think of a puddle of dirty Water by the Gate.\u00a0 But maybe that’s just me.<\/p>\n

Bottom line:\u00a0 it sure looks like this \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 DC Clown Krewe<\/a><\/del>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Administration has been p!ssing on our leg and telling us it’s raining – yet again.\u00a0\u00a0 So what else is new?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Remember the 2012 Secret Service prostitution incident in Columbia?\u00a0 You know, that incident where of Secret … Is Anyone Really Surprised?<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[220,236],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-floggings-will-continue-until-morale-improves","category-wtf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55708\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}