Another week, another scandal, as we learn of more malfeasance at the State Department when Hillary was at the helm, but while CBS is all over the story today, their rivals at ABC and NBC censored the story. In fact, ABC’s Good Morning America and NBC’s Today decided to skip the story entirely.
The contents of the documents obtained by CBS outline lurid details of prostitution and sexual assault committed by State Department officials. Additionally, an underground drug ring in Iraq supplied State Department security contractors with narcotics:
CBS News' John Miller reports that according to an internal State Department Inspector General's memo, several recent investigations were influenced, manipulated, or simply called off. The memo obtained by CBS News cited eight specific examples. Among them: allegations that a State Department security official in Beirut "engaged in sexual assaults" on foreign nationals hired as embassy guards and the charge and that members of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's security detail "engaged prostitutes while on official trips in foreign countries" -- a problem the report says was "endemic."
The memo also reveals details about an "underground drug ring" was operating near the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and supplied State Department security contractors with drugs.
Aurelia Fedenisn, a former investigator with the State Department's internal watchdog agency, the Inspector General, told Miller, "We also uncovered several allegations of criminal wrongdoing in cases, some of which never became cases.
This is the latest wave in a tsunami of scandals touching the Obama administration, with the latest being the NSA’s surveillance program, PRISM, and the seizure of phone records from companies, like Verizon, which was reported on by the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald.
Unlike all of those scandals, however, this one carries a risk for the liberal media who wish to boost Hillary Clinton's prospects for a 2012 presidential race.
Additionally, there's a risk with this rather disturbing story of “endemic” misconduct within State is that the media will come down with scandal fatigue, and let some things fall through the cracks. But something tells us the risk of scandal fatigue would be slim to none if all of these things transpired in the second term of the Bush administration and had Condoleezza Rice been the runaway establishment GOP pick to take up the Bush baton in a presidential run.
