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Sex, Lies and Rotten Meat at the American Consulate in Naples
The New York Post reports that Ms. Kerry Howard, the community-liaison officer at the U.S. Consulate in Naples, claims she was run out of her job with the State Department after complaining about the consul general’s alleged office trysts with subordinates and hookers. Ms. Howard stated she had been bullied, harassed and forced to resign after she exposed US Consul General Donald Moore’s (pictured, left) alleged security-threatening shenanigans in the Naples, Italy, office. She explained that when she revealed allegations about her boss, State Department officials swept it under the rug, according to an Equal Employment Opportunity complaint she filed with the Department’s Office of Civil Rights. This blog has covered this story briefly before, but we now have new information, exclusive to this blog.
Needless to say State declined to comment to the Post. Ms. Howard resigned. Consul General Moore took another assignment elsewhere for State. In the insular world of Foggy Bottom, problem solved.
EXCLUSIVE: Here’s More about Moore
Lawrence Kelly is an attorney in New York representing Kerry Howard, the woman in the New York Post articles who raised the concerns about Naples.
Kelly’s bio has him previous serving as Senior Rule of Law Advisor for the State Department on a Provincial Reconstruction Team in southern Iraq. He also does pro bono works for 9/11 victims (Trial Lawyers Care) and with TSGLI, a lump sum disability benefit for seriously wounded service members. While we have no way to verify the following statements, the State Department sure as heck can, and we invite their comment.
Here’s attorney Lawrence Kelly, today’s guest blogger, with more on Naples:
When the United States is interested in a foreign country, it likes to have a big footprint. What happens to the locals who interact or work with Americans when the Americans lose interest? There is a precedent. In the seventy years since the end of World War II, generations of European families have worked in American embassies and consulates as locally employed staff. If the recent treatment of locally employed staff in the consulate in Naples Italy is any indication, the locals might want to keep a consigliere on retainer.
The New York Post has done two stories on the consequences to the careers of American whistleblowers in the Foreign Service confronting the abysmal activities of senior management in these European posts. Even worse, and not yet disclosed in the media, are the stark consequences for the locally employed staff of being in the wrong place and observing the misbehavior of senior State Department staff. The United States has shown itself to be ungrateful, arrogant and malicious in destroying the lives of locally employed staff to cover up for American misdeeds.
The State Department standard of care has devolved into the Clinton query “what difference does it make?” I have obtained statements from the locally employed staff separated from their Naples Consulate employment. Their observations include the following [Note: Kelly supplied these translations, along with Italian language originals]
“XXX receives in his apartments women of dubious morality, sleeping with them during working hours. …More seriously, I have seen the falsifying of the accounts for food for guests and dignitaries. XXX making them much higher. In addition, he was seeing a psychiatrist attending many sessions and her diagnosis was is mentally unstable, how can it be that a man so mentally unstable be in such a position? During one attack of anger he destroyed the courtyard of the Consulate two metal umbrella containers, taking them kicking and throwing them from the apartments above.”
“I have witnessed in my working things like; XXX received in his residence women who dressed as prostitutes…he had often the habit to cook rotten foods, for example when he was the host of the British Consul General he served meat that had expired in 2010. He also falsified receipts for the costs of his events.”
“XXX (definitely a very despicable person in my opinion”)… advised (a locally employed staff member he had impregnated) forced is a more accurate term to have an abortion…XXX had promised her that she would be able to remain working at the consulate. There are close circuit television tapes that can confirm everything that I say….a man who forces a woman to have an abortion is what kind of man?”
So, as Secretary Clinton would ask, what difference does it make? Families who served the United States for seventy years are thrown away by a feckless United States, discharged from their employment, because the State Department was unable to control or contain senior managers. During the entirety of the Clinton era at the State Department, there was no congressional designation of an Inspector General. Internal investigations were instead run by Foreign Service veterans with close personal ties to existing senior management. Locally employed staff were disposable during an era when suppression of embarrassing details were the governing rules of the road. Regional Security Officers were used to suppress dissent, and morally outraged foreign service officers who raised red flags were admonished, curtailed or forced to seek transfer out of the assignment.
As for the future, it is little consolation that individuals at the top of the pyramid in Italy during this period have now been moved to the State Department nerve center, the Seventh Floor of Main State. David Thorne, John Kerry’s former brother in law and Yale roommate, was Ambassador to Italy during this time, and the consequences to the locally employed staff of his tenure are fairly represented by the termination of six long term employees whose crime was simply knowing the truth about the Americans in charge of the Consulate.
The stark consequence to the local employees is that a message has been sent. Americans are not to be trusted. Even by their fellow Americans.
We’ll have more on this situation
in the near futureFriday, November 15, so please check back!
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Rich Bauer said...
1“XXX receives in his apartments women of dubious morality, sleeping with them during working hours.”
Who does he think he is? JFK or Slick Willie Clinton?
11/13/13 1:36 PM | Comment Link
pitchfork said...
2Well of all the nerve. I mean, sheesh, this Kerry Howard person should be ashamed. After all, she got the benefit of being raked over our exceptional hot coals while gaining personal experience on the receiving end of our wunnerful DoS mission.
She should be so lucky. After all, that poor schmuck US Consul General Donald Moore had to move to another “position”. How harrowing. And embarrassing. It must have traumatized him. Not to mention having to keep his job. Must be real tough. Especially knowing now, he’s gonna have to re-train a whole new slew of fortunate underlings. They should be so lucky.
And now Ms. Victim Howard..get’s an attorney. Swell. We’ll see how far that goes. I can hear Moore & Co. laughing on the 7th floor about now.
Someone kick me. Hard. Please. I need it. I must need it. I mean..I come here every day looking for one. But what do I get? Same ole shit. DoS is a bad guy. youbetcha.
You’d think I’d learn.
11/13/13 2:28 PM | Comment Link
pitchfork said...
3ps..please..please…kick me. Maybe I’ll get a clue.
11/13/13 2:32 PM | Comment Link
pitchfork said...
4I don’t think I need a wink smiley….do I?
11/13/13 2:34 PM | Comment Link
pitchfork said...
5er..make that a rolling eyes.
11/13/13 2:35 PM | Comment Link
Rich Bauer said...
6Rolling eyes with projectile vomiting:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/senior-navy-civilians-investigated-in-alleged-scheme-to-defraud-military-for-16-million/2013/11/12/74383ffa-4bbb-11e3-9890-a1e0997fb0c0_story.html
11/13/13 10:03 PM | Comment Link
Rich Bauer said...
7The fish rots from the head:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/who-are-state-dept-s-100-special-government-employees-it-won-t-say
11/13/13 10:14 PM | Comment Link
Rich Bauer said...
8State is not the only one hiding silencers:
http://gawker.com/a-redneck-overcharged-the-navy-for-untraceable-rustic-1463663322
Tell Fox “News” and Graham-cracker the silencers were used in Benghazi!!
11/13/13 10:25 PM | Comment Link
Lafcadio said...
9D. L. Moore laying on the charm on the yootoobz
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGrSgmnkaJU
11/14/13 1:18 AM | Comment Link
Kyzl Orda said...
10Were there “incentives” offered to Ms Howard to resign? Has she been able to find a job since then? If incentives were offered, why so if someone is supposedly guilty? I never understood why State does that. Either the institution has a case, or it doesnt. This isnt ‘let’s make a deal’ except for the fact its a possible attempt to head off providing Congress any stats the reflect badly in certain categories.
From experience, it seems State doesnt like to report when discrimination or retaliation cases have been filed to Congress, or is there something else afoot??
11/14/13 4:32 AM | Comment Link
teri said...
11Why, Mr. Van Buren, are you suggesting that the freedom-loving USA, which only exists to bring democracy and cultural uplift to the unwashed masses in the rest of the world, might send abroad a rutting Ugly American pig and once apprised of his testicular tendencies, would merely move him to another post so he could enjoy his conquests elsewhere?
My stars.
11/14/13 12:26 PM | Comment Link
wemeantwell said...
12You are, of course, correct. I withdraw the insinuation and apologize.
11/14/13 12:54 PM | Comment Link
Rich Bauer said...
13State is not the only department that can’t spot bad behavior:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57612271/$900m-tsa-program-to-spot-bad-guys-isnt-working-govt-report-says/
11/14/13 12:43 PM | Comment Link
pitchfork said...
14@Rich..ie..rolling eyes and projectile vomiting..
Youbetcha. 200 times the value. And they used some poor auto mechanic schmuck. At least they didn’t use their families like these dimwits did in Coos Bay when I lived there. Always wondered how these people were so successful. Their building always had at least a few Humvee’s sitting out front. Now we know…..
http://www.fbi.gov/portland/press-releases/2011/coos-bay-company-its-owner-and-six-employees-indicted-for-fraud-on-defense-contracts
11/14/13 3:04 PM | Comment Link
pitchfork said...
15ps Rich…ie..TSA.
Behavior detection. right. These schmucks redefine idiocy. Science indeed. Let’s see..I bet that guy whom a cop “detected” squeezing his buttocks learned what this shit is about the hard way…
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/11/05/2892851/police-forced-anal-probe-colonoscopy-mexico-man-stopped-traffic-violation/
Unbelievable. I bet this guy has a 1000 lawyers calling him. Not to mention the Chief of Police’s and Hospital CEO’s heads exploding. I hope he reaps MILLIONS from these scumbags, loosing their jobs notwithstanding. Hell, I hope they go to jail themselves.
11/14/13 3:25 PM | Comment Link
Kyzl Orda said...
16Its a mystery why our agencies feel compelled to defend mid and high level staff who seek such thrills during office hours.
There was a FSO-converted to Civilian Service who not only was given financial compensation but was fortunately able to keep her job after reporting one of her bosses for sexually harassing an intern at an overseas post. The FSO/CSO had to endure alot of retaliation from this guy and fortunately the intern stepped up to the plate, with her own report. Often, people are too afraid to go on record, not wanting to jeopardize a cherished career. When that happened, State offered her a sum, provided she drop her case, and transferred the boss to another of our embassies overseas
It’s what the US bishops were doing for pedophiles, demonstrating in my view it’s a cultural and legal issue, not a religious problem. There’s a clear problem our institutions in our country feel the need to protect higher ups who cross the line in some way, shielding them. And it was not an issue to State to keep the FSO/CSO in a year-long situation of retaliation by this person. She still had to report to him throughout it all.
Ms Howard must have angered someone higher up who had a vested interest in this guy to get “the treatment.’ It sounds like she was pressured to resign and why her instead of “our representative”
There’s another case that is very strange that came back in the headlines the other day. Gareth Williams, the British MI6 agent found locked in a carry all placed in his bathtub full of water where he drowned. His MI6 office didnt even report him missing for days.
According to a wiki entry, one of the agencies that addressed the judge was our State Department, who requested the details of Williams’ work be kept secret. The circumstances of Williams’ death are bizarre, but not as bizarre as the police advocating the view Williams locked himself in the case and laid complacently in the bathtub, drowning. That’s crazy
1.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Gareth_Williams
2.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/nov/13/mi6-spy-dead-bag-locked-himself-gareth-williams
11/15/13 5:52 AM | Comment Link
Lafacadio said...
17PVB:
Shoot me an e-mail, I’ll respond tonight/tomorrow. . .
11/15/13 10:39 AM | Comment Link