Whistleblower accuses consul general of trysts with subordinates and hookers
- Last Updated: 11:32 AM, June 16, 2013
- Posted: 12:19 AM, June 16, 2013
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EXCLUSIVE
In the latest black eye for the scandal-ridden State Department, a whistleblower claims she was run out of the foreign service after complaining about a consul general’s alleged office trysts with subordinates and hookers.
Kerry Howard says she was bullied, harassed and forced to resign after she exposed US Consul General Donald Moore’s alleged security-threatening shenanigans in the Naples, Italy, office.
As the post’s community-liaison officer, Howard was charged with keeping workplace peace and advising higher-ups on the state of morale, but 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.
Consul General Donald Moore
Ex-officer Kerry Howard
“It’s cover-up after cover-up. It’s absolutely hideous,” she told The Post. “When our diplomats disrespect the Italians by hiring and firing them because they have seen too much — or use them for ‘sex-ercise’ — we have to question why we have diplomats abroad at taxpayer expense.”
Howard is just the latest whistleblower to allege that Hillary Rodham Clinton’s State Department allowed sexual misbehavior to continue unchecked.
Last week, The Post reported that Aurelia Fedenisn, an investigator at the department’s inspector-general office, wrote a memo outlining eight cases of supposed sexual misconduct, but that they were removed from an IG report.
The allegations included US Ambassador to Belgium Howard Gutman soliciting prostitutes, including minors, and at least seven agents in Clinton’s security detail hiring hookers while traveling with her to Russia and Colombia.
The soap opera in Italy unfolded in the fall of 2010, when Moore became the Naples consul general after serving in the same capacity at the US Embassy in Port au Prince, Haiti. As a senior foreign-service officer, Moore could make as much as $179,700 a year, State Department data says.
Within days, he allegedly bedded a consulate employee, a single mom who fell in love with him.
Howard detailed the alleged affair in certified letters to members of Congress, including California Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, in December, said Howard’s lawyer, Lawrence Kelly.
“More and more intimate details of their relationship became common knowledge,” Howard wrote, adding that the staffer became pregnant and wanted to keep the baby, but that Moore insisted she get an abortion.
“She informed anyone within earshot that she had had the abortion and had her tubes tied at his instruction,” Howard wrote. “Morale continued to sink as this soap opera played out in our workplace on a daily basis.”
With the affair rumors swirling, Howard’s supervisor, Pamela Caplis, instructed Howard to keep quiet, Howard claims.
“I have already informed Frankfurt,” Caplis allegedly said in what Howard claims was an attempt to head off the complaint.
Still, on a February 2011 trip to Rome, Howard told the US Embassy’s management officer, Frank Ledahawsky, that morale was “very bad” because of the alleged affair.
“We have to save his career,” Ledahawsky allegedly said.
Shortly after the meeting, Moore was allegedly called to Rome and ordered to end his relationship with the employee.
Howard thought her troubles would be over, but she became a target instead.
Howard, who made about $16,000 annually in her part-time position, said that her office was moved five times without notification and that she was excluded from meetings and forbidden from attending a staff photo-op with Sen. John McCain.
Howard says Caplis grilled her for the names of staffers speaking about Moore’s relationships and, in one meeting, screamed she was a “backstabber.”
Colleagues ganged up on her, and one State Department security officer told her, “You better be careful, because they are out to get you,” according to Howard’s affidavit in the Office of Civil Rights investigation.
Howard said the situation got even uglier when Moore became her direct supervisor in February 2012 after Caplis was reassigned.
“Try not to be so perfect, and try to be less present in the consulate,” Moore warned, according to Howard’s affidavit.
Meanwhile, bachelor Moore began a relationship with another subordinate, and “continued a pattern of other relationships which threaten the security of the consulate,” the affidavit said.
“The female visitors to the consulate, if they are logged properly, will provide a starting point for a broader inquiry,” she hinted.
Howard was clearer, however, in a recent memo to Feinstein.
“It is also now known that the consul general entertains prostitutes, escorts and married women in his residence during the day during work hours,” she wrote.
“These women enter and leave the consulate via the front entrance . . . His household staff are required to clean his bathroom and change his linens after each woman leaves.”
Only Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-Ky.) office replied to Howard’s letters.
In an e-mail, Rand aide Brett King wrote: “I received your message this morning regarding actions at the Consulate in Naples, Italy. Do we have your permission to share this information with other government agencies?”
Howard resigned in May 2012.
“I was left with no choice,” she said in her affidavit. “I was forced to leave or suffer continued harassment and humiliation.”
Two months later, she filed the Equal Employment Opportunity complaint. Kelly said an independent investigator is close to concluding her probe, which included affidavits from seven former Italian consulate employees.
Moore is still assigned to Naples. His office referred questions to the State Department, which declined to comment.
kbriquelet@nypost.com
GOP senator questions Weiner's wife about time working for Clinton and as consultant
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) fired off a letter to Huma Abedin and Teneo Holdings, where she worked as a consultant while simultaneously working as an adviser to the former presidential candidate. He wants to know if she provided any governmental information to the firm, which might have benefitted investors.
Comments (1)BY DAN FRIEDMAN / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
FRIDAY, JUNE 14, 2013, 11:50 PM
Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin take a lunchtime stroll uptown near their home.
WASHINGTON — A Republican senator is taking aim at Huma Abedin, the longtime Hillary Clinton confidante who is married to Democratic mayoral hopeful Anthony Weiner.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) wrote Abedin asking for details about her last months at the State Department, when Clinton was secretary of state, it was revealed Friday.
Under a special arrangement approved by the department, Abedin worked as an adviser to Clinton while also working for private clients as a consultant with the firm Teneo Holdings.
Hillary’s tenure stained as scandals pile up
- Last Updated: 3:51 AM, June 16, 2013
- Posted: 12:22 AM, June 16, 2013
* It hired law-enforcement agents with criminal or checkered backgrounds under a flawed vetting process. As a result, many of the roughly 2,000 agents in the agency’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security are permitted to play only limited roles in agency efforts to police bad conduct and prosecute wrongdoers.
* US Ambassador to Belgium Howard Gutman, a big Democratic donor, was accused of soliciting prostitutes, including minors, but the State Department agent examining the claims was called off the investigation even after determining Gutman routinely ditched his security detail.
* Huma Abedin, wife of mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner and one of Clinton’s closest aides, is being investigated for how she got a six-figure deal to work as a private consultant while still employed by the State Department.
* After terrorists killed four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, at the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012, then-US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice described the assault as stemming from a “spontaneous protest” rather than calling what it was — a planned terrorist attack. The assault came after repeated indications that compound security needed to be increased.
MICHAEL IP/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Congressman Anthony Weiner recently announced his campaign for Mayor of New York City. His wife, Huma Abedin, is the target of a GOP Senator questioning her time working for Hillary Clinton while also working for private clients as a consultant with the firm Teneo Holdings.
In his letter to Abedin, Grassley asked whether Teneo “compensated you for gathering information from government sources for the purpose of informing investment decisions of your clients — or in other words, political intelligence.”
Grassley aides framed the letter as part of an ongoing effort by the senator to investigate and tighten rules on the burgeoning field of political intelligence. The firms gather and sell information on upcoming actions by government agencies and Congress that may affect their private clients.
The inquiry also could cast a shadow over Clinton, a potential 2016 Democratic presidential candidate.
THEO WARGO/GETTY IMAGES
Hillary Clinton (left) during a recent public appearance.
In his letter, sent Thursday and first reported by Politico, Grassley offered no evidence that Abedin used her federal position to provide such inside information to clients.
The State Department approved of Abedin’s special working arrangement in June 2012, after she returned from a maternity leave.
In his letter to Abedin, Grassley requested answers to 13 questions related to that change in her employment, including who approved it. He asked for a response by June 27. He also sent a similar letter to Teneo.
MARK WILSON/GETTY IMAGES
GOP Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) sent a letter to Huma Abedin and requested answers to 13 questions related to that change in her employment, including who approved I, and expects a response by June 27.
The letters seek copies of government documents related to the arrangement, Abedin’s consulting contracts and communications involving the State Department, Teneo and its clients — material the firm likely is reluctant to share.
A State Department spokesman said “we received Sen. Grassley’s (request) and we’re reviewing it.” The spokesman said “special government employees” —Abedin’s job title in her part-time role — are not unusual; the department has more than 100 such workers, he said.
Efforts to reach Abedin through her husband’s campaign were not successful. Teneo did not respond to a request for comment.
Grassley, a member of the Judiciary Committee, cannot subpoena information without a committee vote. It is unclear whether the committee, which is controlled by Democrats, would approve such a move in this case.
But Grassley “expects a response” from Abedin, a Republican staffer said.
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