#Scandalpalooza: Did State Dept. cover up illegal/improper behavior on Hillary’s watch?

The hits just keep coming for the Obama administration. Β Hillary Clinton may be out at State but her departmental “legacy” may become tainted after this CBS News report detailing accusations of illegal and improper State Department conduct that not only reportedly happened on her watch but were also allegedly covered up:

(CBS News) CBS News has uncovered documents that show the State Department may have covered up allegations of illegal and inappropriate behavior within their ranks.

The Diplomatic Security Service, or the DSS, is the State Department’s security force, charged with protecting the secretary of state and U.S. ambassadors overseas and with investigating any cases of misconduct on the part of the 70,000 State Department employees worldwide.

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.”

In such cases, DSS agents told the Inspector General’s investigators that senior State Department officials told them to back off, a charge that Fedenisn says is “very” upsetting.

“We were very upset. We expect to see influence, but the degree to which that influence existed and how high up it went, was very disturbing,” she said.

[…]

A draft of the Inspector General’s report on the performance of the DSS, obtained by CBS News, states, “Hindering such cases calls into question the integrity of the investigative process, can result in counterintelligence vulnerabilities and can allow criminal behavior to continue.”

John Miller spoke with Mike Pohelitz, a retired Senior Agent at the DSS who was involved in one of the cases listed in the Inspector General’s memo. Pohelitz said he was told to stop investigating one of the cases and that the order likely came from the upper ranks of the DSS.

“I got the information through my DS channel,” he told Miller. “But it had to come from somebody higher than DS, I’m sure.”

State is denying the allegations but where there is smoke there is fire, and there is a lot that definitely stinks here, especially if the higher ups who allegedly pushed agents to drop cases did it in order to give former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton, who has now officially joined Twitter, a send-off not marred by anymore scandals beyond Benghazi.

Watch the full report from CBS News’ John Miller here:

It’s going to be a busy summer on the Congressional investigations front, methinks.

Hillary Clinton testifies on Benghazi
”What difference does it make?” A big difference, Mrs. Clinton. A big difference. (Photo via AP)

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