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Watchdog: State Department Can’t Fully Account for $6B Worth of Contracts

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The State Department has a “serious” problem accounting for how it has spent billions of dollars on contracts all over the world, according to the official watchdog that oversees the sprawling department.

The Office of Inspector General, in a March 20 “management alert” to department leaders, said the department has failed to provide all or some of the files for $6 billion worth of contracts in the last six years.

“The failure to maintain contract files adequately creates significant financial risk and demonstrates a lack of internal control over the Department’s contract actions,” the memo said.

This apparently is not a new or isolated problem. The memo said investigators and auditors have found “repeated examples of poor contract file administration” and have called this one of the department’s “major management challenges” for several years.

The alert cited one example where contracting officials could not provide dozens of files for contracts supporting the U.S. Mission in Iraq. The value of the contracts in the missing files? $2.1 billion.

Read more from this story HERE.

Hillary and John Kerry’s State Department Boozing it Up: Spent Hundreds of Thousands of our Tax Dollars on Liquor (+video)

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Photo Credit: Foreign PolicyWhile the rest of the government prepared to shut down this fall, the State Department was busy stocking up on embassy liquor supplies.

In September, the final month of the fiscal year, the State Department spent about $180,000 — and racked up a total of more than $400,000 for the whole year, three times the entire liquor tab for all of 2008.

The liquor bill, split among purchase orders placed at embassies around the world, included some major last-minute pre-shutdown splurges:

• $5,625 in “gratuity wine” at the embassy in Rio de Janeiro on Sept. 29, followed by $5,925 in “gratuity whiskey” on the day the shutdown began.

• $22,416 in wine at the embassy in Tokyo.

Read more about booze in John Kerry’s State Department HERE.

U.N. Benghazi Report an Inconvenient Truth for Obama?

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Photo Credit: WND Is the State Department hiding the involvement in the Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi attack of an Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood-linked terrorist group?

A new United Nations report ties perpetrators of the Benghazi attack to the Muhammad Jamal Network, or MJN.

The network and its founder, Egyptian Muhammad Jamal, were designated by Obama’s State Department this month as “specially designated global terrorists” affiliated with al-Qaida.

The designation not only sanctions MJN’s assets but now allows President Obama to use a Bush-era military doctrine to capture Jamal terrorists overseas.

The State Department document designating MJN as terrorists does not mention the Benghazi attack.

Read more from this story HERE.

State Department Official Grilled Over Benghazi at Confirmation Hearing (+video)

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsThe debate over the Benghazi terror attack flared once again Thursday as senators grilled a diplomatic nominee over her role in massaging the Obama administration’s initial story-line on the attack.

Republican senators repeatedly challenged Victoria Nuland, nominated as chief U.S. envoy for Europe, during her confirmation hearing before a Senate panel. The post typically would not receive this much scrutiny, but Nuland’s prior job was as the top spokesperson in the State Department — she was the face of the department in the days and weeks following the Benghazi attack.

Republicans say the full truth has not yet been told, and prodded for answers on the role Nuland played in pushing to change the so-called “talking points” after the attack. Those notes were ultimately used by then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice to give a faulty account to the public about the nature of the attack.

“It is pretty remarkable how sanitized they really were,” Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said of the talking points.

He accused Nuland of being more interested in protecting her bosses’ image than getting the truth out.

Read more from this story HERE.

Worse than Watergate? Cameras Catch Break-In at Law Firm Representing Whistleblower in Explosive State Department Sex, Molestation, Drug Scandal (+video)

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Photo Credit: STATE DEPARTMENTCameras Catch Mystery Break-In at Whistleblower’s Law Firm

By John Hudson. The offices of a Dallas law firm representing a high-profile State Department whistleblower were broken into last weekend. Burglars stole three computers and broke into the firm’s file cabinets. But silver bars, video equipment and other valuables were left untouched, according to local Fox affiliate KDFW, which aired security camera footage of the suspected burglars entering and leaving the offices around the time of the incident.

The firm Schulman & Mathias represents Aurelia Fedenisn, a former investigator at the State Department’s Office of the Inspector General. In recent weeks, she raised a slew of explosive allegations against the department and its contractors ranging from illicit drug use, soliciting sexual favors from minors and prostitutes and sexual harassment.

“It’s a crazy, strange and suspicious situation,” attorney Cary Schulman told The Cable. “It’s clear to me that it was somebody looking for information and not money. My most high-profile case right now is the Aurelia Fedenisn case, and I can’t think of any other case where someone would go to these great lengths to get our information.”

According to the KDFW report, the firm was the only suite burglarized in the high-rise office building and an unlocked office adjacent was left untouched.

The State Department, which has repeatedly disputed Fedenisn’s allegations, denied any involvement in the incident. “Any allegation that the Department of State authorized someone to break into Mr. Schulman’s law firm is false and baseless,” spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Sex for Visas? State Department now confirms probe of US consular official in Guyana

By Judson Berger. The State Department acknowledged it is investigating alleged “improprieties” regarding a consular official who until recently was posted to Guyana, following reports he was trading visas for money and possibly sex.

The department said in a statement it was “aware” of the allegations, without going into detail.

“The department takes all allegations of misconduct by employees seriously,” a spokeswoman said in an email.

“We are reviewing the matter thoroughly. If the allegations are substantiated, we will work with the relevant authorities to hold anyone involved accountable.”

The department would not identify the individual, though media reports in Guyana have. Read more from this story HERE.

State Department Admits it Lied: Yes, John Kerry Actually was on his Yacht During the Egyptian Coup

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Yes, after vigorously denying reports that Kerry was on his private yacht during the uprising Wednesday, the State Department has issued a somewhat sheepish retraction.

“While he was briefly on his boat on Wednesday, Secretary Kerry worked around the clock all day including participating in the president’s meeting with his national security council,” spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

The State Department was forced to admit Kerry was on his boat after the following photos were released by the Boston Herald:

Photo Credit: Boston Herald

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Photo Credit: Boston Herald

Read more from this story HERE.

State Department Bureau Spent $630,000 on Facebook ‘Likes’

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Photo Credit: Thinkstock Image

Photo Credit: Thinkstock Image

State Department officials spent $630,000 to get more Facebook “likes,” prompting employees to complain to a government watchdog that the bureau was “buying fans” in social media, the agency’s inspector general says.

The department’s Bureau of International Information Programs spent the money to increase its “likes” count between 2011 and March 2013.

“Many in the bureau criticize the advertising campaigns as ‘buying fans’ who may have once clicked on an ad or ‘liked’ a photo but have no real interest in the topic and have never engaged further,” the inspector general reported.

The spending increased the bureau’s English-language Facebook page likes from 100,000 to more than 2 million and to 450,000 on Facebook’s foreign-language pages.

Despite the surge in likes, the IG said the effort failed to reach the bureau’s target audience, which is largely older and more influential than the people liking its pages. Only about 2 percent of fans actually engage with the pages by liking, sharing or commenting.

Read more from this story HERE.

Did Senior State Department Security Officials Commit Perjury? (+video)

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

Two top officials at the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service (DS) — the federal law enforcement agency that protects American diplomats and investigates allegations of criminal misconduct by State Department employees — gave sworn testimony earlier this year that appears to be evasive at best, and untrue at worst, according to evidence obtained by Fox News.

The officials are Scott Bultrowicz, who until Feb. 1 served as director of DS, and Tracy H. Mahaffey, who remains the executive director of DS. In videotaped depositions conducted this past February, Bultrowicz claimed not to know about any claims by a federal agency that DS officials have failed to follow proper procedures; and Mahaffey claimed not to know about any pending investigations into DS.

Yet Fox News has obtained meeting notes, draft reports and other evidence that suggest both officials were aware, at the time they were deposed, of a pending investigation into DS and its operations by the State Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG). What’s more, both officials had been apprised of the OIG’s preliminary finding that DS did indeed fail to follow proper procedures in at least eight cases, and possibly more, because of “undue influence” and “pressure” brought to bear by senior State Department officials to halt internal investigations.

Read more from this story HERE.

Whistle-Blower Who Disclosed Prostitution, Drug Use by State Department Has Kids Threatened, Seeks Congressional Protection (+video)

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Photo Credit: Frederic J. Brown, AFP/Getty Images

A State Department whistle-blower says she was threatened after turning over documents to a U.S. senator that alleged coverups of investigations into employee use of drugs and prostitutes, her lawyer says.

The whistle-blower’s allegations have led lawmakers on Capitol Hill to look into whether the State Department squelched investigations into criminal behavior by employees, including an ambassador who allegedly propositioned prostitutes in a Belgian city park…

The allegations were revealed after Aurelia Fedenisn, a former investigator at the State Department’s Office of the Inspector General, complained to Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, that senior State Department officials interfered with investigations she was involved in, and then caused a report about the interference to be watered down.

Dallas lawyer Damon Mathias, who represents Fedenisn, said Fedenisn hired him after two diplomatic security agents spoke in a threatening manner to her teenage children at her home in a Virginia suburb of Washington. The agents arrived at the home to talk to Fedenisn about documents Fedenisn had given to Cruz and told the teens that they demanded to speak to their mom immediately, Mathias said…

The New York Post identified that ambassador as Howard Gutman, a bundler who raised $500,000 for President Obama’s 2008 campaign. Gutman issued a statement Tuesday calling the allegations “baseless.”

Read more from this story HERE.

US State Department in Crisis: “Endemic” Sexual Assaults, Prostitution by Clinton’s Security Detail, Unnamed Ambassador Implicated (+video)

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Photo Credit: Medill DC

Uncovered documents show the U.S. State Department may have covered up allegations of illegal behavior ranging from sexual assaults to an underground drug ring.

CBS News reports that is has unearthed documents from the Diplomatic Security Service (DSS), an internal watchdog agency, that implicate the State Department in a series of misconducts worldwide.

The memo, reported by CBS News’ John Miller, cited eight specific examples, including allegations that a State Department security official in Beirut “engaged in sexual assaults” with 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.”

Former State Department internal investigator Aurelia Fedenisn told CBS News, “We also uncovered several allegations of criminal wrongdoing in cases, some of which never became cases.”

Often times, other DSS agents were simply told to back off of investigations of high-ranking State Department members. Fedenisn told CBS that “hostile intelligence services” allow criminal behavior to continue.

Read more from this story HERE.