THE STATE DEPARTMENT’S HACK: His name is Patrick Kennedy, the State Department’s Undersecretary for Management.
A State Department official at the center of the Benghazi controversy may also have called off a controversial inspector general probe.
Patrick Kennedy, the State Department’s undersecretary for management, allegedly blocked diplomatic security investigations that may have cast the bureau in a negative light.
According to an internal memo prepared by the inspector general in October 2013 and obtained by the Washington Examiner, Kennedy personally called off an investigation into the ambassador to Belgium after allegations surfaced that the ambassador had solicited “sexual favors from both prostitutes and minor children.”
A former official with the State Department’s office of inspector general said the obstruction of oversight went even further, noting that Kennedy was “good friends” with the acting inspector general, Harold Geisel. The former official requested anonymity to speak candidly about Kennedy’s potential interference with inspector general probes. . . .
Kennedy has been linked to the security failures that led to the 2011 terror attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, the controversy involving Hillary Clinton’s private emails and State Department projects that involved Clinton Foundation donors. . . .
The undersecretary continues to play a role in the State Department’s stonewalling of Freedom of Information Act requests.
Is there anything this guy can’t do? A National Review story on Kennedy in 2013 highlighted his odd career at the Department:
He’s not a political appointee or a longtime Obama backer; he has worked in diplomatic and government positions his entire adult life. . . . But congressional Republicans increasingly see Kennedy as a key figure in what they characterize as the State Department’s culture of unaccountability, secrecy, and rear-covering.
Sounds like the State Department’s resident ass-coverer. I would call for his resignation but then again, there would be a thousand other career civil servants willing to take his place (paid for with our tax dollars, of course).