Court Martials For Two Air Force Training Instructors At Texas Lackland Air Base In Latest Sex Scandal – 35 Instructors Removed From Posts, Dozens Suspected, Four Accused

TEXAS – The Air Force announced Wednesday that two training instructors at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas were referred to special courts-martial in a growing sexual misconduct scandal.

Master Sgt. Jamey Crawford was accused of wrongfully conducting a sexual relationship with a basic trainee and other offenses. Allegations against Tech. Sgt. Christopher Smith included wrongfully making sexual advances toward a trainee.

Their trial dates have not yet been set.

A dozen instructors have been suspected of assaulting female recruits.

Allegations of sexual misconduct between instructors and cadets began there last summer, and the Pentagon has ordered a comprehensive strategic review of the entire Air Force training community.

The widespread criminal investigation is looking into the possibility that cases of sexual misconduct extend beyond Lackland.

Investigators are looking at four Air Force bases in two states.

Since allegations of misconduct began, 35 military instructors have been removed from their posts. Four have been accused.

Sgt. Luis Walker, one of the accused instructors, pleaded not guilty and faces court-martial. He’s charged with raping or sexually assaulting 10 recruits between October 2010 and January 2011.

The Air Force says it’s being fully transparent.

“I want the public to know what’s going on,” said Lackland’s Col. Glenn Palmer. “I don’t want the possibility of someone saying, ‘Well look – they’re trying to cover it up.’”

The investigation comes as Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced wider plans to deal with the issue.

In April, he said, “We will continue to develop our strategies. We’ll continue to devote our energy and our intention to enforcing our department’s zero-tolerance policy on sexual assault.”

On Capitol Hill, lawmakers such as Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., want to investigate the matter further with a hearing of their own.

“Congress has known about this problem in the military for 25 years,” she said in an interview broadcast on “CBS This Morning” Wednesday. “We’ve had lots of hearings, lots of reports. But are we willing to step up and do the right thing by taking it out of the chain of command so the victims really have the freedom to report these crimes and feel that they are not going to be marginalized and labeled and then dismissed from the military?”

This could be the worst sexual misconduct scandal to hit the military since a similar case involving the Army in Aberdeen, Md., in 1996.

On Wednesday, victims of military sexual assault planned to lobby members of Congress seeking support for legislation sponsored by Speier called the Stop Act. It would take probes of military sexual assault away from commanders and put them in the hands of a separate military unit.

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Prostitute At Center Of Secret Service Columbian Hooker-Gate Scandal Says Agents “…Were A Bunch Of Fools.”

WASHINGTON, DC – New York Republican Peter King, chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, acted after Dania Londono Suarez appeared on television to reveal her side of the story.

She said that it would have been easy for her to steal any of the documents or plans that President Barack Obama’s bodyguards had with them in a hotel room on a presidential trip to Cartagena, Columbia, last month.

Miss Suarez said: “They were a bunch of fools. They are responsible for Obama’s security and they still let this happen.

“I could have done a thousand other things. If I had wanted to, I could have gone through all his documents, his wallet, his suitcase.”

Miss Suarez told Caracol News in Cartegena that she called the police after the Secret Service agent with whom she spent the night refused to pay her the $800 (£500) he had promised.
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“Let’s go, bitch – I’m not going to pay you,” she said that he told her before throwing her out of the room in the early morning.

A Secret Service investigation into “misconduct” has resulted in nine of the 12 agents that made up the president’s advance security team to Cartegena losing their jobs. But Miss Suarez said that although she was at the heart of the scandal, she had not been interviewed by US investigators.

A visibly angry Congressman King said this weekend: “I have asked the Secret Service for an explanation of how they have failed to find this woman when the news media seems to have no trouble doing so.”

Mr King said it was important that she was interviewed to ensure that the president’s security was not compromised. A Secret Service source told The Sunday Telegraph that “no stone will be left unturned” and that Mr King’s demands were being taken very seriously.

Miss Suarez said in her interview that she and some girlfriends had met a group of American men in a bar on April 11 and drank two bottles of vodka with them. She had no idea that they worked for the Secret Service when one of them asked her to return with him to his hotel room.

Miss Suarez agreed to go after the agent promised to give her a “little gift” of $800-dollars. But next morning he threw her out without paying and when she knocked on the hotel room door of another agent he refused to help her.

Miss Suarez said: “I said in Spanish, ‘Look, if you show no consideration for me, why would I have consideration toward you and not call the police? In that moment, I felt strong’.”

Prostitution is legal in Colombia and Miss Suarez said she had every right to be paid for her services. She said: “I told him, there’s a problem here. Because if I had come with you to enjoy myself that would have been one thing. But I didn’t come to enjoy myself. I had to beg from 6.30 am to 10.00 am for him to pay me.”

At first the agent offered her about $27 to pay for a taxi home and eventually after she returned to the hotel room with a police officer he gave her $250-dollars (£155)

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Photos Surface Of Columbian Whore Involved In Secret Service Scandal – One Of As Many As 21 Prostitutes Hired By Agents

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Dismissal Of 12 US Secret Service Agents Over Their Involvement With Columbian Prostitutes “The Biggest Scandal In Secret Service History”

WASHINGTON, DC – Ronald Kessler, best-selling author of “In the President’s Service” and a former reporter for The Washington Post, called the dismissal of 12 Secret Service members in Colombia prior to President Obama’s arrival there “the biggest scandal in Secret Service history.”

Secret Service confirms members’ removal

A source in the Secret Service told CBS News that one or more of the officers was involved with prostitutes and that there was a dispute over payment. One prostitute went to the police, who notified the State Department.

According to sources two of the Secret Service personnel sent home were supervisors; the rest were part of a detail assigned to logistics. None of those relieved of duty was a member of the president’s protective detail.

On “CBS This Morning: Saturday,” Kessler said the Secret Service has a culture of corner-cutting.

“They don’t have enough agents, they don’t even put people through metal detectors sometimes because there’s pressure to let everybody in,” Kessler said. “It’s like letting passengers in an airplane without putting them through metal detectors. They don’t keep up-to-date with the latest firearms. They don’t even do physical tests. So, it’s a culture that leads to this kind of problem.”

Kessler pointed to a couple crashing a White House state dinner without an invitation as an example of a potential security threat.

He said that Mark Sullivan, director of the Secret Service, should have been fired after the fiasco involving gate-crashers Michaele and Tareq Salahi, but has continued in the same position because of President Barack Obama’s confidence in the agency.

“President Obama keeps saying, ‘I have full confidence in the Secret Service,’” Kessler said. “You know, he deals with agents who are very admirable, so he thinks, ‘Well, the Secret Service must be fine.’ But, you know, in my book…I go into dozens and dozens of examples of poor management.

“For example, when [Dick Cheney's daughter] Mary Cheney was under protection, she wanted her agents to take her friends to restaurants. Well, they’re not taxi drivers. They are law enforcement officers, they refused, as they should have, but because of that she got her detail leader removed.

“So the Secret Service management didn’t back the guy who is doing his job. And that kind of culture is the sort that leads to this kind of incident, where there’s poor morale, there’s hostility toward management.”

Kessler called this latest incident in Colombia “a very shocking scandal.”

He added the situation may be a sign of a trend because it involved supervisors. Kessler called it “just unbelievable” and a “tremendous embarrassment to the U.S.”

He said that the Secret Service personnel’s liaising with prostitutes could expose them blackmail to acquire access to secure areas. “They could have led to an assassination. And if you have an assassination, you nullify democracy. That’s how important the Secret Service is.”

Kessler went so far as to say the president’s safety is in jeopardy because the replacements didn’t have time to get acclimated to the situation.

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