Friday, May 4, 2012

Escort Talks, Agents Balk, Magician Walks, In Week 3 Of The Secret Service Scandal


The Colombian woman at the center of the Secret Service scandal, Dania "I'm-an-escort-not-a-prostitute" Suárez, was interviewed by the news media this week and she is clearly very annoyed that her Secret Service agent-customer showed her no respect.

Dania Suárez, a 24-year old dark-haired beauty, appeared on a call-in show carried by Colombia's W Radio and Carocol Television Friday morning, telling callers the agent was "heavily intoxicated" and everything in his luggage and his papers was left open in his room and could have been easily stolen.
Suárez said [agent] Huntington fell asleep when they returned to his room and refused to answer the question of whether they actually had sex.
"If I answer this you will know what happened," she said.
Suárez said the agent "did not feel he got what he was being asked to pay for" and that this led to dispute over how much he owed her at the end of the evening.
She said she does not consider herself a prostitute, but an escort because prostitutes "are lower class and live in brothels."

You see, she's a high-class escort. Not a low-class prostitute. Get that straight, please.

The transcript of the full interview is here in Spanish.

I notice that Señorita Not-A-Prostitute showed a little disrespect of her own, calling her Secret Service clients a bunch of drunken, free-spending, gringo fools. Maybe it sounded better in Spanish.

"First bottle of vodka, second bottle of vodka, third bottle of Vodka ... They were like any other gringo. They bought alcohol like water."

In the morning, when the hotel's front desk called the room to announce that it was time for all escorts and prostitutes to clear out, the fateful dispute over money occurred.

"I say give me the [$800], but he says "go, bitch" ... I will not pay ... [but eventually] he took out his wallet and gave me 50,000 pesos."

At today's exchange rate a 50,000 Colombian peso note is worth 23 Yankee dollars and 33 cents.










I don't know, maybe Agent Huntington was short on cash after buying all that vodka. But he might have avoided so much trouble for himself if he had been just a little more considerate of Señorita Not-A-Prostitute's feelings at that moment.

Gentlemen, it seems like some of us will never learn the lesson Aretha Franklin tried to teach us: R-E-S-P-E-C-T (find out what it means to me).

Well, you might be wondering, what's the status of the seemingly inevitable photo spread in a skin magazine? It seems the magazines are not all that interested.

According to the Miami Herald's report:

Dania Suárez, the Cartagena woman who three weeks ago unleashed the sex scandal that shook the U.S. Secret Service and military, may be trying to sell her exclusive story to magazines such as Playboy or Hustler, according to rumors that have surfaced in this city on Colombia’s Caribbean coast.

“This is the way this is going to end,” said a Colombian official who asked not to be identified. She’s going to pose nude in Playboy, where a renowned journalist will interview her and write an article telling the whole story of what happened.”

--snip --

Theresa Hennessey, a Playboy spokeswoman, told El Nuevo Herald that none of the magazine’s editors had contacted Suárez and that there are no plans to “publish her photos in the magazine.”

I hope Suárez has something to fall back on if the Playboy thing doesn't come through. Maybe she should get a GED or something. 

Meanwhile, back in Washington, the investigation into Secret Service misconduct ratcheted up a notch when Homeland Security's Office of the Inspector-General took over from the Secret Service. The OIG investigation is in addition to those of four congressional committees as well as internal reviews by the Secret Service, the military and the White House. Details are here.

Among other things, the OIG has been conducting polygraph exams of the agents. It was reported this week that some of the agents refused to submit to the polygraph, and I can't say I blame them. Could you take the polygraph seriously if you knew that its principal inventor also invented Wonder Woman and her magical Lasso of Truth that all are powerless to resist? True story.
 
It looks like they were smart to refuse. Late today, Congressmen Peter King (R-New York) announced that one of the agents who did submit to the Lasso of Truth "failed" his polygraph, which I assume means that someone doesn't believe him about something. That is contrary to the impression King had gotten earlier this week after briefings by Secret Service officials.

A key House chairman says one of the Secret Service agents accused of wrongdoing in the Colombia prostitution scandal failed a lie detector test.

Homeland Security Committee chairman Peter King said Friday that his investigators discovered that, contrary to the Secret Service’s account, one agent failed a polygraph test. King, a New York Republican, also asked why Secret Service agents have not been able to find Dania Londono Suarez, the prostitute at the center of the scandal, even though she apparently granted an interview on Friday.

King’s investigators met with Secret Service officials for three hours on Friday.

Apparently, the agent who failed his polygraph exam wasn't the only one who was being deceptive. That is not good news, since Congressman King has been perhaps the Secret Service's best friend on Capitol Hill since the Cartagena scandal broke, repeatedly defending its Director's handling of the incident. The Service can't afford to alienate him now.

And finally, we have a new loser of the week - a government contractor motivational magician. Yes, seriously.

Yesterday, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) withdrew a published $5,000 contract solicitation for a magician to motivate employees about "The Magic of Change" at a leadership training event. You don't need a weatherman to know which way the political wind blows, and after the General Services Administration's Las Vegas spending spree, NOAA can see there is no Hope for Change.

From the WaPo, NOAA pulls ad for magician in wake of Las Vegas spending scandal:

The ad, for a speaker on “The Magic of Change,” was pulled a day after NOAA officials posted it on a federal contracting website. The agency sought a speaker for a one-day session for 45 managers to create a “unique model of translating magic and principals of the psychology of magic, magic tools, techniques and experiences into a method of teaching leadership,” according to the posting that went up Wednesday on FedBizOpps.gov

NOAA pulled the ad after media reports suggested a magician would be in poor taste.

Poor taste? I would like to think that NOAA cancelled after they questioned why anyone would want to see magic performed by the lowest bidder.

The scandal continues.

2 comments:

A Daring Adventure said...

Senorita Not-a-Prostitute?!?!?

Wonder Woman's Magic Lasso of Truth?!?!?!

RESPECT (find out what it means to me)?!?!?

Holy cow, TSB, this blog post is so awesome you had me ROLLING with laughter and tears in my eyes!!!

I hope Seniorita NAP does, in fact, get a skin mag. And a book deal. Etc. Because the bigger and uglier this thing blows up, the more likely it will be to deter future US LEO's from from thinking that what they do in (name a place different than their hometown) will stay in (that place). Because it won't.

And she's right, TSB. They *ARE* morons. What in the world else could she say about them?

I read some other interview snippets of hers... I loved the one where she out and said something like "if I'd been going back to his hotel room for *me*, that's one thing, but I was going back to the hotel room for *him*, and so he needed to pay me." Honestly. morons the world over think women go back to their hotel rooms because they're just all that. All that... attractive or whatever. No, duh. The woman went back to your hotel room to GET PAID. Because without GETTING PAID at the end, she wouldn't have gone with you, because, contrary to your obvious lofty views of yourself, you are NOT *all that*.

I don't know what it is that makes some men feel so... invincible. But obviously the morons in this case had a really high dose of it. Let this be a lesson! Keep it in your pants while you're on the job, or you're not deserving of your clearance. Simple logic, that.

It just makes me angry because men like these ruin the reputation of entire agencies. I'm sure there are tons and tons of hardworking, good, moral USSS guys who wouldn't DREAM of doing what those men did, but they're now lumped in with being like the bad eggs just by the guilt of association.

TSB said...

ADA,

I agree. I hope exposure will deter misbehavior by official people on TDY. It mystifies me, too, but a lot of people do feel invulnerable when they go TDY. And by "people" I mean men, but also some women.

From some of the comments I've seen recently, I believe quite a few business-traveling men do, in fact, actually think that the women they meet in foreign red light districts are there mainly because they like having sex with strangers, and are only secondarily interested in money. They are really that clueless, and/or self-deluded. Plus, being from the First World, they tend not to realize that hunger is a powerful motivator, and they assume all those women must be there because they want to be.

It's a sad situation all around, including for those TDYers who keep to the straight and narrow.