Agents from the federal Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) attended wild sex parties in Colombia with prostitutes procured and paid for by local drug cartels, a shocking report from the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General (OIG) states.
Politico reports that seven agents admitted attending the parties, were punished only with suspensions of between two and 10 days, and supervisors often failed to report the violations up the chain of command,
The explosive 139-page report is the result of an OIG investigation into allegations of sexual improprieties and harassment within the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), and the U.S. Marshals Service.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, told Politico, "You can’t ignore this. This is terribly embarrassing and fundamentally not right. We need to understand what’s happening with the culture. Anytime you bring a foreign national into your room, you’re asking for trouble.
"We have to understand issue by issue what is happening. We need to understand how these people are being held accountable. There should be no question about the severity of the punishment. I don’t care how senior the person is — they are going to have to let these people go."
Covering the period between 2009 and 2012,
the report states that a foreign police officer "allegedly arranged 'sex parties' with prostitutes funded by the local drug cartels for these DEA agents at their government-leased quarters, over a period of several years," and adds, "the DEA agents’ in-country supervisors were aware of several loud parties with prostitutes that occurred at a special agent’s government-leased quarters, because the special agent had received four complaint letters from building management."
The report states "most of the 'sex parties' occurred in government-leased quarters where agents’ laptops, BlackBerry devices, and other government-issued equipment were present" which "created potential security risks for the DEA and for the agents who participated in the parties, potentially exposing them to extortion, blackmail, or coercion."
"A foreign officer also alleged providing protection for the DEA agents’ weapons and
property during the parties. The foreign officers further alleged that in addition to soliciting prostitutes, three DEA SSAs (supervisory special agents) in particular were
provided money, expensive gifts and weapons from drug cartel members."
Both the DEA and the FBI were accused of stonewalling investigators in the report, which states, "The OIG’s ability to conduct this review was significantly impacted and delayed by the repeated difficulties we had in obtaining relevant information from both the FBI and DEA as we were initiating this review in mid-2013,"
McClatchy D.C. reports.
The report also states that agents "frequented a prostitution establishment while in their overseas assignment and often took agents serving on temporary duty to this establishment and facilitated sexual encounters there,"
the Huffington Post reports.
The report echoes the 2012 scandal in which a dozen Secret Service agents were alleged to have partied with prostitutes during a presidential trip to Colombia, Politico notes.