Good or Bad for the Jews

"Good or Bad for the Jews"

Many years ago, and for many years, I would travel to Morocco to visit uncles, cousins, and my paternal grandmother. Some lived in Tangiers;...

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Big Fraud in the Far Abroad, Part XI: The End

Sorry for the long gap between Part X and this, the final installment in the Long Saga. This post provides a bit of a look at the aftermath of the arrest of Long and AC, and some reflections on what it all meant. Boring stuff, no doubt, but it's the best I can do on just ten years' notice.

As FBI and STATE DS agents told me subsequently, Long was taken from the embassy to the airport, allowed to change clothes, and put on a flight with escort to London. British authorities helped transfer her and "her party" to a flight to Washington DC. Long behaved well, making no attempt to run or create a scene. One agent who flew with her the whole way told me that she never said a word, sat perfectly still, not eating or drinking; he couldn't recall her ever going to the bathroom. She sat most of the flight eyes closed, lost in her thoughts. On arrival at Dulles airport, she was escorted to a magistrate in a small office at the airport, where she was formally charged with a long list of crimes. She said nothing. She was put into a van and driven to a holding facility in Virginia. Only during that portion of the trip did she say anything since leaving Colombo nearly 24 hours earlier. She turned to an agent and said, "This is probably not good for my career. This is probably the end of my career."

One of the FBI agents who had interrogated her that night in the Embassy told me he had never seen anybody quite like her. She had an answer for everything, replied very quickly and smoothly with no hesitation, and despite the hours of interrogation, kept her storyline consistent. She never lost her cool. He told me, "Somebody trained her very well." I remember saying, "It wasn't us."

AC, on the other hand, proved a very different guest of the feds. I saw the pictures of the raid on his house, and how he was taken while standing in the doorway. AC, according to one agent who was there, was terrified, shaking visibly, and absolutely incredulous that he was being arrested. He quickly gave up his denials of wrong-doing when presented the testimony of the young marine guard who had used my desk to have sex with Long. He became furious upon hearing that he was not the only one in the AC-Long household having sex in the Chancery after hours, and began spilling the details of the operation, blaming it all on Long.

The feds also raided the soon-to-open "Lemongrass" Vietnamese restaurant in Medford, Oregon and found a large number of illegal aliens living on the grounds in squalid conditions. Mostly Vietnamese, but also Indian and Sri Lankan, they had been brought there by Long and AC to help set up and operate the restaurant. (Note: I think that the restaurant is now a Thai restaurant.) The Los Angeles-based Vietnamese madam was arrested and many girls and women taken out of her brothels. The Virginia-based Iranian and his mistress, Long's daughter, were also arrested. The nascent limo operation in Colorado was shut down. There were other arrests, too--you can Google for the details.

In the end, neither Long nor AC got the 15-20 years prosecutors had assured us would be the punishment. I believe they were sentenced to six and seven years, respectively, and both were released after about four and half years. The case never went to trial, and Long and AC agreed to a deal for reduced sentences in exchange for a complete accounting of their activities and the forfeiture of all their assets--including Long's State pension and AC's Marine Corps pension. As part of the deal, the daughter in Virginia was allowed to keep her townhouse in exchange for taking on the care of the little handicapped girl, Zu. For what it's worth, and I told this to the prosecutors, I do not believe that Long gave up the full extent of her activities, and am convinced to this day that she hid money in Vietnam.

When investigators began looking at AC's and Long's household effects, they found gold, precious stones, antiques, and cash, stuffed and sewn into sofas and mattresses. They also found that the State Department Credit Union is not exactly run by financial geniuses. The thieving duo ran some $3 million through their accounts there without ever triggering some sort of an alert.

Subsequent to her release from prison, Long wrote a semi-ficitional autobiography which you can find on Amazon. I have no intention of reading it much less buying it. People who have read it have told me--and I don't know how accurate this is--that she barely touches on the visa scandal and does not mention the harm she caused other people and the country, the country that took her in as a refugee, in her bid to get rich.

Now, back to me.

 I, of course, was interviewed by the investigators and by the State IG. Just about everything I had to say or knew about the case I already had passed to the investigators. The IG gave me grief for a bit about the fraudulent representation vouchers which I had signed knowing that they were fraudulent. I showed them the memos I had written to DS each and every time I signed one, but the IG argued that DS did not have the authority to approve the signing of fake vouchers. They fought among themselves; I stayed out of it. I took the opportunity to grill DS on whether I ever had been a suspect in the investigation, and was told, "No." One DS agent, however, did mention that it had struck DS as odd that the Ambassador would try to keep me out of the investigation. My views on that were well-known, and I did not want to vent all over again. I did, however, ask whether anything would be done to BS for spilling his guts on a confidential investigation and for trying to malign me. DS agents said that BS had been reprimanded by the head of DS, and that "the decision had been made to leave it at that."

To paraphrase Long, this scandal did not do good things for my career. No matter how much I explained what had happened, my name was associated with something not kosher in Colombo. You must remember that the Department, when it comes to personnel decisions, operates largely on "corridor reputation," i.e., gossip, and half-information. I already had a reputation of being a trouble-maker and for being, let's say, somewhat more open about my views than is good for a career bureaucrat--you can Google that, too. I, in particular, had had run-ins with certain senior people in personnel (HR) and in the Consular bureau (CA). Some of them made a half-hearted effort to smear me with the scandal, but that did not go very far. I wrote a memo to CA and HR laying out how I thought they had let down the embassy and the Foreign Service; that embassies have to rely on the people provided by the Department system. In addition, I noted that CA had spent years trying to get Ambassadors and DCMs out of the visa process, insisting that it was a matter solely for consular officers; I noted that had I been able to review the visa issuances, I would have noticed that we were giving visas to people from outside of our consular jurisdiction. They sort of left me alone after that, at least on the official level, although, as I said, the rumors and gossip continued. The whole thing left me with a very bad taste in the mouth about the Foreign Service, and about how blowhards like BS can get away with bad stuff.

At the time I also was horrified that these two creeps had managed to blow a huge whole in our elaborate visa issuing system. I kept thinking what if they didn't just let in cooks, maids, and prostitutes? What other sorts of folks availed themselves of AC's facile visa stamp? In retrospect, of course, it all seems so penny-ante, so quaint, almost. We now have a misadministration in Washington that de facto has obliterated our immigration system in the continuing pursuit of irrevocably changing the very nature of our country. The southern border, for all intents, has been erased, and the US government is cooperating with the governments of Central America and Mexico in the sending of tens-of-thousands of illegal aliens in to the US with the full intention of having these people cared for by the American taxpayer and becoming Democrat voters. We are being told by spokesmen for Honduras, for example, and the always reliable New York Times, that suddenly the drug violence is so bad that tens-of-thousands of children are fleeing for the safety of the US and that the US has the responsibility to care for these "children" and make sure they are reunited with their families--reunited, that is, in the USA. All the talk about amnesty and the provision of generous federal benefits, of course, has nothing to do with this sudden surge.

What Obama and Holder have done makes the crimes of Long and AC look like child's play.

24 comments:

  1. Wait! You cannot be done yet! You did not touch on your suspicions that Long really wasn't Long and was a Vietnamese intel angel!

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  2. Quite a story.

    Not that I'm anti-Hispanic or anything, for I've taught ESOL and other things to lots of Hispanic kids who, I believe, will end up a net plus for the USA. And there a number of my present and former Hispanic students for whom I would gladly go to bat, as they say. I would even say there may be ways we can safely expand the numbers of people legally admitted--and perhaps even some illegals could be hauled in, fined, and given some kind of status.

    But this "Come and get it!" call from Washington? PFFFTHHHHHTHHH!

    You write:

    "the drug violence is so bad that tens-of-thousands of children are fleeing for the safety of the US".

    I hate to say it, but some 13-15 year-old "children" can be pretty good mules and whatnot for the cartels and other anti-social groups. I have a former student doing hard time as an accessory to a gang-related murder that happened right outside our school in the suburbs of the Nation's Capital. I also think of the kids who wore Che Guevara T-shirts (one until he got in thick with a kid from eastern Bolivia, then "What Che Guevara T-shirt"?), and wonder why their parents didn't become boat people seeking asylum in progressive Cuba.

    The O and Holder are indeed a couple of criminals. The second article of the impeachment drawn up against Nixon involved trying to use the IRS against political opponents, for Pete's sake. Our anointed next POTUS Lies-cries-alibis Shrillary Shroooooo is also someone you should trust no farther than you can throw your house.

    And, yes, even in my short and inglorious FS career, I saw how corridor reputation can be very petty and malicious.

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  3. Thanks for your story on your trial and tribulations in Colombo. No matter what, you were forever tainted by the deeds of others close to you. At least you have the ability to tell your story and put things in proper perspective.

    You mentioned our southern border and the homeless children fleeing Central America. Please give us your thoughts on this mess.

    Here are some salient facts I find troubling:

    1. The influx of children is coming two months is advance of the immigration reform legislation scheduled for August. Is this timing just coincidental?

    2. From all that I have read over the past 2 to 3 years, Mexico's southern border is well patrolled and enforced. How could 40 or 50 thousand get across so easily?

    3. The distance by road from the southern border of Mexico to the Arizona border is about 2200 miles by road. That's a very long distance . Who is transporting them? I see photos of them riding freight trains. I question that this is how they travelled that way for the whole distance. Maybe in India they do it that way, but in Mexico???

    4. Would the Mexican government allow them to transit their country unhindered unless they had assurances they would not remain in Mexico?

    My personal opinion is this is a staged event to put pressure on Congress to pass immigration reform. But like Fast and Furious it has backfired on the administration due to its ineptness. Far more turned up than expected and our southern border and the situation is out of hand The administration will have a heck of a time convincing the country they will ever close the border to illegals and that's the cornerstone of any immigration reform law.

    Please give us your thoughts.

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    1. Corky: You pose some very interesting questions I haven't heard brought up. As to this being an orchestrated crisis, you're not alone:

      http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2014/06/12/former-border-patrol-office-on-child-crisis-orchestrated-and-contrived-assault-on-americans-n1850732

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  4. "Lemongrass" is indeed an operating as a Thai restaurant in Medford.
    http://www.yelp.com/biz/lemon-grass-thai-cuisine-medford

    I had found out that Long only received 60 months, and AC got 63 awhile back, but didn't want to drop spoilers into such a griping tale.

    The thing that gets me most of all, is all the suffering they caused, for basically peanuts. They really didn't net that much, compared to "normal" Washington graft and corruption amounts. It seems like they busted their asses to make it. The two of them working full time, and yet having to work another full time job to cover and operate their various schemes. Just being honest and with their dual pensions plus savings, and personality would have led to success in their dream of running a little restaurant in Medford Oregon.

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  5. great stories. Thanks for sharing them.

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  6. Whatever happened to Mr. BS (Armitage)?

    I'll bet he's getting big bucks as a consultant, maybe working for Kissinger's outfit.

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  7. I'd like to email you about a similar experience with another consular scofflaw. Something you said rand very true to me. I cant find any contact info associated with your blg, though.

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  8. "Somebody trained her very well." That sounds about right. I still think either her ties were cut or if she was still active with Vietnamese home office they had no idea about her sidelines.

    You were probably very lucky, that someone didn't make a serious effort for you to be the fall guy.
    James the Lesser

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  9. You have already seen this I suspect, but in case you have not...
    http://freebeacon.com/culture/yes-prime-minister-clip-explains-obamas-foreign-policy-in-less-than-a-minute/

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    1. This clip is making the rounds on the internet!

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  10. I'm not sure it's a case of Obama and Holder "making the crimes of AC and Long look like child's play" as much as it is simply doing it on a much larger scale.

    You've got a sitting President, a sitting AG and the entire Democrat Party aiding, abetting, and outright participating in mass human trafficking and what amounts to child prostitution for political purposes. I don't know any other way to describe it.

    --Wes S.

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  11. Nicely finished; but the outcome seems less than AC and Long deserved, and not all deserved for you.

    The sorry tale does highlight how the so called compassion of the West is used by some, perhaps many, as a gateway to places where they can pursue objectives that range from the common personal profit to the malignant undermining of the society that thinks it is helping them.

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  12. Dear Dip, Not quaint. A very important story about the State Department and about government bureaucracy in general. Someone on Redstate recently made the point that power corrupts not only the big names at the top of the pyramid, but many of the little people in the powerful bureaucracies also. How do we get a handle on this? Obviously most of the federal bureaucracies need to be radically reduced in size, but some really are needed, State, Defense, a few others. Another point. About 15 years ago, during the Clinton administration, an honest Russian told me it was common knowledge that corrupt US consular officials were selling visas. How else to account for the known Russian mafia figures freely traveling to the US? I had no answer.

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  13. KephaJune 24, 2014 at 9:12 PM

    Well - you wanted Prohibition. You got its accessory as well. Price supports for criminals. And the last bastion of support for this socialist program? The "anti-socialist" right. How funny can you get?

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  14. Dip: Haven't seen posts in a while. Hope this tale of consular woe isn't the last we're going to hear from you.

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    1. No, no. Life has been getting in the way, that's all.

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  15. Great story, Mr. Amselem. I read something not long ago that rang very true in my experience as a Federal employee. The comment, from a former Federal executive was, "People think that being honest and forthright grants them some kind of immunity. They're wrong. Instead, it often makes them a target."

    State sounds like a snakepit. You're lucky to be gone and still have your pension. In a just world, most of our past Secretaries of State would be doing the 20-year sentences at Leavenworth that Long and AC should have received while Long and AC would have been executed for treason.

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  16. most of our past Secretaries of State would be doing the 20-year sentences at Leavenworth

    Who you have in mind? These are those still living.

    Kerry
    Clinton
    Rice
    Powell
    Albright
    Baker
    Schultz
    Kissinger



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  17. Powell, Kerry, Clinton, and Albright. Basically anyone SoS under Dems and Powell because he turned out to be a backstabbing traitor.

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  18. Very interesting story, and thank you for telling us about it. I just read all 11 parts at once, and feel cheated that Long and AC did not spend more time in prison. But I also consider it a travesty that her possible role as an agent of Vietnam or China, etc., did not interest anyone it should have. I'm saddened but not surprised that your career suffered too. Too many people are no damned good.

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  19. This was a fascinating read and I appreciate that you took the time to tell the story. It is a shame, though, that you felt the need to close it with such a non sequitur of a political statement. I browsed through some of your other postings and am stunned by the amount of hate and vitriol in your writing. I hope it makes you feel good to write it, at least, because it certainly adds nothing to the political discourse.

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  20. Anonymous, July 21, 2014 at 11:25 AM:

    "Stunned by the amount of hate and vitriol" in Mr. Amselem's writing? "Adds nothing to the political discourse" you say?

    You're a damned fool. The reality is that Mr. Amselem is actually being quite restrained in his descriptions. The people he is castigating are anti-American traitors and deserve a firing squad, not just a few measured insults. If you're too stupid or too deep into the Progressive kool-aid to recognize that truth, then you're in for a very ugly surprise when the bill for all of the Prog idiocy gets presented.

    The only saving grace, albeit a bitter one, is that the people hurt worst by most of the Prog policies are the low-information voters who voted for them. They deserve every bit of the pain, humiliation and sorrow they will received. When the dollar is trashed and the country overrun with lawless foreigners taking what they will, they might recognized the magnitude of their error. It will be too late then, though.

    The unfortunate thing is that a lot of other people are going to have to suffer as well despite having opposed the Progs with every legal means at their disposal. When it all comes apart, THOSE people are going to be looking for some serious payback against the Progs. I suspect a lot of the low-level left is going to end up decorating lampposts.

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