Ambassador's Prostitute Excuse Won't Help State's Coverup Case

The tabloid favorite amongst the brewing new State Department investigations isn't the alleged Baghdad drug-ring cover-up, or the alleged Honduras killings cover-up, or even the alleged cover-up of Hillary Clinton's security detail for an "endemic" solicitation of prostitutes. No, the sexiest of the Foggy Bottom probes — all of which State officials are trying to explain away — has to do with the U.S. ambassador to Belgium, who "routinely ditched" his own bodyguards to "solicit sexual favors" himself, including from minors. And now Mr. Ambassador is calling his prostitution allegations "baseless" because... he lives in "a beautiful park in Brussels."

Indeed, after CBS News' John Miller uncovered an October memo (and subsequent watered down drafts from the Inspector General's office) detailing the multiple State investigations on Monday, Ambassador Howard Gutman was outed by the New York Post a day later, forcing not only the White House and one of his State bosses to speak out, but forcing Gutman, who is married and has been in his post for four years, to issue this strange denial (emphasis ours):

I am angered and saddened by the baseless allegations that have appeared in the press and to watch the four years I have proudly served in Belgium smeared is devastating. I live on a beautiful park in Brussels that you walk through to get to many locations and at no point have I ever engaged in any improper activity.

Gutman probably could have stopped after the first sentence of his statement. His neighborhood park is Brussels's Parc Royal Warandepark, where some of the alleged solicitations and ditching of security took place, as the New York Daily News reported. 

Read more at Atlantic Wire.