A senior State Department official has been arrested, charged and booked to the Washington D.C. jail after allegedly soliciting sex from a minor over the internet. The official, Daniel Rosen, is in charge of counterterrorism operations. Fox News' James Rosen has the exclusive details.
Fairfax County Police officials say Daniel Rosen was arrested by a county detective about noon at his Washington, D.C. home after he allegedly sought to arrange sex with a minor. The detective, a female officer working in the county's Child Exploitation Unit, had been posing as the minor in online exchanges with Rosen, police said.
Rosen, who is the director of counterterrorism programs and policy at the State Department, was arrested and transported to the D.C. jail and charged with one count of Use of a Communications Device to Solicit a Juvenile.
Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said late Tuesday, "We are aware that a State Department employee has been arrested and charges have been issued.
"For issues related to Department personnel and for privacy reasons, we are not able to confirm the identity of the individual or specific charges.
"His security clearance will be suspended and he will be put on administrative leave while this proceeds to its end through any judicial process. We are following standard procedure in this case."
Rosen isn't the first State Department official to get into trouble with alleged sex solicitation. For years, and specifically under Hillary Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State, Department officials have reportedly engaged in inappropriate sexual behavior.
Under Clinton's watch, U.S. Ambassador to Belgium Howard Gutman was accused of routinely ditching his “protective security detail in order to solicit sexual favors from both prostitutes and minor children,” in a nearby park according to an internal memo written by a chief inspector general investigator. A State Department security official stationed in Beirut was accused of engaging in multiple sexual assaults. Further, a U.S. Embassy official was removed for allegedly trading visas for sexual favors.
CBS News first reported in 2013, at least seven of Clinton’s security agents routinely hired prostitutes on official trips overseas. Their behavior was described as “endemic.” Although the agents were eventually reassigned, they weren’t seriously punished. When investigations were launched into misconduct, they were immediately shut down by Clinton’s former Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills.
CBS News' John Miller reports that according to an internal State Department Inspector General's memo, several recent investigations were influenced, manipulated, or simply called off. The memo obtained by CBS News cited eight specific examples. Among them: allegations that a State Department security official in Beirut "engaged in sexual assaults" on foreign nationals hired as embassy guards and the charge and that members of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's security detail "engaged prostitutes while on official trips in foreign countries" -- a problem the report says was "endemic."
The memo also reveals details about an "underground drug ring" was operating near the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and supplied State Department security contractors with drugs.
Aurelia Fedenisn, a former investigator with the State Department's internal watchdog agency, the Inspector General, told Miller, "We also uncovered several allegations of criminal wrongdoing in cases, some of which never became cases."
In such cases, DSS agents told the Inspector General's investigators that senior State Department officials told them to back off, a charge that Fedenisn says is "very" upsetting.
Even female whistleblowers who spoke out against the misconduct and exploitation of women and girls by State Department officials have been retaliated against and punished.
At the very least, the State Department seems to have an internal cultural problem that must be addressed with swift accountability and reform.
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