Business as usual
I have worked for the military for 40 years and did a lot of work in overseas assignments many of which are exotic and all have legalized prostitution including Uzbekistan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Peru, Honduras, Ethiopia, Panama, and others. This has always been a problem for staff on TDY assignments, particularly to exotically poor places with high levels of prostitution (meaning inexpensive). In many places I have been they keep on staff at the 5 star hotels (Like the Inter-Continental chain) in the lobby very high level prostitutes as part of the hotel's business. But, this behavior shouldn't be condoned or even tacitly approved by ignoring the problem. Everyone is constantly barraged with not doing this kind of thing as part of the mandatory country briefings. What this indicates to me is that there is a significant slip in the moral climate within the administration. You have to remember that these are not "ordinary" staffers or guest visitors but Secret Service personnel. These folk have constant access to the most sensitive information there is in our government and they all get a lifestyle polygraph as part of their 6 month validation of their TS-SCI clearances. You can't hide this behavior so what went wrong here is that they were caught and not that there was an overt attempt to cover this kind of behavior up. It is an indicator of how Americans, and in particular our government, perceive themselves among other host nations. Yes, prostitution exists legally in many countries but just because it is there doesn't mean these guys should take advantage of it. But, here we see that it may be commonly accepted behavior as long as it is kept discrete. Not a good situation for our government as our country, because of our puritanical background, is not accepting of legalized prostitution which makes someone participating from the US subject to black mail and this is the main reason it should not be condoned. It also sends mixed messages to the host nations and provides leverage against the US. In short it is disastrous. I also believe it is a crime as well for agents to do this not just behavior requiring termination. It will be interesting to see where this goes after the "15 minutes of fame" period ends.
