Is the Department of Homeland Security currently working to spring a wealthy, politically-connected American pedophile now being held in a Phnom Penh prison? If true, what sort of political favor is this, and why is DHS in the business of delivering it?
I’ve thought a few hours about whether, and even how, I should diary this... Yes, this diary is hearsay. But if what I heard this morning in Los Angeles is true, I cannot in good conscience ignore it. It came from two very close friends who left Cambodia early Friday morning, and who had quite a story to tell.
My two friends (whom I have known for decades) spent the last ten days in Vietnam and Cambodia, traveling as part of a larger group. At the end of their visit and during their last two days in Phnom Penh, they stayed in the swanky Le Royal hotel. That's where a woman traveling with my friends' entourage befriended a not-so-quiet American...
This not-so-quiet American was staying in the same hotel, and might have been trying to pick the woman up (which didn’t work). No doubt he was trying to impress her. But over the course of their exchanges, he told her that he worked for the Department of Homeland Security—possibly in New Orleans—and had been flown to Cambodia courtesy of DHS. He is currently in Cambodia because a wealthy, politically-connected American had found himself in a "little trouble", i.e., in a Cambodian jail (presumably in Phnom Penh), after being caught and arrested for offenses related to pedophilia.
Cambodia is well-known as a destination for pedophile sex tourists, and was something of a haven for them before the Cambodian government began a concerted crackdown. (My apologies—I barely have the stomach right now even to Google links to the Cambodian child sex trafficking business, though that broader context would no doubt make this a better diary.)
While other US agencies and officials have stepped up to the plate to prosecute these child predators once they return to the US, the DHS is clearly not there to help facilitate this man’s transition to a U.S. prison. Instead, the DHS is working there to help spring him from jail, get him back to the US, and in the process generate no publicity for the crime. (I'm not helping on that third objective.) All of this was explicitly communicated by the DHS employee to the woman traveling with my two friends.
People can be imprisoned unjustly, of course, in foreign jails. Usually when that’s the case, the embassy is the first to play a role in their release. But apparently when the Bush Administration acts to spring a child rapist from a Cambodian jail cell, it doesn’t call on its diplomats to do the job. It uses Michael Chertoff's Department of Homeland Security, an agency which apparently sees no reason not to lavish extraordinary perks on those doing the work: Le Royal, with its famed Elephant Bar, is in fact Phnom Penh's oldest hotel, built in 1929 in the French Colonial style. After its recent restoration and merger into the Raffles family, Le Royal is almost certainly Phnom Penh's most expensive lodging.
I sincerely wish that none of what I am writing here proves to be true... But I spent hours quizzing my friends about the specific details, trying as hard as could to probe the frame of mind of characters in the story, the man's motivations for revealing this information to the woman, etc. For a variety of reasons, I believe the story is credible.
The key details were repeated less than 72 hours ago, which means the GOP-perp may well still be in prison in Cambodia and very probably isn’t back in the United States yet... Although my knowledge is imperfect and quite indirect, I am posting this because I feel that my words could make a difference if seen more widely, and seen in a very timely manner.
Now is an ideal time for other people who may have knowledge of this, whether inside or outside the DHS, to make copies of extant documents and e-mail. Now is the time for on-the-ground Cambodian media to ask questions. Do the Cambodians know that the DHS is not at all the appropriate agency to be involved in this ugly business? Do the Cambodians know that the DHS is not taking this person into custody, but granting him a get-out-of-jail card?
I pray that someone who knows something, who shares my indignance, takes a stand on this. I'm so sickened and disgusted. Did the towers fall on 9/11 so that we could create an agency which conducts these sorts of operations? What does the DHS's stated mission of "Preserving Our Freedoms, Protecting America" have to do with freeing a child rapist to rape again?