NJ Sen. Menendez calls for federal probe into alleged smear plot by Cuban agents

[UCmeNdc]

New Jersey Democratic Senator Robert Menendez has asked the Justice Department to investigate evidence said to be acquired by U.S. investigators that the Cuban government plotted to smear him with allegations he was involved with prostitutes, the Washington Post reported on Monday.

Citing people familiar with the situation, the Post said Menendez’s lawyer wrote in a letter to the Justice Department in April that the alleged plot was designed to derail Menendez’s political career as he was seeking re-election in 2012.

Menendez, who is of Cuban descent and is now chairman of the powerful U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has been a critic of Cuba’s communist government.

The newspaper quoted a former U.S. official with knowledge of government intelligence as saying the CIA obtained credible evidence, including Internet protocol addresses, that linked Cuban agents to the prostitution claims and efforts to plant the story in U.S. and Latin American media.

The allegations about Menendez surfaced days before the November 2012 election.

The reports, first published on the conservative Daily Caller website, said a political donor provided Menendez with free trips on his private plane to the Dominican Republic where Menendez allegedly engaged in sex with underage prostitutes.

Menendez denied the allegations. The Post, quoting two people familiar with the case, reported that an FBI investigation turned up no evidence tying Menendez to prostitutes.

Menendez’s office could not immediately be reached for comment.

(Reporting by Peter Cooney; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

[Image via Agence France-Presse]

[geek tragedy]

1. I have a hard time choosing between an asshole

like Menendez who repeatedly pushes us in a bad direction on foreign policy (Cuba and Iran being two big examples) and the dictators in Havana.

I'll choose to believe that both are lying.

[DFW]

2. Setting a "story" like this up is easy. It was tried on me, too.

I was on a working visit to Poland not long after the Soviet Union collapsed.

About 10:00 at night, I got a call on my room phone from some "sweet young thing" in passable English and a marked Russian accent, saying she was supposed to come up to my room. I said I didn't think so. Who the F*** told some unknown working girl that I was from an English-speaking country anyway? She insisted that oh, yes, she was to come to my room to see me. I switched languages and told her in Russian that there was a definitely a mistake and that she was NOT to come to my room. That freaked her (probably thought she had called one of her bosses by mistake), and she hung up.

Anyway, the mere allegation that Tucker Carlson had willingly done the bidding of the Cuban Secret Service should be enough to send him into damage control mode for a while.