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Home Front: Politix
Leaked Emails Endanger Obama Nominee
2012-06-08
President B.O.'s ambassadorial nominee to Iraq appears to have conducted a lascivious extramarital affair with a Wall Street Journal news hound while the duo were stationed in Iraq, according to a collection of often-explicit emails posted on the website Cryptome earlier this week.
Reporter canoodled with the source, eh?
The emails raise questions about the administration official's fitness for the ambassadorship and whether he may have traded access to sensitive information for sexual favors.

The 2008 emails between Wall Street Journal news hound Gina Chon and former National Security Council member Brett McGurk, Obama's nominee to be the next U.S. ambassador to Iraq, expose a torrid love affair that unfolded over a period of several months.

Chon did not respond to request for comment. The State Department had no comment.

One source on Capitol Hill with knowledge of the nomination confirmed that the State Department had acknowledged the emails came from their system. The explicit details contained in the missives indicate that McGurk, who was married at the time, dangled unprecedented access and information before Chon in return for a series of increasingly intimate sexual encounters. McGurk is now married to Chon.
That doesn't fix the problem. Who's he sleeping with now, and with what favors in return?
McGurk was nominated by Obama in March to be the next U.S. envoy to Iraq. He served as an adviser to the last three U.S. ambassadors to Iraq, and later played the role of chief negotiator in the 2008 agreement that permitted U.S. troops to remain in that country.

In 2011, he led failed talks aimed at prolonging the U.S. troop presence.
A ringing endorsement!
The recently unearthed emails reveal that McGurk's extramarital relationship with Chon began during the arduous 2008 negotiations over the U.S.-Iraq security agreement--the sensitive details of which McGurk often hinted at over his unclassified exchanges with Chon.
Perhaps if he had put more effort into his work...
McGurk expressed pride in the clandestine relationship more than four months after the fact, when he resends to Chon the series of sexually charged emails and brags about his prowess.

"Cleaning out my emails and this is my all time favorite--from my first message to you through our Chinese dinner to the blue ball banter and then my coming over to hook up with you for the first time on June 23, [2008]--a night the world should celebrate!" McGurk wrote to Chon on December 13, 2008. "I am so fucking smooth!"

The news hound-source relationship began in earnest on June 20, 2008, after the pair met at a dinner party and traded a set of flirty emails.

"Thanks again for the dinner conversation," McGurk wrote to Chon. "I'll tell you what I know, if you can teach me something about cars."

Chon responded in kind, attempting to lure McGurk away from his State Department handlers for a one-on-one schmooze session.

"It would be good to get together on a more casual basis without public affairs people, if you know what I mean," wrote Chon.

From that point, Chon and McGurk engaged in an increasingly erotic back-and-forth in which Chon attempts to extract insider information and McGurk pontificates about his "blue balls," a term that refers to sexual frustration.

McGurk--who is rumored to be the senior U.S. official caught on video receiving fellatio on the rooftop of Saddam Hussein's presidential palace--offers to throw his weight around in order to get Chon into a high level powwow with U.S. and Iraqi political bigwigs.

"Turns out I totally have rank to get you in here, but it would not be fair for a master negotiating tactician like me--to intimidate and inexperience and innocent negotiator like you," McGurk writes. "My strategy is to break you down (day by day) until Friday when I will have achieved maximum leverage. Plan on dinner tomorrow around 8."
Posted by:Fred

#9  dangled unprecedented access and information before Chon in return for a series of increasingly intimate sexual encounters

LOL :) Has the makings of a racy novel.
Posted by: JohnQC   2012-06-08 17:00  

#8  An undercover assignment?
Posted by: mojo   2012-06-08 16:37  

#7  The explicit details contained in the missives indicate that McGurk, who was married at the time, dangled unprecedented access and information before Chon in return for a series of increasingly intimate sexual encounters.

And that's the real issue here, IMO. Anyone willing to do such a thing needs to be kept far away from sensitive information and from access to other sources.
Posted by: lotp   2012-06-08 13:40  

#6  McGurk the jerk-off.
Posted by: OmuluqueHapsburg5085   2012-06-08 11:27  

#5  One wonders who leaked the e-mails and why. That's at least as important as that this guy resembles POTUS 1992-2000.
Posted by: Glenmore   2012-06-08 08:31  

#4  Sounds like what the Brits call a prat.
Posted by: phil_b   2012-06-08 08:22  

#3  So that's what passes for romance today? Need to beef up the entry exam.
Posted by: Perfesser   2012-06-08 05:45  

#2  Images of the actual e-mail messages available at http://cryptome.org/2012/06/mcgurk-chon/mcgurk-chon.htm

I have no real problem with a horndog Alpha male being posted to a shithole like Iraq - maybe a jerk is exactly what you need in dealing with an entire nation of jerks.

The questions are:

1. Can he recover his gravitas after his awkward missives have been publicized?

2. Dose he have the emotional maturity to subordinate his own demon urges to the needs of his diplomatic mission?

3. Did he display an outright pattern of dishonesty in his prior official roles?

This guy was appointed to the National Security Council by George W. - so he appears to be a professional bureaucrat, not a completely political hack.
Posted by: Lone Ranger   2012-06-08 01:07  

#1  Reporter canoodled with the source, eh?

Nothing new there. CNN was blowing Saadam pretty much forever.

Hey, is this Coach McGurk from "Home Movies"?
Posted by: SteveS   2012-06-08 00:18  

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