Rosenberg Guilty of “Unnecessary Profanity” But Not Harassment

/in , /by

The Miami Herald has done an investigation into the allegation that their excellent Gitmo reporter, Carol Rosenberg, had sexually harassed a Gitmo officer, Jeffrey Gordon. The investigation concluded that Rosenberg used "unnecessary profanity," but had not harassed her accuser.

In a letter Monday to the Pentagon, Miami Herald Vice President of Human Resources Elissa Vanaver wrote that the newspaper’s internal investigation ‘‘did not find corroboration” for the complaint of sexual harassment and abusive behavior made last month by Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon.

Herald executives interviewed military officials and journalists from other news outlets, some of whom had witnessed the incidents Gordon cited in his complaint. "We found some inconsistencies in [Gordon’s] version of events," said Miami Herald Executive Editor Anders Gyllenhaal.

[snip]

The written complaint, which is available on the Internet and has been a hot topic on blogs that follow the Guantánamo story, prompted dozens of people familiar with the sometimes-contentious relationship between Gordon and Rosenberg to contact The Herald in support of Rosenberg, Gyllenhaal said.

"We even heard from generals," he added.

Aside from my, um, solidarity with someone guilty of unnecessary profanity (though I insist that "blowjob" is not a profanity), this conclusion makes me ask the question I asked earlier.

Did Gordon file a complaint about Rosenberg because she’s doing the best reporting from Gitmo?

image_print
  5. Arbusto says:

    Somehow, the idea that a male, especially one in the Service, especially the Navy would feel violated even by extreme profanity, gives me hope the DoD will consider restricting cursing as they are cigarette smoking, in the hope of a kinder, gentler armed service. Fucking A!

    • lysias says:

      This retired lieutenant commander is having a hard time imagining a commander who files charges about foul language. I’m having an even harder time imagining him not being laughed out of the Navy.

      • freepatriot says:

        ya gotta wonder about this fucking twinkie of an officer, and his delicate sensibilities

        When I want it to stick, I give it to em LOUD and DIRTY

        George Patton. Lt General, Commander of Third Army

        good thing the 101st Airborn and the 10th Armored, the battered bastards of the Bastion of Bastone, had Patton to count on, instead of this powderpuff officer

        NUTZ

  8. WilliamOckham says:

    I’m probably being overly technical here, but I would say “blow job” could be considered an obscenity, but not a profanity.

  10. rosalind says:

    ot: headline at huffpo “Blackwater Founder Implicated in Murder”

    with a link to the Nation article – server must be slammed, can’t get in, but this is the short version:

    A former Blackwater employee and an ex-US Marine who has worked as a security operative for the company have made a series of explosive allegations in sworn statements filed on August 3 in federal court in Virginia. The two men claim that the company’s owner, Erik Prince, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company.

    • Loo Hoo. says:

      I finally got in and grabbed the first paragraph:

      A former Blackwater employee and an ex-US Marine who has worked as a security operative for the company have made a series of explosive allegations in sworn statements filed on August 3 in federal court in Virginia. The two men claim that the company’s owner, Erik Prince, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company. The former employee also alleges that Prince “views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe,” and that Prince’s companies “encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life.”

  11. MadDog says:

    And another OT – EW has probably already seen this, but if not, Steve Aftergood over at Secrecy News has this:

    CIA Whistleblower Complaint Declassified

    In May 2001, CIA officer Franz Boening submitted a memorandum to the Agency Inspector General alleging that the CIA’s relationship with disgraced Peruvian intelligence official Vladimiro Lenin Montesinos may have involved violations of U.S. law.

    There is no evidence that the CIA Inspector General ever took any action in response to Mr. Boening’s memorandum, which was presented as a whistleblower complaint. CIA classification officials, however, responded quickly and energetically — to silence him. Information contained in the Boening whistleblower complaint is classified, declared CIA information review officer Ralph S. DiMaio (11 page pdf), and its disclosure “reasonably could be expected to cause damage to national security…”

    …With the assistance of attorney Mark S. Zaid, Mr. Boening went to court to challenge the Agency’s censorship of his allegations as an unlawful act of prior restraint. Eight years after submitting the document, he emerged more or less victorious, as the CIA withdrew most of its objections, and permitted publication (37 page pdf) of the 2001 whistleblower complaint regarding Montesinos with only a few remaining redactions…

  12. Leen says:

    “The investigation concluded that Rosenberg used “unnecessary profanity,” but had not harassed her accuser.”

    “What do Rosenberg and Cheney have in common? They both used “unnecessary profanity” Rosenberg’s profanity was investigated. Cheney’s crimes have not

    Cheney
    Cheney Dismisses Critic With Obscenity
    Clash With Leahy About Halliburton
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..Jun24.html
    “Fuck yourself,” said the man who is a heartbeat from the presidency.

    ————————————————————————–

    “Did Gordon file a complaint about Rosenberg because she’s doing the best reporting from Gitmo?”

    No doubt

    —————————————————————-
    ew what did MSNBC say after you said “blowjob” on the air?

  13. freepatriot says:

    Jebus, you people are all over teh fookin map today

    an I really wanted to see which sexual harassment investigation comes out of GITMO next

    sounds like a “HOTBED” of sexual harrasment

    we should send about a dozen AUSAs down there with an open mandate to prosecute sexual harrasment, and any other crimes they might uncover

    for the record, anal rape is above and beyond simple “harassment”

    so we should investigate this topic THOROUGHLY

    Send Patrick Fitzgerald, and let him pick the other 11 AUSAs

    and we’ll get a Special Grand Jury to handle the murder investigations

  14. Hmmm says:

    Uhm, is this news?: Military Lawyer Claims U.S. Paid Gitmo Prosecution Witnesses

    Now, although the Justice Department has conceded it can’t rely on those confessions and can no longer imprison Jawad based on the laws of war, it’s said it may file new criminal charges against him based on previously unavailable eyewitness testimony to the crime. Those witnesses, however, according to Jawad’s U.S. military defense lawyer, were all paid in gifts or cash in exchange for their testimony.

    U.S. Marine Corps Major Eric Montalvo, one of Jawad’s military defense lawyers, said he’s spoken to all of “the government’s star witnesses” and “they all have a couple of things in common.” First, “they know how to describe the day of the incident anywhere from two to five different ways, placing themselves in different locations for each of these descriptions and witnessing or not witnessing different things,” he said in a recent e-mail message. Second, “they have all received some sort of U.S. government compensation, from shoes and a trip to the United States to $400 for cooperation, which is a princely sum in Afghanistan.”

  15. fatster says:

    O/T Laugh of the day (pun intended). Sobering though to realize he was at the pinnacles of power just a few decades ago. And scary to imagine how many people today think his comments about Medicare and Medicaid are accurate.

    TUESDAY, AUG. 4, 2009 17:01 EDT
    Quote of the day

    “Arthur Laffer, the man who came up with the Laffer Curve — the supply-side economic argument that has so captivated the Republican Party — really should know a little something about government programs. But apparently not.

    “Via my friend Steve Benen, here’s what Laffer had to say when debating healthcare reform during an appearance on CNN Tuesday morning: ‘If you like the Post Office and the Department of Motor Vehicles and you think they’re run well, just wait till you see Medicare, Medicaid and health care done by the government.’

    “This is, as Benen notes, not the first time someone’s worried about the government taking over Medicare — which just happens to be a government program.”

    Link.

  16. Leen says:

    ot on Countdown tonight on a segment defined as breaking news Jeremy Scahill reports about BlackWaters and Eric Prince’s alleged murders in the name of Christian Crusades. Not up at the Countdown site yet.

    More shit hitting the fan

    Blackwater Founder Implicated in Murder
    By Jeremy Scahill
    http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090817/scahill

    • Hmmm says:

      If this stands up, it’s going to make it an awful lot harder to resist looking backwards. And it widens the net, remember it’s not just WH & DoD, State doubled down on Blackwater even after the mass shootings.

      • Leen says:

        Hey you “move on, turn the page, next chapter” You sound like you are all about “retribution and revenge”. Jeremy Scahill just on another “witch hunt”

        At what point did Justice and accountability start being defined as “vengeance and retribution”?

  17. marc says:

    Wasn’t sexual harassment of detainees SOP at Gitmo? And wouldn’t suggesting, let alone commanding, a female interrogator to do naked lap dances on a detainee be considered sexual harassment of the female interrogator as well?

  18. aztrias says:

    A profanity might be harrassment if the offender is in a position of power e.g. a supervisor or superior.

    A reporter isn’t such a person. She is NOT over seeing his day to day performance or in the chain of command.

    She has NO has control over the work environment such that the profanity created an environment of fear or intimidation.

    I’d require the filer take the next POSH training session and consider offering him a reassignment where he would not be subjected to harsh language.

    • bobschacht says:

      I’d require the filer take the next POSH training session and consider offering him a reassignment where he would not be subjected to harsh language.

      Well, that would rule out the Armed Services, so Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon would need to find a new line of work. Do the Armed Services have POSH training?

      Bob in HI

  19. plunger says:

    What constitutes NECESSARY PROFANITY?

    How about this:

    What do Rahm Emmanuel and the leaders of these networks have in common?

    In the days before President Obama’s last news conference, as the networks weighed whether to give up a chunk of their precious prime time, Rahm Emanuel went straight to the top.

    Rather than calling ABC, the White House chief of staff phoned Bob Iger, chief executive of parent company Disney. Instead of contacting NBC, Emanuel went to Jeffrey Immelt, the chief executive of General Electric. He also spoke with Les Moonves, the chief executive of CBS Corp., the company spun off from Viacom.

    Whether this amounted to undue pressure or plain old Chicago arm-twisting, Emanuel got results: the fourth hour of lucrative network time for his boss in six months. But network executives have been privately complaining to White House officials that they cannot afford to keep airing these sessions in the economic downturn.

    Answer – ISRAEL.

    I personally knew the CEO of ESPN back in the day. At the time, it was owned by Cap Cities ABC, parent of ABC. While you would think he was on a path to move up into top management at the network, you’d be mistaken.

    He was, sadly, a gentile.

    Once he left ESPN to work for a company where such discrimination would not limit his advancement, he was replaced by Steven Bornstein.

    Media ownership study ordered destroyed
    Sept 14, 2006

    ‘Every last piece’ destroyed

    Adam Candeub, now a law professor at Michigan State University, said senior managers at the agency ordered that “every last piece” of the report be destroyed. “The whole project was just stopped – end of discussion,” he said. Candeub was a lawyer in the FCC’s Media Bureau at the time the report was written and communicated frequently with its authors, he said.

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14836500/

    RULE THE MEDIA – RULE THE WORLD.

    FUCK THIS SHIT!