Randy

As you probably know, Randall Tobias had to resign his position as head of the United States Agency for International Development because his name turned up in the latest DC sex scandal. Tobias, a married man in his 60s, had used Pamela Martin & Associates, the hooker service run by the latest DC Madame, Deborah Jeane Palfrey.

There is an aspect of this story that you may not know about.

Numerous books and magazines articles have stated without equivocation that USAID is often used as cover by the CIA. (See, for one example among many, here.) Randall Tobias is one of the few people who would know which agents were posing as AID personnel.

Obviously, a foreign intelligence service would love to compromise this guy. In the immortal words of Krusty the Klown: "You know -- click click!"

That possibility places into new perspective one of the more outrageous statements to come out of this scandal:

Tobias, who is married, said there had been "no sex," and that recently he had been using another service "with Central Americans" to provide massages.

Palfrey, according to Josh Marshall, used girls from Thailand. One does not need much imagination to see how easy it would have been to ensnare Tobias in what the spooks used to (and may still) call a honeytrap.

This sort of thing has happened before. Back in the Nixon era, Xaviera Hollander was servicing many powerful people, including Arab leaders. The co-author (or ghost writer) of her autobiography, Robin Moore, placed hidden cameras in her bedroom for...er...research purposes. Do a little Googling on Moore and you'll see that he has had a rather interesting history.

Another point worth mentioning:

As the Bush administration's so-called "AIDS czar," Tobias was criticized for emphasizing faithfulness and abstinence over condom use to prevent the spread of AIDS.

Now we know why he derided condom usage. "Mr. Faithfulness" was just looking for a BBBJ.

I wonder how many other advocates of abstinence only got these (a-HEM!) "massages"?