THE CIA’S top officer in Algeria has been returned to Washington amid allegations that he drugged and raped two women at his Algiers residence, an accusation that presents the Obama administration’s new intelligence team with an unexpected legal and diplomatic crisis even before it officially takes office.
The 41-year-old Algiers station chief was ordered home by the state department after a month-long investigation of alleged sexual assaults in September 2007 and February of last year, US officials have confirmed.
The two women involved in the incidents told US diplomats that they became unconscious after receiving what they believed were knockout drugs served to them in drinks.
The alleged assaults, if confirmed, could damage diplomatic relations with Algeria, a US ally, and undermine US efforts to improve its image in the Muslim world, former diplomats and foreign policy experts said.
State department spokesman Robert Wood confirmed that an investigation was ongoing and that the officer involved had been recalled to Washington.
“The US takes very seriously any accusations of misconduct involving any US personnel abroad,” Mr Wood said.
Mark Mansfield, a CIA spokesman, would only say that the agency “would take seriously, and follow up on, any allegations of impropriety.”
The women’s allegations are described in detail in an affidavit by a state department investigator in which they give similar accounts of being assaulted by a man described as an official of the US embassy in the Algerian capital. The official is identified in the affidavit as Andrew Warren.
The first woman, an Algerian national who also holds a German passport, told embassy officials she was assaulted by Mr Warren after meeting him at a party at his residence. She said he offered her a mixed drink, which he prepared out of her sight.
Later, she said, after consuming more of the drinks, she became ill and experienced symptoms “nothing like the physiological effects of alcohol” she had previously experienced, the affidavit states. The next morning she awoke “on a bed, completely nude, with no memory of . . . what had occurred.”
The second woman, a married Algerian national living in Spain, told embassy officials she became violently ill after consuming two drinks at Mr Warren’s residence last February 17th. She reported fading in and out of consciousness and awakening to find Mr Warren having sex with her. She said she blacked out again and could not recall afterward how she got home.
In the affidavit, the investigator said there was “probable cause” to believe Mr Warren had committed aggravated sexual assault. The officer has not been charged. Attempts to reach him for comment were unsuccessful.
ABC, quoting unnamed officials, said the women’s accounts were backed up by videotapes that were found in the CIA officer’s residence.
The tapes, apparently secretly made, allegedly show the CIA officer engaged in sex acts with several women, including one of the alleged victims in the case who appears to be in a semiconscious state, the network reported.
– ( LA Times-Washington Postservice)