Not long before both men were caught by the authorities in sexually compromising positions, two high-ranking federal officials were central players in a congressional hearing on protecting sensitive personal information.
In 2006, then-Sen. Larry Craig, an Idaho Republican, chaired a hearing in which he grilled Department of Veterans Affairs Deputy Inspector General Jon Wooditch about the agency’s failure to safeguard the private medical details of veterans.
Within two months, Wooditch “was standing full frontal, stark naked, masturbating, and very pointedly ducking his head out of the window and looking up at my mother’s house to see if he had an audience,” as described by the daughter of his next door neighbor in LeMoyne, Pa. Soon after, he masturbated in the all-glass conference room of his government office where tourists could easily see him. (RELATED: VA Cop Chose the Wrong Beat)
Wooditch’s activities are described in detail in a previously unpublished investigative report prepared by the Department of the Interior’s inspector general and obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation.
A year later, Craig was arrested for lewd conduct in an airport bathroom because officers believed he was motioning under the stall in a signal for anonymous gay sex.
Both lied — Wooditch to local police and federal investigators, and Craig after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor, saying he was actually innocent but had just wanted to settle the matter in the easiest way.
Wooditch resigned in November 2008. Craig left office in disgrace the next month. Craig ultimately was ordered to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to the U.S. government.
Wooditch had no such consequences and kept full-time pay and pension, despite apparently spending significant portions of the workweek masturbating.
The government ignored a Freedom of Information Act request about the investigation and didn’t take its evidence to federal prosecutors who might have sought to put him on the sex offender registry.
Wooditch told TheDCNF earlier this month he has never in his life been accused of masturbation. On Tuesday, Military.com called him asking about TheDCNF story, and he acknowledged the investigation took place, but said the lack of consequences is evidence he isn’t guilty.
He also implied it is his widowed neighbor who is the pervert, not him.
“Whatever happened in LeMoyne happened in the privacy of my own bedroom … someone may have been looking in my own window,” he said.
He said the complaints about his office behavior that teachers brought to police are “absolutely insane.”
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