Jul 02, 2004  |  By: LOU CHIBBARO JR.  | COMMENTS     

The State Department and the president of Romania have issued strong statements of support for the gay U.S. ambassador to Romania, Michael Guest, following a yearlong onslaught of articles in an English language newspaper in Bucharest accusing Guest of corruption and mismanagement.

A State Department spokesperson this week strongly denied a report in the newspaper, Bucharest Business Week, that the White House had “recalled” Guest from his ambassador’s post because of alleged improprieties.

The spokesperson, Margo Squire, said Guest completed a three-year assignment as Romanian ambassador and would be returning to Washington in July to begin a new assignment in the U.S. Foreign Service, where he has served with “distinction” for more than 20 years.

She said his three-year term had been set at the time Guest was named to his ambassador’s job by President Bush in 2001 and that the newspaper articles had played “absolutely no role” in the timing of his departure.

“Mr. Guest has done an excellent job as U.S. ambassador in Romania,” Squire said. “He has served our country well.”

The Romanian Embassy in Washington announced on June 24 that Romanian President Ion Iliescu awarded Guest that nation’s “Order for Faithful Service in the Rank of Grand Cross.” In a statement, the embassy said Iliescu presented the award to Guest at a June 23 ceremony in Bucharest in appreciation for “high professionalism, dedication to his mission … and for his personal contribution to the strengthening of the Romanian-American partnership.”

Guest, a career Foreign Service officer, became the nation’s second openly gay ambassador. President Clinton appointed San Francisco business executive, philanthropist and gay activist James Hormel as the first openly gay ambassador. Hormel served as ambassador to Luxembourg.

Among the allegations made by Bucharest Business Week is that the U.S. embassy in Bucharest, under Guest’s leadership, appointed a convicted pedophile to an embassy-sponsored board that selects Romanian students for U.S. Fulbright scholarships.

The embassy said it removed the appointee, U.S. citizen and historian Kurt Treptow, from the board after learning about his conviction in a Romanian court for allegedly engaging in sex with juveniles and videotaping the encounters. Neither the newspaper nor the embassy disclosed whether the juveniles were males or females.

The newspaper charged that the embassy failed to adequately vet Treptow before making the appointment. It also charged that Guest and other embassy officials gave Treptow favorable treatment in the selection process over other candidates for the Fulbright board, in part, to provide cover for Treptow alleged work as a CIA agent.

Squire called the newspaper’s claim that Guest gave Treptow favorable treatment “preposterous.” But State Department policy prevents comments on matters relating to the CIA or U.S. intelligence activities, she said.

Guest could not be reached by press time for comment.

Bucharest Business Week is published by AmeriCelt Publishing SRL, described on its Web site as the Bucharest branch of Romanian Ventures Inc., the “only wholly American-owned news media company in Romania.” The Web site says the English-language weekly newspaper specializes in business coverage, including news about American and European companies doing business in Romania.

Corina Mica, the paper’s editorial director and the author of most of the articles about Guest, did not respond to an e-mail by press time.

'Poor leadership'
In addition to the allegations about Guest’s role in Treptow appointment, newspaper articles accused Guest of “poor leadership” in presiding over an embassy that the paper says is plagued by “mismanagement.” Several of the articles accuse embassy officials, including Guest, of engaging in “influence-peddling” in the appointment of outsiders to embassy posts.

One article accuses the embassy of assisting U.S. citizens in obtaining legal assistance in Romania to adopt children in what it calls a multi-million dollar adoption effort in which U.S.-owned adoption agencies allegedly charge $10,000 or more to facilitate adoptions for Americans.

Another article accuses Guest of offending both Romanian leaders and U.S. business executives seeking to arrange business deals in Romania by over stressing reports of corruption within Romania’s government and private corporations.

Squire called all of the allegations untrue.

None of the articles currently posted on the newspaper’s Web site reference Guest’s sexual orientation.

But Tom Coleman, acting president of Gays & Lesbians in Foreign Affairs Agencies, a recognized employee group at the State Department, said a source at the U.S. embassy in Romania told him most embassy officials believe the newspaper’s criticism of Guest is motivated by anti-gay prejudice.

Coleman said his source at the embassy told him that the newspaper began publishing articles attacking Guest and the embassy after the embassy chose not to hire one of the paper’s top officials as executive director for ...