The head of the Agency for International Development, Randall Tobias, resigned abruptly on Friday for what he said were "personal reasons," but an administration official said Tobias' name had come up in an investigation of a suspected Washington prostitution ring.
On Friday night, ABC News said Tobias had confirmed on Thursday that he was a customer of an escort service.
A woman from Vallejo, California, Deborah Palfrey, has pleaded not guilty to charges that she operated a call-girl service in Washington, and has threatened on her Web site to sell her client list to raise money for her defense. ABC News reported that Palfrey had given the network thousands of phone numbers of clients.
In court papers filed on April 11 in US District Court here, Palfrey identified an adviser to the Pentagon as "one of the regular customers" of her service. She posted the man's photo from his own Web site and tax records on a house he owns in Washington.
On her Web site, Palfrey asserted that her service, doing business as Pamela Martin and Associates, "functioned as a high-end adult fantasy firm which offered legal sexual and erotic services across the spectrum of adult sexual behavior."
Tobias told ABC that he used the service for massages, not sex, according to the network's Web site.
The State Department referred all questions to Tobias' personal office in Indianapolis. There was no reply to a message left there on Friday night. At his Washington apartment building, the concierge said Tobias was not in.
Tobias, 65, is a former chairman and chief executive of Eli Lilly & Co and of AT&T International. He served as the chairman of the board of Duke University from 1997 to 2000. He was also a major donor to various Republican campaigns.
He held two federal titles. President Bush nominated him in July 2003 to lead a US$15 billion program to fight AIDS worldwide. As director of US Foreign Assistance, he held the rank of ambassador.
Dana Perino, a White House spokeswoman, said the president expressed "sadness and disappointment" that Tobias was resigning and "wished his family well in the future."
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion