Bogota: A woman who says she was the prostitute who triggered the US secret service scandal in Colombia said on Friday that the agents involved were "idiots" for letting it happen, and declared that if she were a spy and sensitive information was available , she could have easily obtained it.
The woman said she spent five hours in a Cartagena, Colombia, hotel room with an agent and while she barely got cab fare out of him, she could have gotten information that would have compromised the security of US President Barack Obama if the agent had any.
"The man slept all night," said the woman, identified by her lawyer as Dania Londono Suarez. "If I had wanted to, I could have gone through all his documents, his wallet, his suitcase." She spoke in a 90-minute interview with Colombia's W Radio conducted in Spain.
The young single mother appeared in the studio looking tan, with her long, dark hair tumbling down her back. While she denies being a ‘prostitute,’ she said she requested ‘a little present’ of $800.
She said that the luggage and documents in the suitcase in his hotel room were left out in the open, and could easily have been taken, if she were a spy, according to ABC News.
Suarez also said she never would have complained about not being paid had she known the agent was part of Mr Obama’s security detail.
She said she fled the country after the scandal broke for fear of retribution, and spent time in Dubai with a person she had met in Cartagena.
She said in the interview that she will gladly sell her story and has contracted one of Colombia’s top lawyers, according to the interview.
When asked whether or not she and Huntington had sex, she responded: ‘If I answer this, you will know what happened.’
However, she said that Huntington ‘did not feel he got what he was being asked to pay for,’ which led to the now-infamous feud and the scandal breaking out.
Suarez said she considers herself an escort, because prostitutes ‘are lower class and live in brothels.’
A government report published earlier this week tells how the Secret Service agents involved in the Colombian prostitution scandal paid nine of the 12 women that they took home from the bar on that wild evening.
The Secret Service submitted a detailed report about what exactly happened on the night that a dozen agents were partying at a bar in Cartagena while in the country to protect the President.
The report confirms that nine of the women who went back to the Hotel Caribe with the agents were paid thought their identities were not publicly revealed.
The Washington Post says that the 24-page report was submitted to the relevant congressional committees who are investigating the scandal, and those officials will not release the full extent of their findings.
Investigators from the Secret Service are continuing their hunt for more information about the evening, and so far they have only spoken with those nine women. They are still looking to talk to the remaining three women.
So far, they have done background checks on the first nine and have reported that none of them have connections to terrorist organizations or drug cartels, which was a major concern at the beginning of the scandal since they had access to the Secret Service agent's hotel rooms.
The women were aged between 20 and 39 years old.
'We’re going to use this as a base to operate from, but we’re also waiting for those statements from the women,' Congressman Peter King told The Washington Post.
Mr King, one of those in charge of the congressional investigations, said that speaking to the remaining three women 'will fill in a lot of the gaps'.
The report also details the staff ranks of some of the dozen agents involved with the women in Cartagena, Colombia.
Two were supervisory criminal investigators, three were snipers, three were part of a counterassault team.
Nine of the 12 agents submitted to polygraph exams, while three chose not to cooperate.
One of the three that did not submit to a test was the man who initially caused the whole fiasco by refusing to pay his prostitute in full.
That man, identified as Arthur Huntington, would not pay the $800 he initially agreed to pay prostitute Diana Suarez.
Huntington's wife, Jolie, told relatives she will ‘make the marriage work’ with Arthur Huntington, her husband of nearly 20 years.
Friends and family of the couple say that he would never have intentionally hurt her.
Huntington has left the agency since the incident earlier this month, but the circumstances of his departure are unclear. His home in Severna Park, Maryland reportedly went on sale last week.
Ms Suarez has previously told her side of the story, saying she met Huntington and the other men in a local bar and agreed to go back to their hotel.
In the morning the hotel forced her to leave, but Huntington refused to hand over the $800 she believed she was owed.
Police were called, setting off a Secret Service investigation which involved 12 agents and another 12 members of the military and which overshadowed Barack Obama's visit to the Summit of the Americas.
