Does America need it's own Operation Fairbank?

[Cain]

Cuz this seems a little suspect:

Ryan Loskarn, the former chief of staff to U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander who was charged with possessing and distibuting child pornography last month, was found dead in his home in Maryland of an apparent suicide, law enforcement officials said Friday.

"At approximately 12 p.m. yesterday, Carroll County Sheriff's Deputies responded to a private residence in the 6900 block of Kenmar Lane for a report of an unconscious male, believed to be deceased," the sheriff's office reported Friday morning. "Family members reported finding 35-year old Jesse Ryan Loskarn unresponsive in his basement where he'd been residing with family since this past December.

"The preliminary investigation indicates that Loskarn may have taken his own life, and his body has since been transported to the State Medical Examiner's Office for Autopsy."

Shades of Craig Spence?

Spence's name came to national prominence in the aftermath of a June 28, 1989 article in the Washington Times identifying Spence as a customer of a homosexual escort service being investigated by the Secret Service, the District of Columbia Police and the United States Attorney's Office for suspected credit card fraud.

[...]

On November 10, 1989 Spence was found dead dressed in a tuxedo in Room 429 the Boston Ritz Carlton, the city's most expensive hotel with three dollars in his pocket.

[...]

In black felt-tip marker he had written on a mirror of his room:
   
Chief, consider this my resignation, effective immediately. As you always said, you can't ask others to make a sacrifice if you are not ready to do the same. Life is duty. God bless America.

As a postscript, he wrote, "To the Ritz, please forgive this inconvenience."

Though the article on Wikipedia doesn't make it clear, Spence was believed to be running underage rentboys as well.  One report had him arranging a "midnight tour" of the White House for a 15 year old boy, and the Washington Post, while being typically cautious, described the escorts as "teenagers" and "young".

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Oh. my. 

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

It's like those Temple of Set/CIA stories that are totally OUT THERE, but you can't *quite* totally debunk everything. Because when you toss out all the crazies and the bullshit, there's still...stuff. 

[Left]

Funny, I encountered the news item elsewhere, and hadn't even thought of the possibility of it being murder.  I figured he wanted to off himself, you know?

His family was in the home, I thought, and wondered why he hadn't yet gotten out of his room?

I take that back, can't figure out whether they came home and found him or just went downstairs to check on him.
...But that's an interesting question: Were his parents in the home when he died?

Not implying you aren't right, BTW.  Paranoia is totally justified here.

[Cain]

Oh, it was probably suicide.  If you knew you were going to go to prison as a child molestor (let's be honest here, criminals are not one for fine distinctions, and the difference between a supplier of child porn, a user of it and a maker of it would probably be lost of them - though they're not entirely wrong either), suicide would be an attractive alternative.

However.

He was a pedophile in an elite position.  As the chief of staff for a moderate Republican Senator, he likely had a wide range of contacts on both sides of the fence.  A chief of staff is a personal advisor and aide-de-camp to their political master.  As top political advisor, they are responsible for things a Senator cannot be, including....inducements for political deals, overseeing opposition research and running the Senator's office.

So it's a position of key influence. And then we find out Loskarn had a large collection of, and apparently distributed, child pornography.

Putting aside the question of child abuse as a moral evil in and of itself, this also represents a potentially huge security threat.  In the past, homosexual tendencies were used for the purpose of blackmail by intelligence agencies to obtain and control agents in the UK and USA.  It's a variation on the classic honeytrap technique - get a man in a compromising position, get the evidence, and you can own him.

Who owned Loskarn?  Was he a player, or was he being played?  The Senator he served sat on the Appropriations Committee....no doubt Loskarn would've been privy to at least some of their confidential proceedings, and that could be useful for all kinds of people.