The nicest hotels, part 2

Washington Monthly, July-August, 2005 by Charles Peters

Congressmen and their staff members are not the only government officials to live well while traveling. Consider the 19 American intelligence agents who angered the Italian government by snatching a Muslim cleric in 2003. Italian prosecutors and police have uncovered credit card and hotel records that show the agents running up bills as much as $500 per person a day at hostelries like Milan's Hotel Principe di Savoia, which calls itself "one of the world's most luxuriously appointed hotels," where the total tab came to $42,000.

After they had dispatched the cleric to Germany, several of the agents felt the need for some further R&R. "Four of them," writes Craig Whitlock of The Washington Post, "checked into luxury hotels" in Venice.