Ex-DOD employee claims exposure to ‘touchy/feely’ European culture led to his firing

We already knew that the Department of Defense had issues with randy Pentagon employees downloading pornography at work. But now it appears that at least some of the Defense Department's excesses in the realm of the libidinal may stem from the influence of decadent European culture.

That, at any rate, is what Thyrman Smiley — a former Defense Department supervisor with the Defense Logistics Agency — claims led to his downfall. In challenging his 2009 dismissal on charges of sexual harassment before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, Smiley — who described himself in a brief as "charismatic, likeable, hard working, [and] harmlessly amorous" — claims that his superiors didn't consider all the facts when determining his fate. Specifically, Smiley feels he "should have been given credit for an 'unusual' mitigating circumstance, which was the fact that he had lived and worked for 10 years in Italy, where it was customary for people to be 'touchy/feely' with each other."

"It's a different culture there," Smiley testified to an administrative judge at a hearing. "They express themselves with their hands a lot and I, I find myself doing it even today."

Unfortunately for Smiley, the court wasn't buying it. In its ruling against him, the court said that Smiley made "inappropriate uninvited physical contact" with two women he supervised and had "over a course of time, made numerous sexual comments referring to the physical assets of the women and revealing [his] considerable sexual appetite and his desire to share that appetite with the women." The decision found that the testimony of Smiley's accusers "belies his claim to being harmlessly amorous."

So much, in other words, for the "La Dolce Vita" defense.