The U.S. State Department claims no records exist concerning what happened at the U.S. Embassy in Lomé, Togo on November 11, 2025.
This is what they’re claiming didn’t happen, didn’t get documented, and left no trace in any system:
At 3:18 PM, security guard Abdulai Majeed stopped Army Sgt. Kelvin Blas at the embassy gate and asked if he had an appointment. Blas, who hadn’t eaten in three days, identified himself as an American citizen and requested to see Ambassador Richard C. Michaels.
(For detailed background on Ambassador Michaels and other officials involved in this case, see Covenant for Forgotten Warriors’ Profiles of Power.)
Majeed went inside the embassy building to consult with someone. He was gone for approximately twenty minutes.
When he returned, he delivered a message from the Ambassador’s Secretary: “Kelvin is not welcome here and should leave.”
What happened next played out over an extended period. At some point during the confrontation, when Blas had not left the premises, Majeed used physical force: a two-handed chest shove to remove him.
A civilian visitor named Susan Williams witnessed the assault and intervened, telling the guard: “Stop handling him like that.”
Three other visitors who were with Susan also watched the confrontation. Inside the embassy building, Togolese staff member Mr. Agawu Raymond observed through a window.
At some point during or after the physical removal, Majeed delivered a threat: “Next time you won’t even have the chance to come to the premises of the embassy.”
Blas ultimately left the embassy grounds. The entire incident lasted over an hour.
Six witnesses. Physical force after consultation with embassy leadership. Civilian intervention objecting to the treatment. CCTV cameras recording everything. Over an hour of documented interaction.
And according to the State Department’s response to FOIA request F-2026-03441, no records exist concerning any of it.
What Must Exist
The FOIA request filed on November 16, 2025, five days after the assault, asked for specific categories of documentation that cannot possibly not exist:
CCTV footage from 2:30 PM to 5:00 PM showing the gate area. U.S. embassies don’t turn their security cameras off. The footage exists.
Visitor logs for November 11 showing Susan Williams and the three other witnesses who were present. Embassies don’t let people onto their grounds without logging them. The logs exist.
Blas told True Signal Media that for the past two years, embassy security has refused to allow him to sign the visitor log—a departure from earlier visits when he was permitted to register his presence. This systematic exclusion from documentation creates plausible deniability for the embassy, but visitor logs for Susan Williams and the other three witnesses who were present on November 11 must still exist unless Embassy Lomé has abandoned basic security protocols entirely.
Security incident reports documenting the use of physical force against a visitor. Regional Security Officers are required to document when guards put hands on people. The reports exist or should exist.
Communications between guard Abdulai Majeed and the person he consulted for twenty minutes. Someone inside that building made the decision to declare Blas “not welcome.” That communication exists.
The Ambassador’s Secretary’s authorization to deny consular access to a U.S. citizen. This wasn’t a guard acting on his own initiative. He was following orders from embassy leadership. That authorization exists.
Post-incident documentation of Susan Williams’s intervention. When a civilian visitor objects to security personnel’s treatment of someone, that gets noted. The documentation exists.
These aren’t speculative records that might exist. These are mandatory operational records that embassies are required to maintain. Their absence would itself be a violation of federal records law.
Unless, of course, they were deliberately destroyed after Covenant for Forgotten Warriors demanded their preservation.