November 11 wasn’t Blas’s first attempt to seek help from his embassy. It was his fifteenth documented visit since being stranded in Togo in March 2020.
Each time, he was turned away.
But the November 11 visit was different. This time, the rejection wasn’t passive bureaucratic indifference. This time, embassy leadership actively authorized his removal. This time, they used physical force. This time, they threatened to ban him entirely from seeking future assistance.
This time, they crossed a line, and they did it in front of witnesses who had no connection to Blas, no stake in his case, no reason to corroborate his account except that they saw what happened and it was wrong.
Susan Williams told the guard to stop. She saw an American citizen being physically removed from his own embassy for the crime of asking for help, and she spoke up.
Her intervention is documented in independent correspondence obtained by True Signal Media. One of our sources in Togo spoke with embassy staff member Mr. Agawu Raymond two days after the incident. Raymond confirmed the confrontation occurred and that Blas “was indeed asked to leave the premises because he had no appointment scheduled for that day.”
Since when do U.S. citizens need appointments to seek emergency consular assistance from their own embassy? If an American arrives in a foreign country and needs help, are they turned away without an appointment? The claim itself reveals how far Embassy Lomé had strayed from its mandate to assist U.S. citizens.
Raymond also revealed what the embassy was saying about Blas behind closed doors: “Someone has been tarnishing the image of the embassy on the internet, spreading negative comments all over.”
The embassy was tracking the criticism. They knew advocacy organizations were documenting their treatment of Blas. They knew FOIA requests had been filed seeking his complete case file.
And on November 11, with that scrutiny intensifying, they escalated from passive abandonment to active assault.
The Threat
The physical removal wasn’t the end of it.
According to Raymond’s account on November 13, the embassy delivered an additional message: “From today onward, if Kelvin ever comes to the embassy without holding his American passport in his own hands, he will be arrested or sack.”
Think about what that threat actually means.
Blas’s passport was illegally confiscated by Togolese authorities in 2020. The U.S. Embassy in Lomé knows this. State Department officials in Washington know this. It’s documented in years of correspondence.
The embassy is now threatening to have him arrested for not possessing the very document that local authorities stole from him—the very situation that gives him the legal right to seek consular assistance in the first place.
Under 7 FAM 013.1, U.S. embassies are required to “assist U.S. citizens who are in distress or difficulty abroad.” Under 7 FAM 451.1, they are required to provide emergency services to citizens who have lost or had their passports stolen.
The State Department’s own regulations require them to help Blas specifically because he doesn’t have his passport. Yet their threat criminalizes him for that exact circumstance.
This isn’t bureaucratic error. This is systematic abandonment with illegal teeth.
The December 8 Purge
On December 8, 2025, twenty-seven days after the assault, the State Department closed nine FOIA requests concerning Kelvin Blas all on the same day.
Among them: F-2026-03441, the request for records of the November 11 incident.
The reason given: “No records exist.”
Not “records exist but are exempt.” Not “some records exist but require additional review.” Not “we need more time to search.”
No records exist.
Nine requests. Nine different aspects of Blas’s five-year abandonment. Nine separate paper trails of embassy actions, State Department communications, inter-agency coordination, and documented failures.
All closed on the same day. All with the same impossible claim.
Among the other requests closed December 8:
F-2026-03431: Communications between Acting Consular Chief Daniel Neptune and other State Department officials during 2020-2021 about Kelvin Blas. During this period, Neptune was actively dismissing Blas as a “West African scammer” despite documented evidence of his military service.
F-2026-03427: Records of Ambassador Eric W. Stromayer’s March 2020 statement to Blas that “Americans aren’t Black” and his threat to have security remove him from the embassy.
F-2025-30612: All records held by the Bureau of African Affairs, Office of West African Affairs (AF/W), that mention or refer to Sgt. Kelvin Blas,
Each of these requests targeted documentation that State Department regulations require embassies to maintain. Each represents a category of records that cannot possibly not exist unless they were deliberately destroyed.
And all were closed the same day, in what appears to be a coordinated purge of the documentary record.
What the Law Requires
The Federal Records Act (44 U.S.C. § 3101) requires federal agencies to “make and preserve records containing adequate and proper documentation of the organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, and essential transactions of the agency.”
The Foreign Affairs Manual explicitly requires embassies to document:
- Consular interactions with U.S. citizens (7 FAM 010)
- Emergency assistance cases (7 FAM 450)
- Security incidents involving the use of force (12 FAM 260)
- Communications with Washington headquarters about citizen welfare cases (7 FAM 010)
When Covenant for Forgotten Warriors filed F-2026-03441 on November 16, it included an explicit preservation demand: “Pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act (5 U.S.C. § 552) and the Federal Records Act (44 U.S.C. Chapter 31), I hereby demand that the Department of State immediately preserve and refrain from destroying, altering, or disposing of any records responsive to this request.”
That preservation demand specifically covered:
- All personnel at U.S. Embassy Lomé
- The Ambassador and the Ambassador’s Secretary
- Regional Security Officer and Diplomatic Security personnel
- Security guard Abdulai Majeed
- All CCTV systems and security recording equipment
- All backup systems, email servers, and electronic storage systems
The State Department received that demand. They acknowledged the FOIA request. They assigned it a case number.
And then, twenty-two days later, they claimed no responsive records exist.
Either they’re lying about the records not existing, or they destroyed them after being legally ordered to preserve them, or Embassy Lomé coordinated with State Department headquarters to eliminate evidence before it could be requested. There is no fourth option that complies with federal law.