Secret Service Scandals

     There have been foul-ups and crimes involving agents with the FBI, ATF, ICE, DEA and Border Patrol. Federal agents have shot each other, murdered civilians, blown cases, engineered cover-ups, stolen government money and property, taken bribes, invaded privacy, committed perjury and behaved in conduct unbefitting law enforcement officers. 

The Secret Service

          There was a Secret Service embarrassment in November 2009 when a couple of reality show types, Tareq Salahi and his wife Michaele crashed a state dinner in the White House. Three Secret Service Agents were disciplined and the White House social secretary, Desiree Rogers, lost her job. In August 2011 a Secret Service agent doing advance work in anticipation of Obama's midwestern bus tour got arrested for drunk driving in Iowa. In the scheme of things these were small embarrassments.

Secret Service Agents and their Columbian Prostitutes

     President Obama's plan to discuss trade policies at the Sixth Summit of the Americas held on April 15, 2012 in Cartagena, Columbia did not include the oldest trade of them all, prostitution. (In Columbia it's legal.) Roughly 7,600 police officers and thousands of military personnel were on hand to provide security for the 30 or more heads of state coming to the city. (Think of the money saved if these politicians talked by phone and didn't have to look important to voters back home.) Security measures included keeping homeless people and prostitutes out of certain parts of the coastal city.

     President Obama's advanced civilian security detail consisted of 20 or so uniformed and plain-clothed Secret Service agents. Several of the agents were members of the elite, impressively titled, Counter Terror Assault Team (CAT). These CAT agents, known for their heavy drinking and love of partying are separate and somewhat estranged from the more disciplined president's protective detail. The uniformed and CAT agents, along with members of the White House staff and press corps correspondents were staying at the beachfront Hotel Caribe. (The correspondents, instead of filing boring stories about the summit were treated to a juicy law enforcement scandal.)

     On Friday the 13th, CAT and uniformed Secret Service agents, as part of their Friday night partying at a Cartagena brothel called the Pley Club, invited at least 20 prostitutes to their rooms. Under Hotel Caribe rules visitors to a guest's room must leave before seven the next morning. People who visit hotel guests have to register at the front desk. At seven in the morning on Saturday a hotel employee noticed that one of the guests had not signed out of the hotel. When the manager went to the room to investigate he was denied entry. The manager called the police which led to the discovery that the guest in question was a prostitute. The prostitute said she was not leaving the hotel until the agent paid for her services. The agent said he didn't know she was a working girl. The Cartagena police called the American Embassy and that's when the pie hit the fan. If the Secret Service agent had paid his $47 bill the scandal would have been avoided. 

     The initial inquiry into this international embarrassment revealed that at least 20 Secret Service Agents were involved in the scandal, including two supervisors. Also in hot water were at least ten military personnel assigned to the security detail. These military service members were explosive experts and dog handlers from the Navy and the Army. Eleven of the Secret Service agents were immediately sent back to the states and the military people were confined to their quarters. The disgraced agents were gone when Obama and his people rolled into town Saturday evening. The Pentagon and the State Department launched investigations.

     New York Congressman Peter King, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said he didn't think any crimes had been committed by the Secret Service agents. However, Mr. King did consider the alleged behavior a "dereliction of duty." 

     Ronald Kessler, a former reporter with the Washington Post who wrote a book about the Secret Service that details how cutbacks and corner-cutting had seriously attenuated the agency's effectiveness, called the affair the biggest scandal in Secret Service history. Kessler believed the offending agents should lose their top secret security clearances. (Agents involved in the scandal had President Obama's schedule in their rooms.) Without security clearances these men could not remain with the agency. Kessler also believed that Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan should step down. He did not.

The Secret Service Scandal: The More We Know, The Worse It Gets

     Dania Londo Suarez, the prostitute who set off the Secret Service scandal in Cartagena, Columbia, in a 90-minute interview broadcast on Columbia radio and TV, said that after spending 5 hours with an agent at the Hotel Caribe, instead of getting $800 for her services, she barely got enough for cab fare. (Had she been paid in stimulus money, the government would have given her the $800, and bought her a car to get home.) According to the hooker, she met the agent in a Cartagena bar where most of the 10 agents with him were drunk. Although the trick (she didn't know his name) who took her back to his room (after making a condom stop) was only moderately intoxicated, the others "...bought alcohol like they were buying water."

     The prostitute told the Columbian interviewer that "If I had wanted to, I could have gone through all his documents, his wallet, his suitcase." She said that had she been so inclined, she could have compromised the security of the President of the United States. She related how the agent had refused to pay up even after she threatened to call the police. Calling these Secret Service Agents "bobos," Spanish for fools and idiots, she said, "Didn't they see the magnitude of the problem?" (No. And they still don't.)

     On May 23, 2012, Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan testified before a senate homeland security committee investigating the prostitution/security scandal. In his opening remarks, Sullivan apologized for the embarrassment, but assured the senators that what had happened last month in Columbia "is not representative of the agency's values, or the high ethical standards we demand from our nearly 7,000 employees." Several of the senators, however, were suspicious that this off-duty activity in Cartagena represented a culture within the secret service that tolerated this sort of behavior.

     In questioning the Secret Service director, Senator Susan Collins of Maine, pointed out that the agents didn't bother to disguise their identities, or the identities of the prostitutes. (They registered them, as required, as "house guests.") This suggested to the senator that the Columbian affair was not an isolated event. Senator Collins noted that "two of the participants were supervisors--one with 22 years of service, and the other with 21--and both were married. That surely sends a message to the rank and file that this kind of activity is tolerated on the road."

     In response to Senator Collin's skepticism, Director Sullivan said, "I do not think this is indicative. I just think that between the alcohol and, I don't know, the environment, these individuals did some really dumb things. And I just can't explain why." (That's exactly what we want in presidential protection, agents who do dumb things--bobos in paradise.)

     Director Sullivan, in the course of being grilled by Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, revealed that an internal secret service agency survey found that only 58-60 percent of its employees would report unethical conduct. When asked by the senator why these results were not a matter of grave concern, the director said, "We want to improve that number to 100 percent." (The next time this survey is conducted, secret service employees, pursuant to orders, will give the right answers--they will lie, and not report this unethical conduct.)

     As Director Sullivan struggled to restore the tarnished image of the Secret Service, 4 of the 8 agents fired over the prostitution scandal were fighting to get their jobs back. No kidding. These disgraced agents are not denying they hired hookers in Columbia. They are arguing that because the agency tacitly approved of these road trip antics, they, as scapegoats, have been wrongfully dismissed. This line of reasoning reminds me of cops in the 1960s and 70s fired for taking bribes who didn't understand why, in a department corrupt from the top brass down, they were being selectively sacrificed. To hear them tell it, if they hadn't taken bribes, they would have been drummed out of law enforcement. It was a bogus argument then, and a load of crap now.

     I'm pretty sure these secret service agents will remain fired, and more will follow them into private life, including Director Sullivan.