The Secret Service on Wednesday announced the departure of three employees connected to a prostitution scandal last week involving members of President Obama’s security detail who were in Cartagena, Colombia.
As the agency tried to manage the fallout from the embarrassing episode, it said in a statement that one agent is expected to resign and another, a supervisor, intends to retire. A third, also a supervisor, has been recommended for firing but will have an opportunity to appeal, officials said.
In all, 11 Secret Service employees — either agents or staff members of the agency’s uniformed division — and 10 military personnel are suspected of being involved in a night of carousing that included heavy drinking, visits to strip clubs and prostitutes on April 11, two nights before Obama was to arrive in the seaside town of Cartagena for an international summit.
The agency and the Defense Department are each investigating the alleged misconduct. The remaining eight Secret Service personnel are on administrative leave, and their top-secret security clearances have been suspended. The military has returned its service members to their home bases.
“We demand that all of our employees adhere to the highest professional and ethical standards and are committed to a full review of this matter,” the Secret Service said in a statement.
Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), chairman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on homeland security, called the men’s alleged misbehavior a “gross violation of public trust.”
The allegations — and accompanying negative publicity — have deeply angered rank-and-file members of the Secret Service, severely lowering morale at the agency.
In interviews, current and former agents said they are particularly outraged by the alleged involvement of the two senior supervisors, both of whom have two decades of experience and were sent on the trip to oversee the less-experienced members of the team. Both of those supervisors have spent significant time on presidential protective details, dating to the Clinton administration, according to current and former agents. The two are based in Washington.
“I was really disappointed. I’ve learned a lot from both of these guys,” said one agent, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters. “I was surprised they were involved. Especially because they are senior people.”
Those familiar with details of the investigation said the two supervisors were sent to Cartagena as leaders of Secret Service “jump teams,” squads made up of several dozen special agents and uniformed officers that are deployed to a site in the days before the president arrives.
It is customary for the jump teams to fly aboard giant Lockheed military transport aircraft, nicknamed “car planes,” which also carry the presidential limousine, Chevy Suburbans and other vehicles that make up the president’s motorcade.
Several of the agents reportedly were part of the elite counter-assault team, which reports to the special operations division, not the presidential protective detail. The rest were uniformed officers who work with bomb-sniffing dogs or magnetometers.
Source: Washington Post
April 19, 2012 at 3:53 pm
These secret service (SS) agents comprised the security and life of our president (President Barack Obama) so that they could have sex with prostitutes.
All of the involved SS agents should all be charged with treason, have their top security clearances revoked permanently, strip them of any pensions, and the head of the SS needs to step down immediately.
These SS agents outright jeopardized the commander-in-chief’s life while on the job and they did it all over $50. The SS agents earn six figure salaries and know full well what standards of conduct they are to observe, and that their conduct was not only illegal domestically but it was a national security threat because put their own needs before protecting the life of the president and jeopardized his safety, considering they had his full itinerary in their hotel rooms.
Like cops, SS agents are officers of the law and are never off-duty, so anything they do subjects them to the highest scrutiny as public officials – especially since they are fronting for a presidential visit and representing the U.S.A.
Such disregard and disrespect. Any person who justifies the actions taken by these SS traitors has no moral character and needs to be arrested for treason right along with these crooked agents.
Wait until everyone finds out that these prostitutes are only about 13 or 14 years old.