3 agents out in wake of Secret Service scandal

ALICIA A. CALDWELL

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — Mov­ing swiftly, the Secret Ser­vice forced out three agents Wednes­day in a pros­ti­tu­tion scan­dal that has embar­rassed Pres­i­dent Barack Obama. A senior con­gress­man wel­comed the move to hold peo­ple respon­si­ble for the tawdry episode but warned “it’s not over.”

The agency announced three agents are leav­ing the ser­vice even as sep­a­rate U.S. gov­ern­ment inves­ti­ga­tions were under way.

The Secret Ser­vice did not iden­tify the agents being forced out of the gov­ern­ment or eight more it said remain on admin­is­tra­tive leave. In a state­ment, it said one super­vi­sor was allowed to retire and another will be fired for cause. A third employee, who was not a super­vi­sor, has resigned.

The agents were impli­cated in the pros­ti­tu­tion scan­dal in Colom­bia that also involved about 10 mil­i­tary ser­vice mem­bers and as many as 20 women. All the Secret Ser­vice employ­ees who were involved had their secu­rity clear­ances revoked.

“These are the first steps,” said Rep. Pete King, R-N.Y., chair­man of the House Home­land Secu­rity Com­mit­tee, which over­sees the Secret Ser­vice. King said the agency’s direc­tor, Mark Sul­li­van, took employ­ment action against “the three peo­ple he believes the case was clear­est against.” But King warned: “It’s cer­tainly not over.”

King said the agent set to be fired would sue. King said Sul­li­van had to fol­low col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing rules but was “mov­ing as quickly as he can. Once he feels the facts are clear, he’s going to move.”

The embar­rass­ing scan­dal erupted last week after 11 Secret Ser­vice agents were sent home from the colonial-era city of Carta­gena on Colombia’s Caribbean coast after a night of par­ty­ing that report­edly ended with at least some of them bring­ing pros­ti­tutes back to their hotel. The spe­cial agents and uni­formed offi­cers were in Colom­bia in advance of Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s arrival for the Sum­mit of the Americas.

A White House offi­cial said Wednes­day night that Obama had not spo­ken directly to Sul­li­van since the inci­dent unfolded late last week. Obama’s senior aides are in close con­tact with Sul­li­van and the agency’s lead­er­ship, said the offi­cial, who requested anonymity because they were not autho­rized to speak publicly.

In Wash­ing­ton and Colom­bia, sep­a­rate U.S. gov­ern­ment inves­ti­ga­tions were already under way. King said he has assigned four con­gres­sional inves­ti­ga­tors to the probe. The House Com­mit­tee on Over­sight and Gov­ern­ment Reform, led by Rep. Dar­rell Issa, R-Calif., sought details of the Secret Ser­vice inves­ti­ga­tion, includ­ing the dis­ci­pli­nary his­to­ries of the agents involved. Secret Ser­vice inves­ti­ga­tors are in Colom­bia inter­view­ing witnesses.

In a let­ter to Sul­li­van, Issa and Rep. Eli­jah Cum­mings of Mary­land, the committee’s rank­ing Demo­c­rat, said the agents “brought for­eign nation­als in con­tact with sen­si­tive secu­rity infor­ma­tion.” A poten­tial secu­rity breach has been among the con­cerns raised by mem­bers of Congress.

The inci­dent occurred before Obama arrived and was at a dif­fer­ent hotel than the pres­i­dent stayed in.

Sen. Chuck Grass­ley, the rank­ing Repub­li­can on the Sen­ate Judi­ciary Com­mit­tee, said news of the three agents leav­ing Secret Ser­vice was a pos­i­tive development.

“I’ve always said that if heads don’t roll, the cul­ture in a fed­eral agency will never change,” the Iowa law­maker said in a state­ment. “Today’s per­son­nel actions, com­bined with the swift removal and inves­ti­ga­tion, are pos­i­tive signs that there is a seri­ous effort to get to the bot­tom of this scandal.”

New details of the sor­did night emerged Wednes­day. A 24-year-old self-described pros­ti­tute told The New York Times that she met an agent at a dis­cotheque in Carta­gena and after a night of drink­ing, the pair agreed the agent would pay her $800 for sex at the hotel. The next morn­ing, when the hotel’s front desk called because the woman hadn’t left, the pair argued over the price.

“I tell him, ‘Baby, my cash money,’” the woman told the news­pa­per in an inter­view in Colom­bia. She said the two argued after the agent ini­tially offered to pay her about $30 and the sit­u­a­tion esca­lated, even­tu­ally end­ing with Colom­bian law enforce­ment involved. She said she was even­tu­ally paid about $225.

The tawdry episode took a sharp polit­i­cal turn when pre­sump­tive Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee Mitt Rom­ney said he would fire the agents involved.

Rom­ney told radio host Laura Ingra­ham on Wednes­day that “I’d clean house” at the Secret Service.

“The right thing to do is to remove peo­ple who have vio­lated the pub­lic trust and have put their play time and their per­sonal inter­ests ahead of the inter­ests of the nation,” Rom­ney said.

While Rom­ney sug­gested to Ingra­ham that a lead­er­ship prob­lem led to the scan­dal, he told a Colum­bus, Ohio, radio sta­tion ear­lier that he has con­fi­dence in Sul­li­van, the head of the agency.

“I believe the right cor­rec­tive action will be taken there and obvi­ously every­one is very, very dis­ap­pointed,” Rom­ney said. “I think it will be dealt with (in) as aggres­sive a way as is pos­si­ble given the require­ments of the law.”

When asked, the Rom­ney cam­paign would not say whether he had been briefed on the sit­u­a­tion or was rely­ing upon media reports for details.

At least 10 mil­i­tary per­son­nel who were stay­ing at the same hotel are also being inves­ti­gated for misconduct.

Two U.S. mil­i­tary offi­cials have said they include five Army Green Berets. One of the offi­cials said the group also includes two Navy Explo­sive Ordi­nance Dis­posal tech­ni­cians, two Marine dog han­dlers and an Air Force air­man. The offi­cials spoke on con­di­tion of anonymity because the inves­ti­ga­tion is still under way.

Secret Service’s Office of Pro­fes­sional Respon­si­bil­ity, which han­dles that agency’s inter­nal affairs, is inves­ti­gat­ing, and the Home­land Secu­rity Department’s inspec­tor gen­eral also has been notified.

Sul­li­van, who this week has briefed law­mak­ers behind closed doors, said he has referred to the case to an inde­pen­dent gov­ern­ment investigator.

Secret Ser­vice inves­ti­ga­tors have inter­viewed all of the hotel’s maids and clean­ing ladies as part of its inves­ti­ga­tion, accord­ing to a per­son famil­iar with the inves­ti­ga­tion. The per­son, who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymity because the per­son was not autho­rized to speak pub­licly about the ongo­ing probe, said inves­ti­ga­tors have not found any drugs or drug para­pher­na­lia in the agents’ rooms.

King said the agency was “rea­son­ably con­fi­dent” that drug use was not an issue with the three agents forced out on Wednes­day. But he said Secret Ser­vice inves­ti­ga­tors would con­tinue to look into whether drugs played a role in the inci­dent as it con­tin­ues talk­ing to the other eight agents involved.

“Every­thing is on the table,” the con­gress­man said.

Col. Scott Mal­com, a spokesman of U.S. South­ern Com­mand, which orga­nized the mil­i­tary team assigned to sup­port the Secret Service’s mis­sion in Carta­gena, said Wednes­day that an Air Force colonel is lead­ing the mil­i­tary inves­ti­ga­tion and arrived in Colom­bia with a mil­i­tary lawyer Tues­day morning.

The troops are sus­pected of vio­lat­ing cur­fews set by their commanders.

“They were either not in their room or they showed up to their room late while all this was going on or they were in their room with some­body who shouldn’t be there,” Mal­com said.

Law­mak­ers have called for a thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion and have sug­gested they would hold over­sight hear­ings, though none has yet been sched­uled. The inci­dent is expected to come up next week on Wednes­day when Home­land Secu­rity Sec­re­tary Janet Napoli­tano appears before the Sen­ate Judi­ciary Com­mit­tee for a pre­vi­ously sched­uled over­sight hearing.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said that for now, he is inter­ested in what actu­ally hap­pened. He did not address how much respon­si­bil­ity Obama should bear for the scan­dal or whether Con­gress should hold hear­ings on it.

Posted by AP News on Apr 18 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.