More Secret Service agents gone; Obama briefed

ALICIA A. CALDWELL

KEN THOMAS

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — Three more Secret Ser­vice offi­cers resigned Fri­day in the expand­ing pros­ti­tu­tion scan­dal that has brought scorch­ing crit­i­cism of agents’ behav­ior in Colom­bia just before Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s visit for a sum­mit meet­ing last week. Agency Direc­tor Mark Sul­li­van came to the White House late Fri­day to per­son­ally brief Obama in the Oval Office.

The Secret Ser­vice announced the new res­ig­na­tions, bring­ing to six the num­ber of agency offi­cers who have lost their jobs so far because of events at their hotel in Cartagena.

Also late Fri­day, Repub­li­can Sen. Chuck Grass­ley of Iowa urged a broader inves­ti­ga­tion, includ­ing check­ing hotel records for White House advance staff and com­mu­ni­ca­tions per­son­nel who were in Carta­gena for the sum­mit. In a let­ter to Sul­li­van and the inspec­tor gen­eral at the Home­land Secu­rity Depart­ment, Grass­ley asked whether hotel records for the White House staffers had been pulled as part of the investigations.

An addi­tional Secret Ser­vice employee was impli­cated Fri­day, a gov­ern­ment offi­cial said, com­ment­ing only on con­di­tion of anonymity con­cern­ing the con­tin­u­ing inves­ti­ga­tion. That brings the num­ber to 12. One has been cleared of seri­ous mis­con­duct but still faces admin­is­tra­tive action, an offi­cial said.

Obama’s spokesman has assailed Repub­li­can crit­i­cism that has attempted to blame a lack of pres­i­den­tial lead­er­ship for the scan­dal and has said Obama would be angry if alle­ga­tions pub­lished so far proved to be true. Friday’s was Obama’s first per­sonal brief­ing by Sul­li­van on the sub­ject, offi­cials said.

Involve­ment by 11 Secret Ser­vice employ­ees had been noted ear­lier. The 12th has been placed on admin­is­tra­tive leave.

The scan­dal also involves at least 11 mil­i­tary mem­bers who were work­ing on secu­rity before Obama arrived in Carta­gena for the Sum­mit of the Amer­i­cas. The Pen­ta­gon acknowl­edged Fri­day that the 11th mil­i­tary per­son, a mem­ber of the Army, was implicated.

The inci­dent in Colom­bia involved at least some Secret Ser­vice per­son­nel bring­ing pros­ti­tutes to their hotel rooms. News of the inci­dent, which involves at least 20 Colom­bian women, broke a week ago after a fight over pay­ment between a pros­ti­tute and a Secret Ser­vice agent spilled into the hotel hall­way. A 24-year-old Colom­bian pros­ti­tute told The New York Times that the agent agreed to pay her $800 for a night of sex but the next morn­ing offered her only $30. She even­tu­ally left the hotel, she told the news­pa­per, after she was paid $225.

Two Secret Ser­vice super­vi­sors and another employee were forced out of the agency ear­lier in the week. All of the agents being inves­ti­gated have had their top-secret clear­ances revoked.

Mean­while, the lawyer for two Secret Ser­vice super­vi­sors said that Obama’s safety was never at risk, and he crit­i­cized leaks of inter­nal gov­ern­ment inves­ti­ga­tions in the case, sig­nal­ing a pos­si­ble strat­egy for an upcom­ing legal defense.

The Secret Ser­vice briefed about two-dozen con­gres­sional staff mem­bers Fri­day, mainly from the Sen­ate Judi­ciary Com­mit­tee, accord­ing to one indi­vid­ual who was there but was not autho­rized to be quoted by name.

The per­son said inves­ti­ga­tors have photo ID’s and names from a Carta­gena, Colom­bia, hotel reg­istry for all the women who stayed overnight and are in the process of con­duct­ing inter­views. Inves­ti­ga­tors have inter­viewed maids and said no alco­hol or drugs were found in the rooms.

Those under inves­ti­ga­tion were offered poly­graphs and drug tests. It is unclear whether any­one accepted, the per­son said.

Grass­ley, in his let­ter to Sul­li­van and the Home­land Secu­rity inspec­tor gen­eral, Charles Edwards, asked about checks on hotels in Carta­gena for White House advance staff mem­bers and the White House Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Agency, which includes mil­i­tary per­son­nel: “Have records for overnight guests for those enti­ties been pulled as part of the inves­ti­ga­tion? … If not, why not?”

Addi­tion­ally, Grass­ley, top Repub­li­can on the Sen­ate Judi­ciary Com­mit­tee, asked whether rooms were shared by Secret Ser­vice, the com­mu­ni­ca­tions agency and the pres­i­den­tial advance staff.

As for the mil­i­tary per­son­nel noted pre­vi­ously, Pen­ta­gon press sec­re­tary George Lit­tle said Defense Sec­re­tary Leon Panetta was get­ting reg­u­lar updates on the investigation.

“He under­stands the level of inter­est in this issue,” Lit­tle said. “He has seri­ous con­cerns about the alleged misconduct.”

Lit­tle said mem­bers of Con­gress have not yet been briefed on the mil­i­tary inves­ti­ga­tion but would be “in the near future.”

In a let­ter to Secret Ser­vice employ­ees Mon­day and obtained by the AP, Direc­tor Sul­li­van said the agency had moved in a “swift, deci­sive man­ner imme­di­ately after this inci­dent was brought to our atten­tion.” He praised “the over­whelm­ing major­ity” of employ­ees who he said had acted with the “high­est lev­els of pro­fes­sion­al­ism and eth­i­cal behavior.”

“Our job, our mis­sion, our respon­si­bil­ity is to the pres­i­dent, the Amer­i­can peo­ple and the indi­vid­u­als we are entrusted to pro­tect,” Sul­li­van said. “This is not just a mat­ter of honor, although this is crit­i­cal. It is imper­a­tive, as part of our sworn duties, to always act both per­son­ally and pro­fes­sion­ally in a man­ner that rec­og­nizes the seri­ous­ness and con­se­quence of our mission.”

Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., the chair­man of the House Home­land Secu­rity Com­mit­tee, said in an inter­view Fri­day that the Secret Service’s inves­ti­ga­tion has been mov­ing quickly enough to sat­isfy him and that the res­ig­na­tions are a good sign.

“Secret Ser­vice is ques­tion­ing any­one who has any knowl­edge at all,” King said. “They’re talk­ing to maids, they’re talk­ing to hotel employ­ees, they’re talk­ing to women involved, so I have faith in the investigation.”

In Colom­bia on Fri­day, Colom­bian pros­e­cu­tors spent more than three hours ques­tion­ing a taxi dri­ver who led reporters to the home of the young woman who he said was the pros­ti­tute who launched the scan­dal by com­plain­ing of not being paid by a Secret Ser­vice agent at the Hotel Caribe.

A senior offi­cial in the local prosecutor’s office said the dri­ver, Jose Pena, was not sus­pected of any crime but that a Colom­bian inves­ti­ga­tion into the case began Thurs­day to ensure that none of the pros­ti­tutes involved was a minor.

There is no infor­ma­tion indi­cat­ing a crime was com­mit­ted, said the offi­cial, who was not autho­rized to be quoted by name.

The prosecutor’s office offi­cial said the Colom­bian inves­ti­ga­tion was sep­a­rate from U.S. probes and that Colom­bian inves­ti­ga­tors had not been in touch with the U.S. inves­ti­ga­tors. The offi­cial also said the Colom­bian inves­ti­ga­tors did not have and had not asked for a copy of the secu­rity video­tapes from inside the hotel.

Pena told the AP Fri­day morn­ing that he had not spo­ken with any U.S. inves­ti­ga­tors. He did not answer his phone after he met with Colom­bian investigators.

The lawyer for ousted Secret Ser­vice super­vi­sors David Chaney and Greg Stokes, Lawrence Berger of New York, said Fri­day that leaks sur­round­ing the inves­ti­ga­tions “dis­tort the process.”

Regard­less of what hap­pened inside hotel rooms, Berger said, it never jeop­ar­dized the president’s secu­rity. Berger said he could not com­ment on the woman’s claims about being paid for sex, but he added, “I don’t think any­thing she has said is mate­r­ial to any of the issues I am press­ing with my clients.”

“Noth­ing that has been reported in the press in any way neg­a­tively or adversely impacted the mis­sion of that agency or the safety of the pres­i­dent of the United States,” Berger said.

Chaney and Stokes were forced out of the agency Wednes­day. A third agent, who has not been iden­ti­fied and was not a super­vi­sor, resigned.

On Chaney’s Face­book account, which was made inac­ces­si­ble on Fri­day, Chaney joked about his work with for­mer Repub­li­can vice pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Sarah Palin while he was pro­tect­ing her in 2008. The AP pub­lished a pho­to­graph it took of Chaney work­ing in Palin’s pro­tec­tive detail in Octo­ber 2008 dur­ing a cam­paign rally in Car­son, Calif.

“I was really check­ing her out, if you know what i mean?” Chaney wrote after a friend com­mented on the pic­ture posted in Jan­u­ary 2009 on Chaney’s Face­book account.

Speak­ing on Fox News late Thurs­day, Palin said the joke was on Chaney.

“Well, check this out, buddy — you’re fired!” Palin said.

The agency’s inves­ti­ga­tion has included inter­views of agents and hotel staff. Rep. Peter King, chair­man of the House Home­land Secu­rity Com­mit­tee, said this week that inves­ti­ga­tors in Colom­bia have not been able to inter­view the women.

The affair has also prompted a mil­i­tary inves­ti­ga­tion of the ser­vice mem­bers, includ­ing six mem­bers of the Army, two Navy Explo­sive Ordi­nance Dis­posal tech­ni­cians, two Marine dog han­dlers and an Air Force airman.

An Air Force colonel and a mil­i­tary lawyer were also dis­patched to Colom­bia this week. Under the Uni­form Code of Mil­i­tary Jus­tice, patron­iz­ing pros­ti­tutes is a crime for mil­i­tary per­son­nel. It is referred to as “com­pelling, induc­ing, entic­ing or procur­ing a per­son to have sex in exchange for money; or receiv­ing money for arranged sex.”

Offi­cials from U.S. South­ern Com­mand, which orga­nized the mil­i­tary role for the secu­rity oper­a­tion, have not pro­vided details of its probe beyond say­ing that at least some of the mil­i­tary mem­bers vio­lated cur­few and may have been involved in “inap­pro­pri­ate conduct.”

White House press sec­re­tary Jay Car­ney has said it is “pre­pos­ter­ous to politi­cize” the issue, respond­ing to crit­i­cism from Alabama Sen. Jeff Ses­sions and Palin, who have said the alle­ga­tions reflect poor man­age­ment of the gov­ern­ment under Obama.

Palin described the affair Thurs­day as a “symp­tom of gov­ern­ment run amok.”

“It’s like, who’s mind­ing the store around here?” Palin said.

Posted by AP News on Apr 20 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.