WASHINGTON — Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan apologized Wednesday before a Senate panel for the prostitution scandal that has embarrassed his agency and overshadowed President Barack Obama’s April trip to the Summit of the Americas, saying it was the result
WASHINGTON — Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan apologized Wednesday before a Senate panel for the prostitution scandal that has embarrassed his agency and overshadowed President Barack Obama’s April trip to the Summit of the Americas, saying it was the result of a few agents doing “really dumb things,” and not a sign of a workplace culture that turns a blind eye to misbehavior.
Skeptical lawmakers, however, questioned whether the carousing in Cartagena, Colombia, was truly a one-time incident. The Senate Homeland Security Committee revealed 64 allegations of sexual misconduct against Secret Service employees over the past five years, including a report of nonconsensual sex and of soliciting a prostitute. The senators welcomed further inquiry, including an independent investigation by the Homeland Security Department’s inspector general.
“I am deeply disappointed, and I apologize for the misconduct of these employees and the distraction that it has caused,” Sullivan said, referring to the agents who took prostitutes back to their hotel rooms on a trip ahead of Obama’s visit. “The men and women of the U.S. Secret Service are committed to continuing to live up to the standards that the president, the Congress and the American people expect and deserve.”
Sullivan sought to portray the event as rogue agents most likely influenced by alcohol and “the environment,” but Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, and Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the panel’s top Republican, were nearly incredulous, though they had no proof it was otherwise.
“It is hard for many people, including me, I will admit, to believe that on one night in April 2012 in Cartagena, Colombia, 12 Secret Service agents there to protect the president suddenly and spontaneously did something they or other agents had never done before,” Lieberman said. He added the agents had “gone out in groups of two, three or four to four different nightclubs or strip clubs, drink to excess and then bring foreign national women back to their hotel rooms.” He said the event left lawmakers with a sense of “lingering disbelief.”
