Secret Service's conduct 'troubling'
Source: Agencies |
May 24, 2012, Thursday
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THE US lawmaker leading an inquiry into the nation's Secret Service prostitution scandal reported yesterday dozens of "troubling" episodes of past misbehavior and appealed to insiders to come forward with what they know as investigators try to determine whether a culture of misconduct took root in the storied agency.
"We can only know what the records of the Secret Service reveal," Senate Joe Lieberman said in opening the first Senate hearing into the matter.
And those records, however incomplete, show 64 instances of allegations or complaints of sexual misconduct made against Secret Service employees during the past five years, Lieberman said.
Many of the instances involved employees sending sexually suggestive emails. But three were about charges of inappropriate relationships with a foreign national and one was a complaint of "non-consensual intercourse," Lieberman said in his opening statement.
He said the reports did not necessarily show a historical pattern of wrongdoing by agents but he and other lawmakers made clear their conviction that what happened in Columbia was far from an aberration.
Several small groups of Secret Service employees separately visited clubs, bars and brothels in Colombia prior to a visit by President Barack Obama last month and engaged in reckless, "morally repugnant" behavior, Republican Senate Susan Collins told the hearing.
She said the employees' actions could have provided a foreign intelligence service, drug cartels or other criminals with opportunities for blackmail or coercion threatening the president's safety.
"This was not a one-time event," said Collins, the top Republican on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
In his own prepared remarks, Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan told senators the behavior in Colombia was not representative of the agency's nearly 7,000 employees. "I can understand how the question could be asked," Sullivan said, calling his employees "among the most dedicated, hardest working, self-sacrificing employees within the federal government."
"We can only know what the records of the Secret Service reveal," Senate Joe Lieberman said in opening the first Senate hearing into the matter.
And those records, however incomplete, show 64 instances of allegations or complaints of sexual misconduct made against Secret Service employees during the past five years, Lieberman said.
Many of the instances involved employees sending sexually suggestive emails. But three were about charges of inappropriate relationships with a foreign national and one was a complaint of "non-consensual intercourse," Lieberman said in his opening statement.
He said the reports did not necessarily show a historical pattern of wrongdoing by agents but he and other lawmakers made clear their conviction that what happened in Columbia was far from an aberration.
Several small groups of Secret Service employees separately visited clubs, bars and brothels in Colombia prior to a visit by President Barack Obama last month and engaged in reckless, "morally repugnant" behavior, Republican Senate Susan Collins told the hearing.
She said the employees' actions could have provided a foreign intelligence service, drug cartels or other criminals with opportunities for blackmail or coercion threatening the president's safety.
"This was not a one-time event," said Collins, the top Republican on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
In his own prepared remarks, Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan told senators the behavior in Colombia was not representative of the agency's nearly 7,000 employees. "I can understand how the question could be asked," Sullivan said, calling his employees "among the most dedicated, hardest working, self-sacrificing employees within the federal government."
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