Former Agent: The Secret Service Is In Collapse

[WestVirginiaRebel]

NY Observer:

A former high-ranking Secret Service Agent has come forward to detail to the Observer in plain language exactly how this vaunted agency seems to have disintegrated before our very eyes.

 

Beginning with the scandal involving more than a dozen Secret Service agents being fired or disciplined for a prostitution scandal surrounding the President’s visit to an economic summit in Cartagena, Colombia, the United States Secret Service has endured a stunning and unprecedented series of high-profile failures. They include multiple incidents of drinking on the job, a car wreck, an untruthful account of seven shots fired into the south façade of the White House and most recently, a shocking breach in which an armed man, Omar Gonzalez, hopped the White House fence, ran across the lawn unscathed, overpowered a female Secret Service agent inside the North Portico entrance and “ran past the stairway to the presidential living quarters and into the East Room where he was finally tackled by an off-duty agent.” Director Julia Pierson resigned last week after coming under scathing bi-partisan criticism during a Congressional hearing that seemed to produce outrage beyond even the usual camera-friendly pontificating.

 

Despite the high profile torrent of disasters, it has been difficult for the public to piece together the “how could this happen” part of the story. The code of silence among USSS agents, including former agents, is stronger than most similar agencies – after all, “Secret” is literally its middle name. And as a relatively small agency, with about 3000 active compared to about 40,000 FBI or 21,000 CIA, its grip on leaks and gossip has largely prevented journalists from employing the “according to agents who declined to be named” sort of color that would help paint an accurate picture of an agency in turmoil.

 

That grip loosened substantially this morning. A revivified Washington Post published a long front-page shocker, in which the Obama administration is accused of covering up knowledge of the Colombia scandal for political reasons linked to protecting an important donor and avoiding embarrassment in an election year. In sum, a young White House aide seems to have hired a prostitute but it was the Secret Service that was accused and disciplined, with White House officials happy to let USSS take the public blame and the lead investigator saying, “We were directed at the time . . . to delay the report of the investigation until after the 2012 election.”

 

It’s a stunning piece of journalism, as much for the way the Post‘s Carol D. Leonnig and David Nakamura penetrated the silence of the USSS as for the shocking allegations of a White House cover-up. And now it seems the can of worms is beginning to open.

________

 

And a big can it is...

 

[Valin]

The next President/s will have some real work ahead of him/her, to clean up the various messes.

 

The question I have is, have the Democrats learned anything from this and the Clintons? There needs to be a purge of the party.