Secret Service director says Colombia prostitution scandal was isolated incident
Source: LAT
WASHINGTON — The prostitution scandal that has embroiled the Secret Service is not evidence of a wider culture of boozing and paying for sex among those who are trained to take a bullet for the president, the director of the agency told skeptical senators.
The senators challenged Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan to explain how it was possible, without an atmosphere of permissiveness among the agency's supervisors, that 12 agents could go out in separate groups on April 11 in Cartagena, Colombia, independently decide to bring women back to their hotel rooms, and then sign the women in at the front desk next to the agents' real names.
"I'm confident this is not a cultural issue. This is not a systemic issue with us," said Sullivan, speaking for the first time in public about the incident. Sullivan has worked for the Secret Service for 29 years, including two tours on the presidential protection detail.
---
But members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee were concerned that these were not isolated trysts, and that the actions may be part of a larger culture of hard partying on the road that had routinely put agents at risk for coercion, blackmail and kidnapping.
Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-secret-service-20120524,0,6361727.story
= new reply since forum marked as read
