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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
Pattern of sexual breaches: senators
Secret Service director says it's not systemic
Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan (CP)
WASHINGTON -- U.S. senators investigating the Secret Service prostitution scandal said Wednesday dozens of reported episodes of misconduct by agents point to a culture of carousing in the agency and urged Director Mark Sullivan to get past his insistence that the romp in Cartagena was a one-time mistake.
The disconnect between the senators and Sullivan reappeared throughout the two-hour hearing, where the Secret Service chief for the first time apologized for the incident that tarnished the elite presidential protection force. But Sullivan's job appeared secure even as new details emerged that left little doubt, senators said, that a pattern of sexual misbehaviour had taken root in the agency.
"He kept saying over and over again that he basically does think this was an isolated incident, and I don't think he has any basis for that conclusion," said Sen. Susan Collins, the top Republican on the Homeland Security panel that heard Sullivan's first public accounting of the episode.
"For the good of the Secret Service," added Sen. Joe Lieberman, the panel chairman, "he's got to assume that what happened in Cartagena was not an isolated incident or else it will happen again."
Sullivan insisted repeatedly that in his 29-year Secret Service career he had never heard anyone say misconduct was condoned, implicitly or otherwise.
"I just do not think that this is something that is systemic within this organization," he said.
The misconduct became public after a dispute over payment between a Secret Service agent and a prostitute at a Cartagena hotel on April 12. The Secret Service was in the Colombian resort, where prostitution is legal, before U.S. President Barack Obama's arrival for a summit. Twelve employees were implicated, eight of them ousted, three cleared of serious misconduct and one stripped of his security clearance. Sullivan said two who initially resigned are now fighting to get their jobs back.
Lieberman said 64 allegations or complaints of sexual misconduct were made against Secret Service employees in the last five years.
Three of those, he said, were complaints of inappropriate relationships with a foreign national and one of "non-consensual intercourse." Sullivan said that complaint was investigated by outside law-enforcement officers, who decided not to prosecute. Sullivan also told the committee an agent was fired after trying to hire an uncover police officer in Washington in 2008.
-- The Associated Press
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 24, 2012 A13
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