SECRET SWERVICE
Boozy duo veered into phony bomb
The two highranking Secret Service members who drunkenly crashed a government car into a barricade outside the White House interrupted a bomb investigation — and might have even cruised over the suspicious package being probed, according to a report Thursday.
At about 10:25 p.m. on March 4, a Pennsylvania woman made a bomb threat near the southwest entrance of the White House.
“I’m holding a [expletive] bomb,” she told a Secret Service agent, as she cradled a package shrouded in a green shirt.
She left the supposed explosive on the ground and climbed back in her car, but an agent ordered her to get out, an official told The Washington Post. Instead, she put the car in reverse and hit the agent with the car door as she accelerated.
The agent stuck his hand inside and switched the gear into park — but she shifted it back and drove forward, hitting him again, then speeding off as soon as he darted out of her way.
Police put tape around the crime scene and an explosives team arrived to investigate the bomb threat.
Just before 11 p.m., the two agents, Mark Connolly and George Ogilvie, who spent the night drinking at a retirement party for departing agency spokesman Edwin Donovan, wreaked havoc with their boozy driving.
They plowed straight through security tape, then hit some barricades set up at the scene.
It was all caught on surveillance video, and probers say the two drove extremely close to — or possibly directly over — the package being investigated.
Secret Service officers wanted to arrest the drunken duo, but a supervisor stepped in and let them go home without taking a sobriety test.
The explosives team eventually decided the bomb threat was nothing more than a scare.
The woman was questioned days later by Secret Service officers — and they discovered her photo was already on file with the agency. Officials told The Washington Post a warrant was issued for her arrest and she was charged with assault with a dangerous weapon.
Connolly, the secondincommand of President Obama’s security detail, and Ogilvie, a Washington fieldoffice supervisor, have been put on “nonsupervisory, nonoperational assignments.”
When asked about the incident Thursday, Obama insisted he still has confidence in Secret Service Director Joseph Clancy, who was appointed just last month.