Secret Service faces a new embarrassment

Three agents involved in drinking incident sparks new concern.

WASHINGTON Despite a renewed emphasis on professional ethics and personal conduct throughout the U. S. Secret Service, officials are grappling with another embarrassing high- profile episode — this time involving the afterhours behavior of three agents assigned to President Obama’s trip to the Netherlands.

The three agents, whom the Secret Service sent home in advance of the president’s Monday arrival for an international summit, are the focus of an internal review related to a session of heavy drinking after which one of the agents was found passed out in a hotel hallway.

The incident has stirred new concern about the agency, which only two years ago was rocked by a prostitution and drinking scandal involving several agents in Cartagena, Colombia, while preparing for a presidential visit. Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Tom Carper, DDel., said he is “troubled” by the reports of the agents’ behavior.

“This is a drip that has to be sealed,” said former Secret Ser- vice director John Magaw, who has been consulting with Secret Service Director Julia Pierson since she took command soon after the Cartagena incident. “She will seal that drip just as quickly as she can.”

White House spokesman Jay Carney, expressing the administration’s dissatisfaction over the embarrasing episode, said that Obama believes every government official representing the USA overseas must hold himself “to the highest standards.”

The Secret Service has long argued that the Cartagena episode represented an aberration for the agency. But it was hit again last May with disclosures that two agents were disciplined related to their contacts with women. In one of the instances, an agent attempted to retrieve a bullet left in a woman’s hotel room.

“I remain unconvinced that the behavior exhibited in Cartagena, at the Hay Adams Hotel in Washington and this week in Amsterdam does not represent a greater systemic or cultural problem,” said Sen. Ron Johnson, R- Wis.

From 2004 to early 2013, the Secret Service has counted 824 cases where officials were cited for misconduct, according to a Department of Homeland Security Inspector General audit completed in December.

PABLO MARTINEZ MONSIVAIS, AP Members of the Secret Service’s Counter Assault Team board helicopters in Amsterdam on Monday. Three agents were sent home for “disciplinary reasons” before President Obama arrived.