Trump plans to ‘drain the swamp’ may not include Secret Service pick

These critics worry that Trump will move to fill the spot too quickly with a former or current Secret Service top official with a long history in the agency, following previous presidents’ lead.

Critics of the agency over the last few years, including several key members of Congress, would prefer an agency outsider — someone from the military or another top law enforcement agency, such as the FBI or the New York Police Department. They want a new director who is unconnected to the current and former agency leadership who can truly change the culture and uneven discipline they say is behind the agency’s low morale.

“The ‘cover-up culture’ remains a serious problem,” Ron Kessler, who has written several books on the Secret Service, told the Washington Examiner Monday. “They need an outsider to truly fix the agency. I would really be amazed if they took someone from the inside, but stranger things have happened.”

Kessler also said he’s talked to Trump personally via email about the need to hire an outsider and just before a New Year’s Eve party at Mar-a-Lago with Trump that he attended with his wife.

“I’ve emailed him and talked to him in New York and Mar-a-Lago just in December before New Year’s Eve,” Kessler said. “I didn’t get a sense of where he stands, but I know he’s aware of the issues.”

Asked about the search for a new Secret Service director and the timing on the naming of a successor, the White House referred all questions to the Secret Service. The Secret Service then referred questions to the White House and the Department of Homeland Security.

The Secret Service also declined to say who the new acting director is after Clancy’s March 4 departure over the weekend. A spokeswoman referred all questions to DHS, which didn’t respond to Washington Examiner’s inquiries. On Wednesday morning, a Secret Service spokeswoman said the acting director is William Callahan, who was named deputy director in December.

All of the known names circulating within the Secret Service community to replace Clancy are former or current Secret Service officials.

Those candidates include Rob Buster, the assistant director of protective operations who. As late as 2015, he served as the special agent-in-charge of the Presidential Protective Division responsible for protecting the president and the first family, several sources told the Washington Examiner.

Secret Service sources believe George Mulligan, the agency’s current chief operating officer, as well as the relatively new Deputy Director William Callahan, are both under consideration. According to one source, Larry Cockell, a former deputy director and ex-agent in charge of President Bill Clinton’s protective detail, is also under consideration to be named director. Cockell retired in late 2011 to become chief of security for AOL Time Warner.

Mickey Nelson, a former assistant director of the agency whom some assumed to be in contention is not being considered, a spokesman told the Washington Examiner on Tuesday.

In recent days, agents have pointed to Buster as a serious contender who may have an inside track, according to several current and former agents.

Buster, whose wife is also a Secret Service agent and is a special agent in charge of investigations, is well liked among rank-and-file and senior agents and officers and worked years to rise through the ranks to become an assistant director of protective operations.

But he has at least two serious black marks on his leadership record, according to three sources who spoke to the Washington Examiner. He headed the Presidential Protective Division, one of the most important and prestigious assignments in the agency, when the most serious fence-jumping incident occurred in September 2014.

Buster remained as the top agent in charge of protecting the first family when two agents disrupted a potential bomb investigation by running into it with their car on the White House grounds after a night of drinking in March 2015.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform panel charged with investigating the Secret Service’s lapses in recent years, complained during a 2015 hearing that Clancy failed to make Buster available to attend a closed-door committee briefing on the incident in March of that same year. One of the two agents involved was a close colleague of Buster’s on the president’s detail.

During the bulk of Clancy’s two-year tenure, the agency had relatively few disciplinary issues and no known serious security lapses, other than the March 2015 incident involving two agents who drove their car into an active security investigation on the White House grounds after a night of drinking. That incident occurred just three months into Clancy’s tenure.

But more recently, as the Washington Examiner first reported last month, the agency was forced to investigate Facebook comments by the top agent in charge of the Secret Service’s Denver office, suggesting that she would rather “face jail time” than take “a bullet” for Trump.

Even though a complaint about the Facebook post was filed in October of last year, the agency waited until the Washington Examiner reported on the comments to place O’Grady on paid administrative leave and launch an investigation.

A blue-ribbon independent panel, charged with getting to the bottom of the agency’s problems after the fence-jumping incident and several others, in late-2014 after months of research, issued a report that found the Secret Service “starving for leadership” and called on President Obama to name a director who had served in another law enforcement capacity, not the agency itself.

A member of the panel who made that recommendation was Joe Hagin, who currently serves as Trump’s deputy chief of staff for security operations at the White House and when the president travels. It’s as similar position to the one he held for eight years during President George W. Bush’s time in office.

Obama rejected the advice to tap an outsider and instead chose Clancy, a former head of his trusted Secret Service protective detail. Clancy served in that post for more than two years until Saturday, when he retired as he announced he would in mid-February.

Critics, including rank-and-file agents and officers and members of Congress and longtime observers of the agency, argue that tapping an insider with years of experience in the Secret Service’s top brass will only perpetuate a “culture of cover-up,” which has plagued the agency in recent years.

In the wake of Clancy’s retirement announcement both Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., and Chaffetz have called on Trump to name someone from outside the Secret Service community as Clancy’s successor. Johnson and Chaffetz chair the Senate and House committees that oversee the Secret Service.

Two sources told the Washington Examiner that Secret Service agents and officers saw Nelson and former Secret Service Director Ralph Basham, who are both partners at the same private international security and intelligence firm they founded together, leaving the West Wing the day Clancy announced his retirement Feb. 15.

They were there to visit Hagin, who also is a partner at the same firm, Command Consulting, along with Basham and Nelson. As of Monday night, Hagin was still pictured and listed as a partner on the firm’s website.

Agents and officers point to Hagin as key in helping the Trump White House choose a new Secret Service director, a job he’s used to doing.

Kessler, who said Hagin brought him in to speak to the blue-ribbon panel that recommended an outsider, said he believes Hagin remains committed to the concept.

“I know that Joe Hagin was very adamant, as was the rest of the panel, about hiring an outsider to lead the agency,” Kessler said.

This story was updated Wednesday at 10:00 a.m. after the Secret Service told the Examiner that William Callahan is serving as the acting director after Clancy’s departure.