Senior Secret Service supervisors didn’t believe two senior agents were intoxicated the night of a March 4 White House incident in which the agents allegedly disturbed an active bomb investigation after a night of drinking.
Members of Congress and news reports have faulted the supervisors on hand that night for failing to report the actions of the pair of agents who nudged a barricade and violated an active suspicious package investigation after attending a retirement party for another agent where there was drinking. But the supervisors told internal agency investigators that they didn’t believe the agents were drunk.
An anonymous email circulating inside and outside the Secret Service days after the March 4 accused the two senior agents of being “extremely intoxicated” as they drove through an active bomb investigation that was set up just a few feet outside the perimeter of the White House complex near an entry gate.
Word of the anonymous email only reached Secret Service Director Joseph Clancy fives days later on March 9 and created a media firestorm when the revelations exploded in the press two days later on March 11.
Officials at the Secret Service’s Office of Professional Integrity began to investigate the allegations March 9, the same day Clancy found out about them. OPR Director Richard Coughlin interviewed Secret Service Deputy Chief Alfonso Dyson and Captain Michael Braun, leaders in the Uniformed Division who were on duty that night. Both told him that they didn’t believe either agent were drunk the night of the incident, ABC News first reported Thursday night.
According to an internal Secret Service document chronicling those interviews obtained by the Washington Examiner, Dyson said he didn’t believe Marc Connolly, the agent who was riding in a passenger seat in the government-owned SUV in question, was impaired.
Dyson, according to the document, called Connolly the night of the incident. Connolly told Dyson he had made a mistake, which Dyson interpreted to mean that he accidentally drove into the crime scene just outside the White House checkpoint that night.
Braun, the other supervisor on duty, reported that George Ogilvie, the driver of the government vehicle, did not appear to be intoxicated, though he noted that Connolly’s eyes appeared glassy.
The document also points out that Uniform Division Inspector Keith Williams briefed Dyson about the evening and cited an unknown source who told him that Connolly, the passenger in the car, “smelled of alcohol.”
Coughlin then told Dyson to secure all Uniform Division shift reports, Joint Operations Center logs, and any other evidence that may have been preserved regarding the suspicious package and the incident involving Connolly and Ogilvie for potential follow-up by the Department of Homeland Security inspector general’s office.
Members of Congress who have watched brief clips of surveillance tapes of the incident in question say they don’t resolve the question of whether the two agents had been drinking that night and were impaired in their driving.
The Secret Service forwarded their initial findings on to the DHS inspector general, who is now investigating the matter and is expected to produce initial findings in a matter of weeks, not months.
