The Secret Service has placed one senior agent on leave and the other announced his retirement after an internal government watchdog concluded that the agents “more likely than not” were alcohol-impaired when they drove their official car through a suspicious package investigation at the White House in early March.
The report concludes that George Ogilvie, the driver the night of the March 4 incident, and Marc Connolly, spent roughly five hours at a bar after a retirement party for another senior agent, running up a “significant” bar tab before leaving to retrieve Ogilvie’s government-issued vehicle at the White House and running into an active suspicious package investigation in the process.
The Department of Homeland Security inspector general’s office, which conducted the investigation and issued the report, said the bar tab included eight glasses of scotch, two vodka drinks, three beers and a glass of wine. Both men said they were not drunk, and Ogilvie said he had given most of the drinks to other people at the bar, although he did not indicate who received them.
One female Secret Service employee acknowledged drinking two vodka drinks from Ogilvie’s tab and a male employee said he drank one beer and a scotch from the tab.
Wait staff at Fado’s Irish bar in Chinatown, where the drinking took place, said they did not observe anyone visibly intoxicated.
Contrary to subsequent media reports after the March 4 report, the report found that Ogilvie did not merely “bump” a barrel marking the suspicious package investigation at one of the entrances to the White House. Instead, the report concluded that the barrel moved more than five feet, pushed along the concrete and brick walkway, before Ogilvie’s SUV could enter the White House grounds.
“This was no mere ‘bump,’ but rather extended contact to shove the barrel out of the way,” the report said. “Additionally, apparently unknown to Ogilvie, his car passed within inches of the suspicious package during the process.”
The seniority of the two agents – Connolly was the No. 2 agent in charge of the Presidential Protective Division and Ogilvie was the assistant special agent in charge of the Washington Field Office – shocked lawmakers on Capitol Hill who were already scrutinizing the agency for a string of security lapses and incidents of misconduct.
After receiving the report, Secret Service Director Joseph Clancy moved to put both men on administrative leave, and Connolly subsequently submitted his retirement notification, according to a Secret Service official.
Clancy issued a statement late Wednesday saying he is “disappointed and disturbed” by the report’s findings and pledged to hold any employee, regardless of rank, accountable.
“I am disappointed and disturbed at the apparent lack of judgment described in this report,” he said. “Behavior of the type described in the report is unacceptable and will not be tolerated. Our mission is too important.”
“We owe it to the other 99 percent of Secret Service employees who perform their duties every day ethically and with dignity,” he continued, noting that the agency will continue to institute policies to address employee misconduct and “demand the highest level of professionalism of all employees.”
The inspector general’s report also concluded that Clancy acted appropriately upon receiving information about the potential misconduct and found no evidence suggesting any video of the incident the night of March 4 was intentionally deleted or destroyed.
Lawmakers, including Reps. Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Elijah Cummings, D-Md., it’s ranking member, were harshly critical of Clancy’s failure to conduct his own internal investigation before handing the probe off to the DHS inspector general’s office.
They also were infuriated to learn that Secret Service internal surveillance video of the incident had been taped over and that the agency has a policy of only keeping the footage for three days unless an incident occurs that causes a senior officer or agent to flag it and retain the tape.
In the aftermath of the incident, Clancy argued that he was following internal government policy by handing over the investigation to the inspector general’s office and wanted to avoid any appearance that he was interfering with the probe.
Clancy said the Secret Service’s Office of Integrity has requested supporting information for the inspector general’s findings, including memoranda of interviews and sworn statements from the witnesses interviewed.
Once the office receives the material, the agency will propose disciplinary action for the agents involved.
Other details of the incident at the White House that night suggest that Uniformed Division officers on the scene regarded it as highly unusual and raise new questions about why the top officer in charge of the White House complex that night and other more senior officers and agents did not report it up the chain of command. It took days before Clancy became aware of it.
Several minutes after Ogilvie pulled up to the entrance, the Joint Operations Center, a command center for White House complex security, radioed the Uniform Division officers to check on the car and find out why it was there.
The officers, which the report states had more than 65 years of combined Secret Service experience, were hesitant to do so because the car was so close to the suspicious package, which had yet to be cleared.
“One of the officers, with over 25 years’ experience at the White House, said he had never seen anything like this,” the report states.
When three officers approached the car, one of them asked Ogilvie, “how did you get in here?” He received no response even after asking a second and third time.
“The officer told OIG investigators that Ogilvie had his head back in the seat and his eyes were wide open as if he was trying hard not to blink, and in notes written that evening described both agents as having a ‘deer in the headlights’ look,” the report states.
The fourth time the officer asked Ogilvie what they were doing there, he responded that they had driven down 15th Street and “nobody stopped us.” Connolly, who was checking his blackberry, acknowledged that the agency was at an elevated security state, and Ogilvie to the officer that the pair had just come from headquarters.
“All three of the officers at the scene thought something was ‘not right,'” the report states. “They did not smell any alcohol, and none of them noted that either agent slurred their speech or otherwise appeared intoxicated, but each of the officers thought the agents were ‘not making sense.'”
One of the officers called the watch commander, a captain who is the highest ranking Uniformed Division officer on duty that night and informing him of the situation and adding that “they may be drunk.”
The watch commander then called his immediate supervisor, referred to as “Inspector Williams,” in the report.
After approaching the car, the watch commander described Connolly, who was on his cellphone, as having a “flushed face, glazed eyes” and slightly disheveled clothing. He detected a “slight odor of alcohol” coming from the car and asked if they had been drinking, to which Ogilvie replied, “What?”
Connolly confirmed that they had. The watch commander characterized Ogilvie’s appearance as “normal and he was calm and professional.”
“The watch commander told the OIG investigators that he believed Ogilvie had consumed alcohol but wasn’t exhibiting any signs of intoxication such as flushed face, slurred speech, glassy eyes or lack of concentration,” the report states.
In subsequent interviews with investigators, Ogilvie acknowledged that he told one of the Uniformed Division officers that night that “I had a drink.”
What happened next is in dispute. Connolly was making calls to other senior agents and superiors on his cell phone while the Uniformed Division was alerting superiors as well.
Uniformed Deputy Chief Alfonso Dyson called Connolly. Dyson commands the Uniformed Division at the White House and reports to the top agent in charge of the Presidential Protective Division through Connolly.
According to Dyson, Connolly told him, “I f—ed up,” the report states, and Dyson then told Connolly that he needed “to make notification” before the incident got out of hand, and Connolly agreed.
The watch commander then let the two agents go on there way because he believed Ogilvie was fit to drive while Connolly was not and that Connolly would remain at headquarters or a hotel that night because the Washington area was expecting a major snow storm and agents regularly remained in town under those conditions.
Other statements contradict the watch commander’s assertion that he thought Ogilvie was fit to drive, according to the report.
Witnesses told investigator that the watch commander that night said both agents were “hammered,” and one agent reported that the watch commander said that he did not ask to have a field sobriety test conducted because it would be a “career killer.”
The watch commander denied making those statements and said he also separately told the other three officers at the scene that the agents had admitted they had been drinking and told his supervisor, Inspector Williams, that he thought the agents were in violation of the “10-hour rule,” an agency rule barring alcohol consumption within 10 hours of reporting for duty.
This story has been updated.
