Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, for the first time publicly aired a video of an incident on March 4 in which two senior Secret Service agents disrupted an active bomb investigation after allegedly spending the night drinking at a retirement party.
The video showed two senior special agents in a government-owned vehicle approaching a White House check point and nudging aside an orange barrel set to designate an area where officers were investigating a bomb threat outside the White House. The SUV then proceeds within feet of the potential bomb, driving by it.
Chaffetz, the chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, showed the video during scathing opening remarks in a hearing Tuesday in which Secret Service Director Joseph Clancy is testifying.
The Utah Republican, who has spent more than a year scrutinizing Secret Service security lapses and a string of incidents of misconduct, implied that he received the video from the D.C. Metropolitan Police, not the Secret Service.
He also revealed new allegations that the Secret Service may have botched the investigation of the suspicious package itself.
For seventeen minutes, Chaffetz reported, that traffic continued through the intersection and pedestrians continued to walk by the potential bomb. He also noted that an officer tried to apprehend the person who left the package and claimed that it was a bomb but was unsuccessful.
An officer then followed the suspect in her car but was waived off when another Secret Service official told him he was following the wrong person and directed him to follow a different car, which was not the right suspect, Chaffetz said.
He also noted that the Secret Service waited 30 minutes to issue a “Be On the Lookout” or BOLO alert for the suspect. The suspect, he said, was arrested three days later by another law enforcement agency.
Chaffetz, as well as ranking member Elijah Cummings, D-Md., in their opening statements also expressed deep disappointment that Clancy refused to allow four witnesses to the March 4 incident at the White House to testify before Congress.
“By refusing to allow the witnesses Director Clancy is keeping Congress and the American public in the dark,” he said. “There is no legitimate explanation as to why — it’s not clear why Clancy, at the beginning of his tenure, is being so unhelpful to Congress.”
Clancy has argued that the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general is conducting an investigation into the incident and that he wanted to preserve the integrity of that probe by not allowing witnesses to testify before Congress.
The lawmakers specifically asked for Clancy to allow testimony from Capt. Michael Braun, a senior official in the Uniformed Division, whom Clancy identified at a previous hearing as the supervisor on duty March 4. Braun reportedly overruled lower-level officers who wanted to give the pair of agents in question a sobriety test and let the two go home.
In addition, they asked to hear from Special Agent in Charge Robert Buster, Assistant to Special Agent in Charge Thomas Rizza and Assistant Agent in Charge Kimberly Tello.
Cummings, however, argued that Congress has the Constitutional mandate to conduct its own investigation into serious security lapses and matters of misconduct that threaten the security of the president of the United States.
In a long and brutal monologue, Cummings upbraided Clancy for failing to provide the witnesses or an explanation as to why they couldn’t testify.
“If we are going to err, we must err on the side of the safety of the president,” he said, noting that the committee has agreed to consult with the inspector general before taking any action.
Cummings said it’s unacceptable that Clancy did not hear about the incident for five days, despite an anonymous email that was circulating among other Secret Service personnel.
“I believe when the chain of command is broken, there is no command,” Cummings said. “It’s like a body without a head, and where there is no command, there is vulnerability and the vulnerability goes to the safety of the U.S. president of the United States.”
“Let me make something clear, this is not business as usual,” he said. “This is not just another oversight hearing about just another agency. I don’t want anything to happen to [Obama] – not under my watch.”
