Secret Service investigators never formally questioned a senior agent who co-workers say was implicated in a Colombian prostitution scandal that ensnared a dozen other agents.
A high-level special agent, who was later promoted, played a key role in advance work on the trip to Cartagena that became notorious when reports surfaced that agents had hired prostitutes there.
Co-workers believe that the agent should have been included in the Secret Service’s review of the matter, but when he wasn’t, at least one filed a complaint about him with the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general.
One reason why the agent may not have been investigated at first: location.
While hotel records indicated that women visited multiple agents’ rooms at the Hotel Caribe and the Hilton Cartagena, the senior agent’s alleged encounter occurred at the apartment of a DEA agent stationed in Cartagena, three sources familiar with the investigations said.
The inspector general’s office of the Justice Department, which oversees the Drug Enforcement Agency, opened its own investigation into the matter. The outcome of that investigation remains unclear.
Two sources familiar with the matter told the Washington Examiner that Justice officials prevented the inspector general’s office from interviewing female foreign nationals and accessing some of the records from 11 of the 13 hotels where the advance team stayed.
That hampered the inspector general’s investigators, who were forced to rely on material collected by the Secret Service’s internal probe, sources argued. Those files included interviews with the agents involved and women in Colombia as well as some hotel registration documents, but they did not include any mention of the senior agent’s involvement.
The Justice Department told DHS investigators that it would need a mutual legal assistance treaty, an agreement between two countries to gather and exchange evidence for criminal cases in their own countries.
Most developed countries allow their law enforcement agencies to exchange information for criminal probes more informally through their law enforcement agencies.
The Secret Service also did not have legal authority to conduct an investigation in Colombia. Inspectors relied on Colombian and State Department officials to coordinate investigative activities and depended on female foreign nationals’ consent to be interviewed, according to the 2013 DHS IG’s report.
Without legal authority, inspectors were unable to obtain records from the Hilton Hotel while in Colombia, but the Justice Department intervened and helped provide to the Secret Service records of the hotel’s bills incurred during the summit, the report said.
A DOJ official told the Examiner Friday that the law, not the Justice Department, constricted agencies’ ability to investigate in Colombia. The official said the department provided the same information to DHS investigators and argued they were not deprived of any information they had also given the Secret Service.
Secret Service investigators never formally questioned the senior agent, and his involvement in the scandal was not internally documented either by the agency or the inspector general, sources familiar with the investigation said. Unlike 10 other agents implicated in the scandal, he never had to undergo a polygraph test, the sources added.
Critics of the Secret Service say the prostitution scandal is indicative of larger problems the agency has with investigating and disciplining agents suspected of misbehavior. They also say the different way people were investigated and punished raise questions about fairness.
A Senate subcommittee found that the acting inspector general in charge of the investigation, Charles Edwards, ordered his investigators to alter and delay parts of the office’s investigative report.
Earlier this week, the Washington Post reported that the White House never publicly acknowledged that Jonathan Dach, a White House volunteer, also was implicated in the scandal. Dach, the son of a lobbyist for Walmart and Democratic donor, went on to another administration post.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican who chairs a government oversight subcommittee, said the punishments in the Cartagena case for Dach and the other Secret Service agents concerned him because it showed that people suspected of involvement in the prostitution scandal were treated differently.
“Nearly two dozen people were given varying degrees of punishment for the same behavior,” Chaffetz told the Examiner Thursday. “The explanations that some people had better political connections in the office — that’s a very serious charge.”
By the time the Secret Service internal investigation ended, nine agents had lost their jobs. Some agents were allowed to keep their security clearances, which makes them eligible for future intelligence work, while others were not.
Polygraphs helped determine which agents paid for sex, sources said. Anyone whom investigators determined had not paid the women was allowed to keep his job.
Just three of those who took polygraph tests fell into that category.
One young agent with just three years at the agency, who pleaded with investigators during his agency internal affairs interview, claimed not to have paid or had sex with any women, but he was forced out of the Secret Service because the scandal occurred during a probationary period required of new agents.
At least three of the agents were determined not to have paid for sex and were allowed to remain in their jobs.
The servicemen involved fared much better. Eleven were accused of having sex with women that night. Nine were punished outside of the military justice system, which included docking their pay and forcing them to do extra work on base, sources said. Two chose to undergo a court-martial, but it’s not clear whether they were ever punished. A Pentagon spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.
The investigation involved more than a dozen inspectors who worked long hours and weekends under pressure to produce results quickly while thoroughly scrutinizing the evidence.
The polygraph tests, initiated by Secret Service internal affairs, began on April 17, four days after the story was reported by the Washington Post and continued for 10 days, according to the DHS IG’s report released in January 2013. Two agents did not undergo polygraphs because they admitted to what happened early on and believed that hiring prostitutes was not an egregious offense since other agents had done so in the past.
But after reports of the investigations were leaked, creating a media firestorm, some of the agents wished they had invoked their right not to cooperate with investigators, similar to the right against self-incrimination suspects have when arrested, sources said.
During the DHS IG probe, investigators found that the Secret Service did not provide “employee advising rights” against self-incrimination so anything they admitted could not be used in a criminal proceeding, two sources familiar with the investigation said.
But the final DHS IG report concluded that because the Secret Service internal investigation was only administrative and not criminal, inspectors were not required to advise employees of their rights before an interview.
Prostitution is legal in Colombia, but consorting with prostitutes raised concerns about the security and judgment of the agents involved. Drug cartels are known for using prostitutes as spies.
Many of the agents involved in the scandal were not as senior as the agent who managed to escape questions about his role.
That veteran agent was promoted in February to a high-level post where he received a six-figure salary and had major responsibilities within the Secret Service. Sources said he left last summer, just months after the promotion, for a job in the private sector.
The Secret Service declined to comment on this story.
