A Secret Service agent allegedly involved in a driving accident after drinking said last year that the agency had a “zero tolerance” policy toward alcohol misuse and misconduct.
George Ogilvie, a senior agent in the Washington Field Office, served as a U.S. Secret Service spokesman last year and made his comments after incidents in which one agent passed out drunk in a Dutch hotel and another crashed a car in Florida.
Ogilvie said then that the Secret Service “maintains a zero tolerance policy regarding incidents of misconduct and continues to evaluate the best human capital practices and policies for the workforce” and was reassigning staff “after two recent incidents of misconduct.”
The agency took steps to prevent such incidents overseas when agents prepare for presidential visits. New rules barred Special Operations Division agents from drinking alcohol within 12 hours of duty and 24 hours before the president arrived.
Now Ogilvie and agent Mark Connolly, allegedly ran through police tape and hit a barrier, have been reassigned to nonsupervisory and nonprotective roles.
Secret Service Director Joseph Clancy now faces a barrage of criticism and calls for swift, aggressive action. Ogilvie and Connolly allegedly were drinking at another agent’s retirement party at a local bar.
The two agents, one who was second-in-command of the president’s protective detail, are accused of driving their government car into an area cordoned off for the investigation of a suspicious package. They may have run over the package, sources familiar with the incident told the Washington Examiner.
A supervisor at the White House that night overruled more junior officers and allowed the agents to go home without taking a sobriety test, according to two knowledgeable sources.
The details of the incident remain murky with new reports Thursday that the car was driving slowly and only nudged an orange barricade cone and made it through initial checkpoints without incident.
Clancy has forwarded the investigation to the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General. The investigation could take months.
President Obama promoted Clancy last month from acting director to the permanent head of the agency, rejecting recommendations from an outside panel and Congress members who called for fresh leadership to shake up an old boys culture of uneven discipline.
But Obama tapped Clancy, a trusted friend who had served as chief of the Protective Division until retiring in 2011 to head security at Comcast.
Clancy reassigned at least four senior officials in January in the biggest shake-up in the agency’s 150 years.
Now, just weeks into the job, Clancy is under pressure to curb the Secret Service’s corrosive culture.
Reps. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, head of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Elijah Cummings, D-Md., the ranking Democrat, issued a joint statement Wednesday night.
“The committee’s ongoing bipartisan investigation has focused from the onset on whether or not specific instances of misconduct is indicative of a broader cultural problem within the agency,” they said. “Although recent steps have been made to bring new leadership in at the highest levels, this incident begs the question of whether that is enough.”
Chaffetz also expressed disappointment when Obama ignored the outside panel’s recommendations against naming Clancy.
The White House on Thursday said Obama retains full confidence in Clancy, and maintains he is the right man to fix the problems.
“Nobody has higher standards for the Secret Service than Director Clancy,” White House spokesman Eric Schultz told reporters Thursday.
New York Times’ best-selling author and Secret Service expert Ron Kessler, who recently published The First Family Detail, strongly disagrees. He argues that the choice of Clancy all but guarantees black-eyes for the agency.
“Clancy is cut from the same cloth as the previous directors. He is a career agent and has the same management culture that has led to all of these problems,” Kessler told the Examiner. “Since he’s become acting director in October he has done absolutely nothing to change the culture of laxness and cover-ups.”
Although Clancy forced several top officials out of their jobs earlier this year, Kessler says he has replaced them with managers with the same type of mentality.
“I know them and what their reputations are. They are going to continue the very same culture — one that punishes agents with threats for pointing out problems and rewards people who say that the Secret Service is beyond reproach,” he said.
Kessler criticizes Clancy for failing to place the agents involved in the car accident on immediate administrative leave. A Secret Service spokesman, however, said recent policy requires that employees stay on active duty while being investigated for misconduct.
“Only when circumstances are such that the retention of the employee in active duty status may pose a threat to the employee or others, result in the loss of or damage to government property, or otherwise jeopardize legitimate government interests (including security, i.e. employee’s security clearance has been suspended) may the employee be placed in a non-duty status,” the rule states. “In such situations, the Secret Service may place the employee in a paid non-duty status (administrative leave).”
Cheri Cannon, a partner at attorneys Tully Rinckey which specializes in federal labor and employment law, said the Secret Service is acting properly in not placing the agents and supervisor in question on administrative leave.
Administrative leave, she said, “is overused and misused. You should only be placed on administrative leave if you’re a danger to yourself or others or you pose some national security risk.”
The driver of the car in the recent accident will probably be suspended without pay for the 30-day minimum, Cannon said.
The standard Secret Service penalty for driving drunk in a government car is a 45-day suspension without pay, a Secret Service spokesman said.
In this case, however, there were no arrests and the alcohol levels of the agents involved were not checked.
