An internal watchdog for the Department of Homeland Security has concluded that the Secret Service erred in diverting members of a special White House unit to protect the assistant of the agency’s director at her home in La Plata, Md.
DHS Inspector General John Roth led an investigation into the agents’ diversion, an assignment known within the Secret Service as Operation Moonlight, and found “no legal or procedural justification” for it and said the diversion amounted to a “serious lapse in judgment” on the part of top agency officials who ordered it.
An unnamed top official at the Secret Service ordered the members of the Secret Service’s Prowler unit, which is responsible for patrolling the White House perimeter, to leave their posts and travel to the southern Maryland town, a 50-minute drive from Washington.
David Beach and Jim Donaldson, the two agents in charge of the Washington field office, helped lead the diversion of agents to the home of the Lisa Chopey, an assistant to then-Director Mark Sullivan, because a neighbor was allegedly harassing her and top Secret Service officials believed she was in danger, sources have told the Washington Examiner.
Investigators determined that Secret Service special agents assigned to the protective intelligence unit of the Washington Field Office were “diverted from their normal duties while performing “welfare checks” at the employee’s home on five days in July 2011, the DHS, Roth said in a press release.
President Obama was in the White House on two of those days when the Prowler team was away monitoring the employee’s home, the DHS inspector general team found. The Secret Service is a division of DHS.
“These agents, who were there to protect the president and the White House were improperly diverted for an impermissible purpose,” Roth said. “This constitutes a serious lapse in judgment. “The Secret Service’s mission is to protect the president of the United States, and not to involve itself in an employee’s purely private dispute best handled by local police.”
Top Secret Service officials ordered Operation Moonlight because the Secret Service operates like a family and the agency looks after its people, several sources have told the Examiner.
Sullivan has publicly said he did not order the 2011 checks on his assistant’s home and that a supervisor in his office authorized them. He also has said that he only learned of the checks after they began and that “to his knowledge,” they were done for just a few days and were “appropriate.”
Roth’s statement Wednesday did not name the top official who ordered the operation. But an accompanying seven-page memo from Roth to DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson goes into greater detail.
According to the memo, Chopey told top Secret Service officials that her neighbor was harassing her and had assaulted her father resulting in the loss of several of his teeth. Local police arrested the neighbor, and Chopey applied to attain a protective order.
She also then told investigators that she informed Keith Prewitt, the deputy director of the Secret Service and a family friend, of her problems with the neighbor.
Alarmed, Prewitt then briefed A.T. Smith, then the assistant director for investigations who now serves as the agency’s deputy director.
Smith then directed the Washington Field Office to have agents travel out to La Plata to check in on Chopey.
The Washington Post first reported elements of the Operation Moonlight story May 11.
The Post reported that the agents were pulled from the White House for nearly two months and were sent out to La Plata twice a day to monitor Chopey’s home.
The Secret Service has disputed the Post’s account of how long Operation Moonlight lasted, saying it took place over the Fourth of July weekend in 2011 while President Obama and his family were at Camp David, the presidential retreat north of Washington.
Roth said his investigators determined that it took place over the course of five days in 2011, and on two of the days Obama was at the White House.
The Examiner on May 21 reported that the Secret Service had not placed Beach and Donaldson, the two agents who sources said ordered the diversion, on administrative leave while the matter was under investigation.
Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan defended Operation Moonlight, arguing that no protective assets were used during the checks on Chopey in Maryland so there was no impact on the agency’s protective operations.
“The Secret Service will respond to any findings from this investigation and implement any recommendations or corrective actions identified by the DHS [Office of Inspector General] as appropriate,” Donovan told the Examiner at the time. “We won’t discuss individual employee status related to this investigation.”
“The welfare checks of an employee you’re referencing occurred over the Fourth of July weekend in 2011,” Donovan said. “A Washington Field Office vehicle, an investigative asset, was used to do these periodic checks. Because there were no protective assets used during these checks, there was no impact on protective operations.”
Roth’s Wednesday statement does not make any recommendations to the Secret Service to prevent such a diversion from happening again.
In his statement, Roth said he included his findings in an Oct. 17 memo to DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson.
Johnson now must determine whether to punish the top Secret Service officials involved and how severe the discipline, if any, will be. In a statement, Johnson Wednesday said he would defer any decisions about discipline to acting Secret Service Director Joseph Clancy.
Obama recently named Clancy as an interim, acting director after the agency’s former chief, Julia Pierson, resigned Oct. 1 in the wake of two serious security breaches.
“I have reviewed the analysis of the Office of Inspector General’s investigation into the allegations of misuse of the United States Secret Service resources,” Johnson said in a statement. “I have asked acting [Secret Service] Director Clancy to take any appropriate disciplinary action that he deems necessary and report back to me.”
Roth’s office told the Examiner in mid-October that it does not comment on active investigations. On Wednesday the office said it publicly released the memo to Johnson “in the interest of increased transparency and faster response times.”
The office referred questions about potential disciplinary action to the Secret Service. The Secret Service did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Prowler vehicle in question operates out of the Washington field office, just a few blocks from the White House. Two knowledgeable sources told the Examiner the vehicle was assigned to monitor an area of the White House perimeter when the president departs and arrives in Marine One, the presidential helicopter, on the White House’s south lawn.
Sources have told the Examiner that the Prowler vehicle is a layer of redundant security for monitoring the White House perimeter, and that additional security measures have been implemented since the Sept. 11 attacks that make its mission less vital.
Donovan, a Secret Service spokesman, told the Associated Press Wednesday that, “The Secret Service has received the OIG memorandum and is reviewing it for findings.”
Roth’s findings come at a critical time for the Secret Service, after a number of security breaches and scandals involving agents hiring prostitutes in Colombia in 2012. The scandal and subsequent breaches have lawmakers and Obama administration officials questioning the agency’s ability to hold its employees and top officials accountable for their failings.
Pierson was forced to resign after revelations of two serious security breaches.
On Sept. 19, a fence-jumper made it all the way into the White House East Room before he was tackled and detained, and just three days prior, a man with a gun who has a criminal record was in an elevator with Obama during the president’s trip to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Examiner first reported the elevator incident.
This story was first published at 9:50 a.m. and has been updated.
