The Secret Service has a history of imposing far lower penalties than the FBI for drunken driving and other alcohol-related incidents, according to an expert familiar with federal law enforcement policies and a Secret Service misconduct report provided to Congress last week.
The agency also has ratcheted up its discipline for the most severe infractions over the last two years but still fails to impose discipline uniformly after the prostitution scandal ensnared more than a dozen agents in Colombia in 2012, according to three sources with first-hand knowledge of the process.
The FBI requires at least a 30-day suspension without pay for an off-duty drunk-driving charge, according to Larry Berger, an attorney who has served as a general counsel for the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association.
“And it goes up from there,” depending on the circumstances, he said.
In 2009, the Transportation Security Administration also began imposing a 30-day suspension without pay for federal air marshals arrested on drunk-driving charges, according to a report in ProPublica.org.
The policy put the air marshals in line with other federal law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, that require a 30-day suspension for any “alcohol-related offense,” which includes an arrest, conviction, or refusing a sobriety test.
Over the past five years, the Secret Service has had nine incidents involving agents or officers charged with drunken driving, according to a Secret Service report outlining misconduct. It has had 27 other alcohol-related incidents that required some sort of disciplinary review.
In six of the nine drunken driving cases, the Secret Service employees charged received less than a 30-day suspension and received only a warning about the potential ramifications to their top-secret security clearances.
One received a three-day suspension, another a 10-day suspension, and another a 14-day suspension. Of the two others who managed to bargain the charge down to reckless driving, one received only a letter of reprimand, and the other got a one-day suspension.
In only one case, from August 2011, did the individual receive a 30-day suspension on a drunken driving charge. That case also involved an unauthorized use of a rented, government-owned vehicle. It’s unclear whether the agent was driving the rented government vehicle when he was accused of drunken driving.
In only two cases, in July and August of this year, were the officers or agents charged with driving under the influence severely punished. In a July 15 case, an agent was fired and lost his top-secret security clearance, preventing the agent from being able to land a new job with a clearance requirement.
After revelations of several security breaches in the early fall, which led to then-Director Julia Pierson’s resignation, Congress asked for a more thorough accounting of all the White House security breaches officers or agents have responded to over the last five years, as well as all the misconduct cases against individual agents or officers.
Acting Secret Service Director Joseph Clancy on Friday gave the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee the report detailing 394 total cases of misconduct by 356 agents or officers.
He said the chart reflects only “information pertaining to incidents of substantiated misconduct” in which the incident resulted either in the imposition of discipline or the resignation or retirement of an employee.
Three sources familiar with the discipline process, however, complain that that the agency suffers from a “culture of cover-up” and argue superiors swept some serious violations under the rug and never acted on them. Using the description Clancy applied to the information shared with Congress, those allegations would not be included in the report.
During the time frame the report covers, from 2010 to 2014, the Secret Service has employed roughly 4,500 to 5,000 special agents and Uniformed Division officers, according to congressional testimony.
The misconduct cases, for which the officers or agents involved were not named, range in severity from more minor infractions such as officers or agents disciplined for sleeping on the job, being absent without leave and failure to secure a Secret Service-issued weapon to more serious violations such as drunken driving and other alcohol-related allegations, assault and sexual misconduct, as well as secret involvement with foreign nationals.
Before the Colombia prostitute scandal, the Secret Service had an internal review board to handle all problems with employees and determine appropriate disciplinary action, if any. But for much of its history, the agency has relied on supervisors to write up and report any incidents to the review board.
Too often, several knowledgeable sources said, supervisors only write up infractions for some agents and not others, and recommend harsher penalties for some and more minor punishments for others, creating resentment in the ranks.
After the prostitution scandal, President Obama tapped Pierson to help rebuild the agency’s image. She established an Office of Integrity to weigh agency violations and impose tougher disciplinary action.
Although more recent violations tend to receive more severe punishments than those that occurred before the prostitution scandal, the report provides very little comparative detail. For instance, from the descriptions of the violations it isn’t clear whether the officers and agents involved were convicted or simply charged with drunken driving.
“It’s impossible to really take into consideration what I would call ‘similarly situated’” cases from the Clancy report, Berger cautioned.
Twenty-seven of the misconduct cases involve alcohol use of some kind, including an incident in March in which an agent passed out in a hotel hallway in the Netherlands where President Obama was scheduled to arrive the following day.
After questioning the agent involved and two others who had been out drinking with him the night before, managers determined that all three had violated new rules intended to prevent bad behavior during overseas trips.
According to the misconduct report, one of the agents involved in the Netherlands episode “resigned in lieu of adverse action.” One received a 30-day suspension and the other received a 28-day suspension.
There also were 10 cases involving violence of some kind. In one 2009 sexual assault case in which an indictment was dismissed, the special agent resigned “in lieu of adverse action.”
Two others involved arrests for domestic violence.
In one, occurring in 2009, the individual received a four-day suspension and had his top-secret clearance suspended, then reinstated.
In another, in 2011, the officer was never suspended, although the officer’s clearance was put on hold, then later reinstated.
In one case involving a uniformed division officer and several incidents dating to 2012, police charged the individual with assault in the second degree on two occasions and the officer failed to report the arrests to superiors as required. In this case the Secret Service revoked the officer’s clearance and the individual resigned.
The agency reported one case in October 2012 of an officer arrested for “aggravated sexual battery and taking indecent sexual liberties with a child.” The agency suspended the person’s clearance and the officer retired “in lieu of removal.”
Cheri Cannon, a partner at the law firm Tully Rinckey who specializes in federal labor and employment law, said government workers convicted of felonies and even more serious heinous crimes can keep their pensions unless they engage in treason or are known to have defrauded the government in a serious financial crime.
