A White House aide implicated in the Secret Service prostitution scandal was never subjected to the same kind of rigorous investigation as the agents who were involved.
The Secret Service thoroughly polygraphed 10 agents a total of 14 times after the news broke that agents and members of the military had hired prostitutes on a trip to Colombia, according to a Department of Homeland Security inspector general’s report released in January 2013.
In the middle of the polygraph process, Secret Service officials came to the White House with information implicating a twentysomething volunteer providing advance work for the president.
But the White House at first brushed the information off as a rumor and never thoroughly pursued questions about it, according to a report in the Washington Post.
A White House spokesman did not immediately respond to a question about whether the aide was polygraphed. In the absence of legal action, it would be highly unusual for an administration official outside law enforcement and the military to be polygraphed.
Lifestyle polygraphs that applicants must undergo when applying for Secret Service and FBI jobs usually ask specific questions about illegal behavior involving sex and drugs with questions often hinging on technicalities, such as whether applicants paid for sex. This series of intense exams, which took place over 10 days in mid- to late-April, likely included similar question patterns.
At least three agents passed and were allowed to remain at the agency, but most did not and were forced to leave, while three others were not polygraphed because they were already in the process of separating from the agency by the time the tests began, according to a Department of Homeland Security inspector general’s report.
In all, 10 Secret Service agents lost their jobs.
The information the Secret Service shared with the White House included hotel records and first-hand accounts.
The aide, who worked as an unpaid member of the White House travel-office advance team at the time of scandal, through his lawyer told the Post he never hired a prostitute or brought anyone to his hotel room.
A cover letter to the Department of Homeland Security inspector general’s report on the Secret Service prostitution scandal, released in January 2013, points out that a member of the White House advance operation “may have been involved in the scandal.”
Edwards sent the cover letter to members of Congress but it was not included in an online copy of the report posted on the DHS IG website.
The report included a one-line mention of “reported” involvement of a member of the “White House staff and/or advance team who had personal encounters with female Colombia nationals consistent with the misconduct reported.”
But that report, which found that the Secret Service conducted a thorough after-action investigation into the Colombia prostitutes scandal, was later re-investigated by a Senate Committee after complaints from whistleblowers that then-acting DHS Inspector General Charles Edwards acted improperly and mishandled it.
After its own lengthy investigation, the Senate report did not contradict the IG office’s findings about how the Secret Service handled its own investigation of the prostitute scandal, but it did find that Edwards was too cozy with senior DHS officials, played politics with his investigations and inappropriately responded to requests from top department officials.
Edwards resigned from his IG position in December 2013 was later placed on administrative leave.
White House spokesman Eric Schultz said late Wednesday that the White House conducted an internal review of the prostitution scandal and “did not identify any inappropriate behavior on the part of the White House advance team.”
“At the time, White House counsel requested the Secret Service send over any information related to White House personnel engaging in inappropriate conduct – and indeed that is how the hotel log emerged, an analogous version of which proved to falsely implicate another agent who was subsequently cleared,” he said.
Schultz also denied suggestions that the White House interfered with the inspector general’s investigation.
In his report, Edwards said investigating whether any other non-Secret Service employees – either White House or members of the military — who might have been involved in the prostitute scandal fell outside the scope of his investigation. The DHS is the umbrella organization for the Secret Service.
But during the IG investigation top investigators sparred over whether to pursue the White House angle and gathered research and material suggesting that a White House aide had been involved.
A lead investigator, according to the Post, said his team collected evidence showing that the name of the woman in the Hilton records registered to the aide’s room matched that of a woman advertising herself online as a prostitute.
The same investigator told Senate staffers he felt pressured to withhold from his superiors information about the case that might be damaging politically to Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, which was in full swing at the time, the Post reported.
