Recent events suggest 'Secret Service' is neither

Some within the U.S. Secret Service apparently feel the agency hasn't disgraced itself quite enough.

You'd think the booze-and-hookers carousing in Colombia a few years ago, which attracted the attention of hotel and Cartagena police, or White House protection breaches that would have been comical if not for the national security implications, might have prompted the agency to clean up its act.

So it wouldn't seem. As recently as March, a couple of senior supervisors capped off a night of drinking by driving onto the White House grounds through an active bomb-probe scene. Now comes an assistant director, promoted to that rank for the express purpose of reforming the tarnished service and repairing its self-shattered image, who urged retaliation against a lawmaker critical of the agency. In a March 31 email to a fellow director, Assistant Director Edward Lowery wrote of Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, "Some information that he might find embarrassing needs to get out Just to be fair."

Chaffetz chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee which, a week before the Lowery email, had publicly castigated the agency and its officials for the embarrassing and well-documented series of gaffes and security lapses that had cost about two-thirds of senior management officials their jobs.

The "embarrassing" information on Chaffetz consisted of the fact that he had applied to be a Secret Service agent in 2003 and had been turned down - a detail leaked to news outlets and websites.

An investigation by Homeland Security Inspector General John Roth cited the Lowery email as the initial source, but it was shared with and spread by so many others in the Secret Service that the actual leak was impossible to trace. (According to the Washington Post, the file was accessed by field offices in Sacramento, Charlotte, Dallas and New York, as well as by senior headquarters, the public affairs office and the presidential protection detail.)

Not only was Lowery's action unethical, vindictive and remarkably petty; it also appears to have been illegal. According to the Post, the Chaffetz personnel file was in a restricted Secret Service database the release of which is prohibited by law.

The Roth report's summary: "These agents work for an agency whose motto -- 'Worthy of trust and confidence' -- is engraved in marble in the lobby of their headquarters building. Few could credibly argue that the agents involved in this episode lived up to this motto."

The House committee's ranking Democrat, Elijah Cummings of Maryland, said in a statement that "Chairman Chaffetz and I have worked together to help restore the Secret Service to its standing," and that the report's findings are "completely and utterly unacceptable and indefensible."

The Secret Service seems to be failing miserably at service, and can't or won't safeguard secrets. That pretty much defines incompetence, not to mention gross dereliction of duty.

This story was originally published October 1, 2015 at 5:12 PM with the headline "Recent events suggest 'Secret Service' is neither."