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Re: Secret Service Director “Forgot” His Agents Were Illegal

PostPosted: Tue Oct 06, 2015 12:19 am
by admin
Congressman Who Oversees Secret Service Was Rejected by Secret Service
by Tim Mak
4/2/15

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Jason Chaffetz, who as House Oversight Committee chairman is responsible for overseeing the agency, once applied for a job there and was turned down—because of his age, he says.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, who oversees the Secret Service, never disclosed that he had applied for and was rejected from the agency in the early 2000s.

“It was because I was too old,” the Utah Republican told The Daily Beast. “I’m not sure [of the reason]…that’s more than a decade ago.”

The Secret Service now requires that applicants be between the ages of 21 and 37 at the time of appointment. Chaffetz said he was unsure whether he had applied in 2002 or 2003. He would have been 36 in 2003.

Asked whether he harbored any ill will at being rejected from the agency, he replied, “That’s pretty funny, no.” He pointed out that his grandfather had been a law enforcement agent.

Chaffetz said he “might have” applied to the FBI around the same time, as well. But he wasn’t sure, he said.

The congressman explained that he hadn’t disclosed his Secret Service application because he had spent only “10 minutes” on his application and hadn’t thought about it in years.

“I haven’t looked at that in more than a decade. It’s not something that’s entered my mind…seriously, this was like 10 minutes, 12 years ago,” he said.

In 2003, around the time Chaffetz applied, the Secret Service application form was some 50 pages long.

The congressmen said he was motivated to apply because “it was just after 9/11.” He applied for the Secret Service through a field office.

Early on in the process, he received a “BQA” letter, a rejection letter that explained he was rejected because there were better qualified applicants at the time. A BQA is a generic rejection that can take place at various points of the application process. Chaffetz said he was never given a physical test by the Secret Service.

Chaffetz, who was elected to Congress in 2008 and has chaired the Oversight Committee since January, has been on a mission to root out the causes of the Secret Service’s dysfunction.

The Secret Service, which is responsible for protecting the president and foreign dignitaries, among other functions, has suffered from a series of embarrassing scandals in the past few years.

Last year, a White House fence jumper was able to make it into the White House through an unlocked door. Later, an armed security guard was allowed in the same elevator as President Obama.

And the 2012 Secret Service prostitution scandal in Cartagena, Colombia, still hangs over the agency’s reputation.

Chaffetz’s committee announced this week that it was subpoenaing two Secret Service officials, after the agency suffered another embarrassment last month. Agents had allegedly collided with a White House barrier while an active suspicious package threat was being investigated.

Re: Secret Service Director “Forgot” His Agents Were Illegal

PostPosted: Tue Oct 06, 2015 12:23 am
by admin
Drunken Secret Service Agents Crash into White House Barricade
by Andrew Emett
March 12, 2015

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


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Secret Service agents Mark Connolly and George Ogilvie were returning from drinking and celebrating the retirement of departing Secret Service spokesman Edwin Donovan. While driving drunk through the police tape and interrupting an active investigation, the agents crashed into a temporary barricade in their government vehicle.

In yet another example of misconduct and incompetence, the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general has launched an investigation into two Secret Service agents caught on surveillance camera driving drunk and crashing into a White House barricade. Besides driving under the influence, the agents also disturbed an active bomb investigation by possibly driving over the suspicious package. Instead of allowing law enforcement officials to arrest the agents or determine their blood alcohol content, a Secret Service supervisor simply decided to send them home.

Around 10:25pm on March 4, a Pennsylvania woman exited a blue Toyota near the southeast entrance of the White House carrying a package wrapped in a green shirt. As the woman approached a Secret Service agent, she shouted at him that she was holding a bomb. After placing the package on the ground, the woman ran back to her vehicle and jumped inside with the agent in pursuit.

Opening the front passenger door, the agent ordered the woman to exit the vehicle when she put the car in reverse. After the open door struck the agent, he managed to reach inside the car and force it into park. But the woman shifted it back into drive and sped off before the agent could stop her. Officers immediately secured the area with police tape and called the bomb squad to check the package for explosives.

During that time, Secret Service agents Mark Connolly and George Ogilvie were returning from a party at a bar about eight blocks away from the White House where they had been drinking and celebrating the retirement of departing Secret Service spokesman Edwin Donovan. While driving drunk through the police tape and interrupting an active investigation, the agents crashed into a temporary barricade in their government vehicle shortly before 11pm. According to witnesses and video footage, investigators believe the inebriated agents may have driven over the suspicious package.

As officers attempted to arrest Connolly and Ogilvie, a senior supervisor appeared and allegedly ordered the officers to release the agents without conducting field sobriety tests. Instead of punishing the agents, the supervisor ordered Connolly and Ogilvie to return home. At 11:45pm, the bomb squad determined the suspicious item was not a threat and instead turned out to be a book.

Two days later, the Secret Service found the woman and charged her with assault with a dangerous weapon for trying to run over an agent with her car. Instead of placing the intoxicated agents on administrative leave, Secret Service Director Joseph Clancy transferred Connolly, the second-in-command on President Obama’s detail; and Ogilvie, a senior supervisor in the Washington field office; to non-supervisory, non-operational assignments. Due to the fact that the incident involves senior officials, the Department of Homeland Security inspector general will handle the investigation instead of allowing the Secret Service to conduct an internal review of the charges.

The incident is merely the latest example of a history marred with misconduct and incompetence. On October 1, 2014, former Secret Service Director Julia Pierson resigned after lying to congressional members regarding her failure to disclose all security breaches to President Obama. On September 19, 2014, Iraq war veteran Omar Gonzalez leapt over the fence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and broke into the White House equipped with a three-inch serrated knife. During a visit to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention three days earlier, President Obama entered an elevator accompanied by an armed private contractor with three convictions for assault and battery.

In May 2013, Secret Service supervisor Ignacio Zamora left a bullet in a woman’s hotel room and attempted to force his way back into the room to retrieve it. In March 2013, three members of the Secret Service’s Counter Assault Team were placed on paid administrative leave after one of them was found passed out drunk in a hallway by hotel staff in Amsterdam. Days before President Obama’s arrival to the international summit in Cartagena in 2012, multiple Secret Service and DEA agents were caught purchasing prostitutes in Colombia.

On November 11, 2011, Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez fired a semi-automatic rifle at the White House while Sasha Obama was home. The Secret Service realized four days later that seven bullets had hit the White House only after a maid noticed broken glass and pieces of cement on the Truman balcony.

“The Secret Service has suffered from a lack of leadership and that has had a detrimental impact on security, training, protocols, and overall culture,” stated Rep. Jason Chaffetz, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee.

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy appointed the first black Secret Service agent to the Presidential Protective Division. During an interview with ABC News, former Secret Service agent Abraham Bolden admitted that his white colleagues repeatedly drank on the job.

“I told the chief of the Secret Service this, that if anything happens, that if an emergency situation happens with President Kennedy, that their reflexes are gonna be in such a condition that they won’t be able to respond,” recalled Bolden. “And Dallas, Texas, proved that I was right.”