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17 April 2012

Secret Service Scandal: How Deep Rooted Is The Lax Security Culture?

Cover of "In the President's Secret Servi...
Cover via Amazon
From Denny:  The Secret Service has everyone talking and millions of people angry at their latest sloppy performance on an advance trip to secure President Obama's trip to Colombia.  Did taxpayers pay for the "business and accommodations" expenses of hiring prostitutes for these agents?

To date, as more facts come out, there were now at least 21 high priced prostitutes taken to the taxpayer paid hotel rooms.  Eleven of the agents were suspended during investigation and their security clearances yanked.

There are between 10 - 20 additional military involved in this stupidity.  That's, of course, if more information does not appear as this story seems to be growing in scope.  Who knows just how many of these mostly married men were involved?  Can you imagine being one of the wives who had to hear this news?

The military involved were from the Navy, the Army and the Marines.  They were in the positions of explosives experts, linguists, dog handlers and drivers.

The advance team included two high-level Secret Service supervisors, three counter assault officers tasked with repelling attacks, three snipers that are the guys you see on rooftops securing the area of the route where the presidential motorcade passes.  (My paternal grandfather did that rooftop sniper work whenever the President would visit New York City.)

Get this:  the Secret Service sent out an advance team to check out the prostitutes.  They were to determine if they were minors, involved in terrorism or trafficking in illegal drugs.  They conducted extensive background checks to make sure their IDs were correct.

This is a revoltingly bizarre mindset.  If all these parameters were met then they still were in possession of their personal discipline?  Get real.  It's no wonder they thought it just fine to party when you know your own agency first checks out the working girls for you.

These guys flunked security basics.  You never place yourself - or your team - in compromising positions as obvious as this situation.  As it turned out there were two supervisors heading the team into the strip clubs and involved in bringing home the prostitutes.  That is not any one's idea of real leadership.

Every one of these some 30 men had copies of President Obama's trip details in their rooms.  These same men bragged at the strip club about how they were working for the President's security.  Does dumb and dumber get any more stupid than that?  What ever happened to anonymity and keeping a low profile?

Prostitutes are the most ancient method in the intelligence business to get information.  Looks like they didn't have to work too hard to find it out in this situation.  Think about it.  With about 30 men and 21 women you had the busy chaos of about 50 people "partying."  Do you really think anyone was worrying about securing the sensitive documents from prying eyes?  Apparently not.

These heavily armed agents and military personnel were to secure the routes for President Obama's visit.  These were the same guys who were to neutralize attacks and were involved directly in protecting the President.

Would you have much confidence in the Secret Service agents after this huge gaffe and complete disregard for your security?  I wouldn't.  Nor would I want these kind of pervs involved in protecting my young daughters.  Who would trust your kids with these guys?  So, why is Obama making more stupid by supporting the current director in charge of this perv culture?

The American public would never have known about this secret culture of lax security and on the road perversion at the taxpayer's expense unless one of the prostitutes argued with two of the agents who refused to pay her.  She went to the local police and they called up the U.S. Embassy.  And then the White House heard the news.

Back in 2009 gate crashers, a couple and a single man, succeeded in entering the State dinner for the Indian Prime Minister and his wife.  The Secret Service blew it then too.  The agents on the Presidential Detail just don't seem to care or take their jobs seriously.  The public heard about the Salahis but not the third man.

Then in 2008, do you remember that weird shoe throwing incident?  A disgusted angry Iraqi journalist took off his shoe and threw it squarely at President George W. Bush, hitting him, at a Baghdad visit.  Of course, it was caught on tape.

A lot is just not right with the Presidential Detail of the Secret Service and the public is not happy about it.  What's worse is how President Obama is tacitly condoning this idiot behavior by supporting the U.S. Secret Service Director, Mark Sullivan.  This director knew about the culture and condoned it.  It's as simple as that.

This time a President was not harmed or assassinated.  If it happens again, because of these lax cowboys who don't care about what happens to their President, the country may not be so lucky.

Currently, the Secret Service investigates itself.  There is no outside agency or investigator to do so?  How can the public trust the report to be honest?

This disgusting and shameful incident points back to the obvious:  a complete disregard for women.  Most of these agents come from military backgrounds where the Pentagon has a deeply entrenched culture of hostility toward women.

The Pentagon stubbornly refuses to change their negative culture against women.  They still have not taken Rush Limbaugh show's off the Armed Forces Radio network where women are regularly trashed, mocked and treated with excessive disdain.

These men thought nothing of cheating on their wives.  They thought nothing of refusing to pay the prostitute.  Well, at least the prostitute had game; she stood up to them and reported them for nonpayment.

Meanwhile, the spin doctors and the apologists are out in the media full force like this is just an isolated incident.  No, this is just the time the rotten amoral culture finally got exposed.

Now get this, the Senate Judiciary Committee, the politicians that oversee the Secret Service, are still trying to figure out if they should launch an investigation into Prostitute Gate.  Are you kidding?  Why is the committee sitting on its hands?  Is this government at their finest?  They are probably waiting to see if it dies down in the news, hoping it will go away in this election year.

Well, at least Sec. of Defense Leon Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have the decency to say publicly they are mightily embarrassed.  Tell me, guys, how embarrassed are you at how badly women are treated in the military?  Does it take the pluck of one Colombian prostitute to rivet your focus upon the military's issues with how badly you condone abuse of and disrespect of women?

From Gen. Dempsey:  “What we do know is that several of our members distracted the issue from what was a very important regional engagement for our president.  We let the boss down because nobody is talking about what went on in Colombia other than this incident, so to that extent we let him down.”  Read that as we are embarrassed because our culture of corruption literally got caught with its pants down.

From Ron Kessler, author of "In The President's Secret Service":  "This really is the biggest scandal in the history of the Secret Service.  There's a culture in the Secret Service that's fostered by the management of just nodding, winking, favoritism.  What the agency needs is an outside director who can come in, clean house and change the standards."

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