Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told the Senate Judiciary Committee this morning that the Secret Service sex scandal doesn’t appear to represent a wider problem.
“I asked the same question,” she said when asked by Chairman Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) about concerns over whether the Colombia incident was the first time agents had engaged in such behavior. “Over the past two and a half years the Secret Service office of professional responsibility has not received any such complaint.”
“There was nothing in the record to suggest that this behavior would happen,” she added. “…It was really a huge disappointment to the men and women of the Secret Service.”
“Do you think the agents were confused that their conduct was wrong?” asked Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).
“They should not have been,” Napolitano said.
Graham suggested reforms that could include unannounced supervisor checks on Secret Service personnel, as in the military, to “change the system so that people who are away from home never think they’re really away from home.”
He also asked Napolitano if exit interviews were conducted with Secret Service personnel that asked about misconduct they’d witnessed while in the agency. She said she’d have to look into that.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member