A recent news article claims that Secret Service agents were used to protect another employee during a bitter dispute with a neighbor. The article implies that this was an abuse of government resources. A quick glance at the news comments section reveals (no surprise) a seething cauldron of anti-government vitriol.
However, I submit this: By extending security resources to protect another agency employee, the Service has guaranteed that employee’s continued loyalty to the organization. It will be virtually impossible for this employee to become disgruntled and turn to a foreign master (as Ames, and Hannsen did). From a counterintelligence perspective, this is a very wise investment that will pay big dividends.
Its kind of hard to tell whether there was a real abuse of resources, since one version of the story is that an important unit for guarding the WH spent a whole summer watching a house for a project that didn’t have anything to do with their duties.
The other version is that the watch only took a few days, didn’t pull any agents that were supposed to be guarding the WH and that providing security for other SS employees is part of the mandate of the agency.
Either version seems plausible, so it’s kind of hard to know if there’s any there there.
“Top Secret Service officials ordered members of a special unit responsible for patrolling the White House perimeter to abandon their posts over at least two months in 2011 in order to protect a personal friend of the agency’s director, according to three people familiar with the operation.
…
Agents were told that then-Director Mark Sullivan was concerned that his assistant was being harassed by her neighbor, the three people said.”
If the person in question was an employee, why was she characterized as “a personal friend”?
"The trips began June 30, 2011, and extended through the summer before tapering off in August, …
An alarming reminder of the potential for danger came in November 2011, weeks after Operation Moonlight had ended, …"
If the second event occurred while there normal contingent were in place on the Eclipse, that would suggest that removing them temporarily really doesn’t matter, doesn’t it?
I will certainly take care never to threaten any of my neighbors who happen to work at Homeland Security, though, either before or after they get a restraining order against me.