Does the Secret Service have specific rules about not hiring prostitutes while traveling? Is prostitution illegal in Columbia?
Would it matter if the agents were single? What if the agent’s spouses gave them permission to use prostitutes. Would it have been different if the women weren’t prostitutes, but just women that they picked up in a bar?
Sounds like this is more of an embarrasment issue to the agency.
Prostitution is legal in some of Columbia but that doesn’t really matter when you are a Secret Service Agent as opposed to some businessman on vacation. They are held to a very high ethics and conduct standard for good reason. The agents had the details of the President’s movements minute by minute on them and yet they fraternized with parts of the local population that should not be anywhere near them or that type of information. They were in the country for a specific reason and engaging prostitutes in antithetical to that.
People with jobs like the Secret Service’s protection detail should as a matter of policy not engage in unsavory activities, whether legal or not. It exposes them to scrutiny, makes information less secure, and leads to the possibility of blackmail or extortion.
In addition to what Shagnasty said, there’s this from the CNN article:
[QUOTE=CNN]
The Americans don’t seem to have broken the law in Colombia, where soliciting prostitutes is legal in some parts of the country, he said. But the congressman – a leading Obama administration critic – **said the conduct could have posed a security risk to the president by exposing Secret Service agents to blackmail.
**
“What’s legal in one country still could lead to a married man being blackmailed,” he said.
[/QUOTE]
(bolding mine)
It’s an issue of operational security. The agents had classified materials in their rooms, including copies of the president’s schedule. What if those women had been spies, or had planted eavesdropping or surveillance equipment? What if it was a dry run by a drug cartel or al Qaeda to breach the Secret Service perimeter for something more nefarious?
Seems like the concern was over married agents being blackmailed. What if the agent was single, would that have made a difference? What if an agent in question, routinely and openly frequented prostitutes in Vegas while in the US?
So they would have been fired, even if they hadn’t picked up prostitutes, but just a woman at the bar in their hotel? I highly doubt that.
You can’t do any of that if you are a Secret Service Agent. Don’t you understand the concern? Nobody forced them to take the job. It is one of a number of jobs where general conduct, ethics, and plain common sense is held to a higher standard than other people. We don’t want people with classified information to fraternize with people’s whose ethical standards may be just a little lower.
When you have a security clearance, pretty much any contact with foreign nationals (beyond normal social interaction with strangers) needs to be reported to your security manager. If you’re single and you’re stationed in Columbia, and you go on a date or two with a Columbian citizen, no sex involved, you should still be reporting that to your security manager so it can be documented and examined. Failure to do so can jeopardize your clearance. And that’s just for a DoD clearance, I don’t know what hoops the secret service has to go through.
A single (non-married) secret service agent frequenting American prostitutes in Vegas? No idea how they’d view that. But change the nationality of the prostitutes and things change big time.
I have a good friend that is on Obama’s personal security detail, and was on Cheney’s personal detail before that. He was not part of the advance detail in Columbia. So, yes I completely understand what is required for the job. But at the same time, they don’t routinely inquire about his personal habits and the ethical nature of them.
The problem in this situation, is that it was an embarrasment to the agency. There’s nothing unethical about being single and picking up someone in a bar and having consensual sex with them in your hotel room, and some posters here are alluding that would be grounds for dismissal as well.
Ethics has nothing to do with it.
This is just like the GSA scandel. We don’t pay taxes so the secret service guys can fly down to Columbia for hookers and blow. Well, we do, but we shouldn’t. They got there on my dime, they are staying in a nice hotel on my dime and they are drawing a salary to do a job, on my dime. In their jobs they represent the USA and the office of the president. It’s not good enough to claim that their activites are probably legal, in Columbia.
So someone with a security clearance whose spouse or whole family are foreign nationals does what exactly?
Off topic butit occured to me a while back that were he not CIC Obama would likely have been turned down for a security clearance, and then people wonder why the US government is stodgy and groupthinky.:smack:
You do? Then why don’t you ask him what the problem was? Did you start this thread as some sort of “gotcha” thing or what?
I mean, you posted in GQ so you were seeking information, yet when it’s given to you, you immediately call bullshit on it, and then tell us about your “good friend”. WTF?
It’s fine as long as you disclose everything. If you’re married to a foreign national, their background will be closely scrutinized, but if they don’t find anything, you’ll still likely get your clearance. I mean, getting stationed overseas and coming back married is a time-honored tradition. The import thing is that you don’t accidentally forget that you’ve been dating an Iranian national for the last 3 years. They frown on that.
Considering I haven’t had a chance to talk to him about the specifics, I thought I would ask here first. And I would hardly say that the responses given have been the definitive answers to my question, but more speculation as to why they agents in question were fired, and not based upon knowledge of any actual policies the agency has in place.
“Ok before we start this date I need to ask where your parents are from” seems like it could happen accidentally.
So if you are traveling on business, you are not allowed to do anything on your free time? It hasn’t been alleged that the agents in question, didn’t do their jobs while they were there.
“I swear, I had no idea those Columbian prostitutes weren’t American citizens! And then I accidentally in their vaginas!”
The country is called Colombia. Columbia is a college in New York, a river and county in Washington, and the name of the district where the U.S. capital is located. And yes, I would expect Secret Service agents to know better than to get busy with prostitutes while they are on the job setting up advance security for the president.