With the number of Secret Service members and agents caught up in the partying-with-prostitutes scandal in Cartagena now at a dozen, and six already gone, how much wider and deeper does this go?
No one can take pleasure in seeing Secret Service agents — whose deserved reputation is that they will “take a bullet” for the president, his family and all whom they protect — shamed and disgraced.
Yet one would have to be naive to believe this was some isolated incident. No sooner was the first day’s work done in Cartagena than 20 hookers were trooping into the hotel rooms of SS agents, supervisors and members of the military advance team.
And Sen. Charles Grassley asks a relevant question.
As the Secret Service travel and work in close contact with the White House Advance Office and White House Communications Agency, was the Obama staff oblivious to this misconduct? If they were aware of it, did no one report it to the White House chief of staff?
Hostile intelligence services often use “honey traps” to ensnare U.S. diplomats and journalists. Thus this hookers-and-agents scandal is no laughing matter.
And it hit just as we learned that the General Services Administration, purchasing agent for the U.S. government, shelled out $823,000 on a party for 300 employees at a casino-spa in Las Vegas, where the hired entertainment included a mind reader, a clown and a $75,000 bicycle-building exercise.
