The two Secret Service agents who were drinking on the night they drove into a crime scene investigation near the White House almost ran over a “suspicious package,” sources told Fox News on Thursday.
The details of the March 4 incident come as officials seek to downplay what’s been the latest embarrassing episode for the troubled agency.Police were examining the package around 10 p.m. when the two senior agents – one of whom is a top member of President Obama’s protective detail – arrived at a guard shack checkpoint that had been vacated due to its proximity to the package, which turned out to be a book covered in a shirt.
But when the agents – identified as Mark Connolly, the second-in-command on Obama’s detail, and George Ogilvie, a senior supervisor in the Washington field office – realized the guard shack was unoccupied, the government car backed up a few feet and “nudged” an orange, four-foot-tall traffic barrel that had been placed in the roadway, sources said.
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The sources said the car did not appear to be out of control or traveling at a high rate of speed, and when the barrel was struck by the car, it did not tip over or cause damage to the vehicle. They nearly ran over the package that was being examined, although they did not run over it.
The incident, which happened during a steady downpour, was over in less than 30 seconds.
The Washington Post has reported that the officers on duty who witnessed the incident wanted to arrest the agents and conduct sobriety tests, but they were ordered by a supervisor on duty that night to let the agents go home. One source told Fox News they could smell alcohol on the agents, and said it was well-known that Secret Service agents had been attending the retirement party of spokesman Ed Donovan earlier that night.Another source told Fox News that Secret Service Director Joseph P. Clancy wasn’t notified immediately because the incident wasn’t initially seen as a problem, but that he and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson were notified the next day.
A spokesman with the Department of Homeland Security inspector general’s office told Fox News on Thursday that they are now investigating the incident, after it was referred by the Secret Service.
“We cannot discuss details of our ongoing investigation,” the spokesman said.
Obama was informed of the incident earlier this week, but has “full confidence” in Clancy, who took over the agency in February, White House Deputy Press Secretary Eric Schultz said Thursday.
But reaction on Capitol Hill has ranged from outraged to incredulous.“These embarrassing incidents have a profoundly negative effect on the reputation and motivation of thousands of hard-working Secret Service members who have committed their careers to protecting the president,” Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said in a statement Thursday. “A few bad apples are forcing the Secret Service to account for itself in the media and distracting it from a mission in which it must not fail. This is not acceptable.”
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