By LAURIE KELLMAN and ALICIA A. CALDWELL
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — No excessive drinking – and no
alcohol at all within 10 hours of working. Disreputable establishments are off limits, as is entertaining foreigners in the
hotel room.
photo, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington before the Senate Judiciary
Committee hearing on the Secret Service prostitution scandal. Seeking to shake the disgrace of a prostitution scandal, the
Secret Service late Friday, April 27, 2012 tightened conduct rules for its agents to prohibit them from drinking excessively,
visiting disreputable establishments while traveling or bringing foreigners to their hotel rooms. . (AP Photo/Susan Walsh,
File)
Those are among the tightened conduct rules the
Secret Service issued Friday for its agents and employees. They apply even when traveling personnel are off duty.
The
new behavior policies, issued in a memorandum obtained by The Associated Press, are the agency’s latest attempt to shake off
a prostitution scandal that surfaced as President Barack Obama was headed to a Latin American summit in Cartagena,
Colombia.
The embattled Secret Service director, Mark Sullivan, urged agents and other employees to “consider your
conduct through the lens of the past several weeks.”
Sullivan said the rules “cannot address every situation that our
employees will face as we execute our dual-missions throughout the world.” He added: “The absence of a specific, published
standard of conduct covering an act or behavior does not mean that the act is condoned, is permissible or will not call for –
and result in – corrective or disciplinary action.”
“All employees have a continuing obligation to confront expected
abuses or perceived misconduct,” Sullivan said.
Ethics classes will be conducted for agency employees next
week.
The agency-wide changes were intended to staunch the embarrassing disclosures since April 13, when a
prostitution scandal erupted in Cartagena involving 12 Secret Service agents, officers and supervisors and 12 more enlisted
military personnel who were there ahead of Obama’s visit to the Summit of the Americas.
But the new policies raised
questions about claims that the behavior discovered in Cartagena was an isolated incident: Why would the Secret Service
formally issue new regulations covering thousands of employees if such activities were a one-time occurrence?
“It’s
too bad commonsense policy has to be dictated in this manner,” said Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, a member of the Senate
Judiciary Committee. “New conduct rules are necessary to preventing more shenanigans from happening in the future, and
whether these are the best, and most cost effective, rules to stop future misconduct remains to be seen.”
The new
rules did not mention prostitutes or strip clubs, but they prohibit employees from allowing foreigners – except hotel staff
or foreign law enforcement colleagues – into their hotel rooms. They also ban visits to “non-reputable” establishments, which
were not defined. The State Department was expected to brief Secret Service employees on trips about areas and businesses
considered off-limits to them.
During trips in which the presidential limousine and other bulletproof vehicles are
transported by plane, senior-level chaperones will accompany agents and enforce conduct rules, including one from the
agency’s Office of Professional Responsibility.
In a Wonderland moment, the operator of the “Lips” strip club in San
Salvador, Dan Ertel, organized a news conference late Friday and said he didn’t know whether any Secret Service employees
were among his customers. Ertel said the club was the only one in the country where prostitutes don’t work. But a dancer who
identified herself by her stage name, Yajaira, told the AP earlier in the day that she would have sex with customers for
money after her shift ended.
“You can pay for dances, touch a little, but there’s no sex,” she said. “But if somebody
wants, if they pay me enough, we can do it after I leave at 3 in the morning.”
The chairman of the House Homeland
Security Committee, Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., praised the new rules as “very positive steps by the Secret Service to make
clear what is expected of every agent and also makes clear what will not be tolerated.”
The Secret Service already has
forced eight employees from their jobs and was seeking to revoke the security clearance of another employee, which would
effectively force him to resign. Three others have been cleared of serious wrongdoing. The military was conducting its own,
separate investigation but canceled the security clearances of all 12 enlisted personnel.
Homeland Security Secretary
Janet Napolitano assured senators earlier this week that the incident in Colombia appeared to be an isolated case, saying she
would be surprised if it represented a broader cultural problem. The next day, the Secret Service acknowledged it was
investigating whether its employees hired strippers and prostitutes in advance of Obama’s visit last year to El Salvador.
Prostitution is legal in both Colombia and El Salvador.
In a confidential message to senators on Thursday, the Secret
Service said its Office of Professional Responsibility had not received complaints about officer behavior in El Salvador but
would investigate.
On Capitol Hill, early signs surfaced of eroding support for the Secret Service director. Grassley
said Sullivan’s job could be secure if the scandal were an isolated incident. “But if it goes much deeper, you know, nothing
happens or nothing’s changed in Washington if heads don’t roll,” Grassley said on CBS “This Morning.”
The White
House said the president remained supportive of Sullivan and confident in the capabilities of the Secret Service.
