CARTAGENA, Colombia — An embarrassing scandal involving prostitutes and Secret Service agents deepened Saturday as 11 agents were placed on leave, and the agency designed to protect President Barack Obama had to offer regret for the mess overshadowing his diplomatic mission to Latin America.
The controversy also expanded to the U.S. military, which announced five service members staying at the same hotel as the agents in Colombia may have been involved in misconduct as well. They were confined to their quarters in Colombia and ordered not to have contact with others.
All the alleged activities took place before Obama arrived Friday in this Colombian port city for meetings with 33 other regional leaders.
Put together, the allegations were an embarrassment for an American president on foreign soil and threatened to upend White House efforts to keep his trip focused squarely on boosting economic ties with fast-growing Latin America. Obama was holding two days of meetings at the Summit of the Americas with leaders from across the vast region before heading back to Washington on Sunday night.
The Secret Service did not disclose the nature of the misconduct. The Associated Press confirmed on Friday that it involved prostitutes.
The White House said Obama had been briefed about the incidents but would not comment on his reaction.
“The president does have full confidence in the United States Secret Service,” presidential spokesman Jay Carney said when asked.
Carney insisted the matter was more a distraction for the media than Obama. But Secret Service assistant director Paul Morrissey said in a statement: “We regret any distraction from the Summit of the Americas this situation has caused.”
Rep. Peter King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, told the AP after he was briefed on the investigation on Saturday that “close to” all 11 of the agents involved had brought women back to their rooms at a hotel separate from where Obama is now staying.
The New York Republican said the women were “presumed to be prostitutes” but investigators were interviewing the agents.
The lawmaker also offered new details about the controversy.
King said he was told that anyone visiting the hotel overnight was required to leave identification at the front desk and leave the hotel by 7 a.m. When a woman failed to do so, it raised questions among hotel staff and police, who investigated. They found the woman with the agent in the hotel room and a dispute arose over whether the agent should have paid her.
King said he was told that the agent did eventually pay the woman.
The incident was reported to the U.S. embassy, prompting further investigation, King said
The 11 employees in question were special agents and Uniformed Division Officers. None were assigned to directly protect Obama. All were sent home and replaced, Morrissey said, given “the nature of the allegations” and a zero tolerance policy on personal misconduct.
The Secret Service says the incidents have had no bearing on its ability to provide security for Obama’s stay in Colombia.
Another jolt came Saturday when the U.S. Southern Command said five service members assigned to support the Secret Service violated their curfew and may have been involved in inappropriate conduct. Carney said it was part of the same incident involving the Secret Service.
As for the apparent misconduct by the military members, Gen. Douglas Fraser, commander of U.S. Southern Command, said he was “disappointed by the entire incident” and said the behavior was “not in keeping with the professional standards expected of members of the United States military.”
Col. Scott Malcom, chief of public affairs for Southern Command, said of the five service members: “The only misconduct I can confirm is that they were violating the curfew established. He said he had seen the news reports about the Secret Service agents involved in alleged prostitution at the hotel but could not confirm whether the service members also were involved.
The military is investigating.
The Secret Service agents at the center of the allegations had stayed at Cartagena’s five-star Hotel Caribe. Several members of the White House staff and press corps subsequently stayed at the hotel.
King credited the Secret Service director for acting quickly to remove the agents in question and replace them before Obama’s arrival.
A hotel employee, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of losing his job, said the agents arrived at the beachfront hotel about a week ago and said the agents left the hotel Thursday, a day before Obama and other regional leaders arrived for the weekend summit.
Three waiters interviewed by the AP at the hotel described the agents as drinking heavily during their stay.
On Friday, the hotel began filling up with the delegations of some of the more than 30 countries whose leaders are convening for the weekend Summit of the Americas.
The hotel’s public relations director, Ana Beatriz Angel, refused to comment on the incident, which she said “concerns only and exclusively the U.S. government.”
On the steamy streets of Cartagena, a resort city with a teeming prostitution trade, there was condemnation for the Secret Service agents for what residents saw as abusing their station and dishonoring their country.
Edwin Yepes, a souvenir vendor, said “they are supposed to come here and set an example. We are an inferior culture, and so it’s better if they don’t come than if they damage our image of them.”
Associated Press writers Ken Thomas and Ben Feller in Washington, Frank Bajak and Pedro Mendoza in Cartagena and Jennifer Kay in Miami contributed to this story.
All this at the expense of the American taxpayer ! And before you say my comment can’t be true , I know from experiance it is !
As much embarrassment as this will cause, it doesn’t compare to the embarrassment I will feel when Obama arrives.
Its funny, here in Argentina people will tell you they love Obama and then rail against the US Goverment.
Maybe we could arrange a trade?
We’ll give you Obama.
And take back our dignity?
Im from Maine myself, live here half the year, half the year back in Hancock County. Im not a big fan of Obama so I really have no interest in having him here in Argentina. Besides trading him for Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner is not much of a trade. They are both pretty much the same. They are one or two rungs above the clowns Chavez and Morales.
Now where are all the Liberals, I am sure they will blame Bush for this fiasco too.
Poor put upon GW. Your sensitivity to his legacy is like the princess and the pea, even when no one mentions the man.
Give it a rest! Oh my word I am so sick of hearing “blame it on Bush”. That’s an old saying.
So now it begins. I’d been wondering how the Republicans were going to try to win the November election with a candidate as weak as Romney and now I know. It’s going to be nearly seven months of persistent character assassination. Anything and everything that can be remotely tied to our President will be dragged out, hashed and rehashed in an attempt to discredit him. Faux News, the media arm of the party, will flourish.
The Republicans know that they’ve lost contact with the 1% – or even the 10% or 20% – so rather than talk about the issues the country is facing their strategy is going to be, “If you can’t win by talking about the issues, then talk about everything else.”
Oh, please. Your paranoia is showing.
We’ll see. there’s a fine line between paranoia and learning from past experience. There are still people beating the “birth certificate” drum.
for good reason
Yeah, they are crazy
Sounds to me like you believe they may have stolen a page from the Demoractic play book.
If this happened when Bush was president, it would be 24hr coverage by liberal media. Instead it is just a run of the mill story in Pravda on the Penobscot
That’s because Bush would have been found drunk in the room with the agent.
Im in South America and it is being reportedon TV here that the Secret Service Agents hired Colombian prostitutes for a large sex party and then refused to pay them. The prostitutes went riot in the hotel and the the local police had to send in the Riot Squad to secure control.
I think your confusing Bush with Clinton.
Sorry, unlike Bush, Clinton didn’t have to pay for it.
That’s because Bill was handsome once,not like the ferret GWB.
Bill was handsome many times, not just once.
You insight into the determination of what’s news to the liberal media is truly a revelation.
The story’s been out for one day.How do you know what will happen?I think this WILL be covered ad nauseum since nothing else is happening with primaries,debates,etc.And Darrell Issa’s already flapping his jaws.That creep never met a camera he didn’t love.
Guess this means that a few Americans had already consummated positive relations with Latin Americans even before the President arrived. If the people of Cartagena don’t approve of prostitution they should outlaw it rather than legalize it as they have done and allow it to become a “teeming prostitution trade.” As for our agents, they should feel free to sample everything another country has to offer as long as they can do it with a little discretion. Sounds like our men may have fallen more than a bit short there. If any of these men have wives back home, well that’s a whole other ballgame.
I want to see their expense accounts.
The expense will be classified as “undercover investigations”.
Oh come on Cheesecake, you know we payed for it! lol.
No we didnt, the Chinese did. We will get around to paying them back sometime in the next thirty years or so.
I saw a piece on government waste and “pork” a couple of months back on ABC news. It said how some dim wit in the Senate pushed through a bill that gave a community in China an economic and social development grant for $25 million. Guess how the geniuses paid for the grant? They borrowed the money from China! lol. I have to laugh about stuff like that so my head doesn’t explode. We keep sending greedy dim wits to Washington, on both sides of the aisle, and expect smart decisions. That makes us the rubes.
Driving into La Paz, Bolivia you enter a part of the city known as El Alto(the high). On walls and many buildings you see graffiti saying f— the USA, USAID out of Bolivia, White Devil Disciples of Bush burn and other interesing slogans in Spanish and English. In the midts of all this is a lovely statue of Che Guevara. I have seen the embassy of the US in La Paz and wonder how much that costs to maintain. Watch Bolivian TV(I get it here in Argentina) and you can see Evo Morales give his daily anti USA speach. I look at this and see only US Dollars, yours, mine and others poured right down the drain.
Borrowing money from someone only to give it back to them in a grant? That sounds about right for the bozos in Washington. Its a three ring circus run by five stat clowns. And yes, some of us are rubes. You might as well laugh as if you stop laughing you will just start crying.
Remember Proxmire’s “Fleece Awards?”Time for someone to bring that back.
No I dont, I do remember Tom Brokaws the fleecing of America.
American Express; Don’t leave home without it.
Its everywhere you want to be! Is that Visa or Mastercard?
Can you say “honeytrap”?
So, apparently Republicans want to keep women barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, and Democrats just want to keep women working in their “oldest profession”. What with parties in Vegas, and orgies in Columbia–I’d say the Obama administration is really so in touch with the average suffering American.
Looks like Mitt really does have the most sensible and capable adviser out there in his wife, Ann.
Secret service men are not part of the “Administration”, some are probably the same ones that hepled protect President Bush. I am not sure how you know what party they are in.
They work for the Treasury Department, which is headed by a guy that Obama picked, which is a Government Agency that Obama directs as part of his Presidential duties. I think of the President as the CEO of the US Government. He is the overall head and leader of the corporation. Anything that happens on his watch is something he ultimately has to answer for.
I think it is safe to say that Obama didnt tell these guys to act out this way. However at the end of the day they are his “employees” and their actions will rub off on him. I dont think it makes much sense to suggest these agents are all Democrats and had their behavior endorsed by the President. However I do think that people who make the point that there would be a different reaction if this occured under President Bush’s watch have a point.
The Secret Service is a Federal Law Enforcement agency; it initially fell under the Dept. of US Treasury but now is under Homeland Security, so it most definitely is a part of the “Administration”.
Other than the very highest appointees, they are civil service employees who carry over from administration to administration regardless of party.
this is not about republicans or democrats. What these agents did was not about obama. he had no play in this and they were removed and sent home for their actions. They acted on their own. Do not use this to judge a political party.
A fish rots from the head down.
They disgraced a service that has quite literally been asked to give their lives if necessary since 1865.Same with the military members.Most people think the Secret Service only provides protection.They do so much more(counterfeiting,border protection,etc.)
Except they didnt want to pay the ladies and then the ladies went riot and the local police(the riot police forces, they are called Infanteria in South America) had to be brought in. It is all over the TV here where I am in South America.
Is it possible the “ladies” didn’t measure up to the secret service’s standards?
Im guessing those types of ladies here in South America could put those types of ladies in North America to shame.
You sayin our girls don’t measure up?
The femnazis will crucify you.
I really dont see the big deal…….
The big deal is… I wasn’t there to……study,yea, that’s it, study the situation.
I think I smell grant money in this somewhere.
Obama was there to “boost economic ties”…….Looks like the Secret Service beat him to it.
Honey I’m Home…. I missed you so much, Lets snuggle (-;
Diseases along with the gewgaws for the kiddies.
Not sure why the President would be blamed for what grown men do before he is even in the country, except that it puts President Obama’s name in an article about prostitution.
The President is the CEO of the US Government in my opinion. Anything that any of his “employees” does reflects on him positively or negatively. It is the same idea as how the hunting incident Cheney had reflected poorly on Bush.
Nobody thinks any less of a CEO if one of his employees breaks the law. I have yet to hear of someone being accused of committing a crime having their job or CEO mentioned in the news unless that person is very very high up in a company.
Private Companies are one thing, the US Government and its employees is something else. There is a higher standard in my opinion.
I can assure you that if I got arrested for consorting with prostitutes it would reflect very bad on my employer and create problems for him. In the past I have had to suspend employees that had engaged in inappropriate behavior on their personal time based soley on how it reflected upon the company and how it created problems within the company.
Im not saying its fair, Im not saying the Obama is too blame for the behavior. Im just saying that the actions of the agents do create a bad impression of the types of people who work for the government in the eyes of many Americans.
So far from what I am seeing, Obama is taking a very appropriate stance on this and seems convincingly upset. He appears to be handling the situation correctly in my mind.
MSHA under Dale McCormick claims it to be all part of their wellness program…
LOL
They were only an advance team and on their own time. They let loose one night when one of them didn’t pay for his ‘girl’ starting this mess. A slight embarrassment until the media LET it overshadow his mission. Big deal. It’s the media acting like the National Enquirer.
News Organization in Latin America are reporting that some sort of orgy was taking place and that when the American Agents complained about the payment the prostitutes went on the rampage, calling in their pimps and setting parts of the hotel on fire. That may not be the case however it is what is being reported on TV news from Bolivia, Argentina, Chile and Venezuela.
Our last couple of communications seem to have gone the BDN-Disqus way! Are you a Mainiac? Your comments are the most even keeled I’ve seen here for awhile.
The agents were just trying to push Obama’s “stimulus” program & helping to further foriegn relations.
Can you image the big stink if these were some of GW’s men….The left would be asking for his resignation…
I am in Argentina and it is being reported on channels from Chile, Venezuela, Bolivia and Argentina, as well as CNN Latina that these Secret Service agents hired prostitutes and then refused to pay them. The prostitutes then created a massive distrubance, almost a riot in fact, in the hotel which required a strong police response.
If true, that is more offensive than hiring the prostitutes.
The latest here, coming from a news channel in Venezuela,(we dont get Colombian Channels) is indacting that some sort of large sex party involving several agents and women was taking place whena dispute developed over money. The women became very angry and called their employers or security and a large distubance, in which certain parts of the hotel were destoyed took place. One report is suggesting that a hotel room was lit on fire.
Local Television here in South America is suggesting that this was not a disagreement between one prostitute and one agent but that some sort of large sex party was happening involving a dozen participants and that a disagreement over payment developed. The ladies commenced to going riot(I am seeing reports that suggest a fire was started in a hotel room) and several of the ladies business partners(pimps) then came to the hotel and became involved as well.
Thank you for another perspective. While NBC. CBS etc showed the outside of the hotel, there were no fire trucks (file photos?). One source said that checkout time for the girls was 7AM, but only one raised a fuss about payment. None of what you said.
Either way, it overshadowed Obama’s trip (so did the Cuba question). Drunken orgy or not, it is still a little bit of a tempest in a teapot in the great scheme of foreign relations.
Once again, thanks for the input (even though I replied to the wrong post). We all need to hear the ‘other side of the story’. :)
One thing to keep in mind is that news tends to be extremely sensational here. The particulars I mention were coming from Venezuelan television and could be exaggerated propaganda. Thats how their news media operates. Its basically Hugo Chavez TV. They may be taking an opportunity to play up the story and embellish it some. What is being reported here on certain television channels may not be entirely true.
LOL Understood
Bush drunk?!! SURELY you must have meant ole Ted Kennedy! After all he was the poster child for drunk for you whiner liberals!!
Drunk=Bush in Maine
And to follow-up with my comment, I am not a Bush fan.
Does the President have food tasters too?
Good ol government relations where everybody is a prostitute.
Government: 0
msfreeh: 11
LOL!
I think they watched the GSA party and said
“we will be more discreet”. I know…I know…
it’s Bush’s fault.
Gen. Douglas Fraser, commander of U.S. Southern Command, said he was
“disappointed by the entire incident” and said the behavior was “not in
keeping with the professional standards expected of members of the
United States military.”
I guess General Fraser is in a different United States Army than the one I was. Soldiers have been consorting with prostitutes since before the time of the Roman Legions.
The story does not say if these men were on duty(Secret Service), if prostitution is legal in Columbia, and if my tax dollars were spent on the procurement of prostitutes, or alcohol. I am a Republican. I cannot make broad sweeping statements calling for anyone’s head until I hear the answers to these questions. I cannot blame the President for this, that is lunacy. These agents are most likely the same ones that protected Bush.
I guess the General has never heard of the Philippines…..
Jezz how secret is a service that can’t be secretly serviced by the oldest service in the world? The trick is you pay for that secret to remain secret and when to don’t pay the $47.00 owed, the trick may be on you? Talk about stupid and cheap, I hope it was worth it?
This reminds me of Jimmy Swagert trying to cheat a $20 hooker out of ten bucks, classy, very classy.