Again? Agents likely 'impaired' in White House incident

WASHINGTON -- What were they thinking?

For months, new Secret Service director Joseph Clancy had been warning agents and officers misconduct and drunken shenanigans would not be tolerated in the once-vaunted law enforcement agency.

And yet, according to investigators, two senior Secret Service agents spent five hours at a bar, ran up a significant tab and then drove back to the White House, where they shoved their car into a construction barrier and drove within inches of a suspicious package earlier this year.

All this just months after Secret Service director Julia Pierson was ousted in the aftermath of a series of embarrassing security breaches involving Secret Service agents and officers.

George Ogilvie and Marc Connolly "more likely than not" were impaired by alcohol when they drove through a secure area at the White House earlier this year, the Homeland Security Department's inspector general said in a new report released late Wednesday.

They were among dozens of agency personnel who went to a retirement party for another agent, but when the party wrapped up March 4, the pair and two non-agent Secret Service employees stuck around the Irish-themed bar for three more hours.

Ogilvie, the assistant special agent in charge of the agency's Washington field office, opened a tab and paid for eight scotches, two vodka drinks, three beers and a glass of wine. The incident became public days later and forced Clancy to follow in the steps of Pierson and head to Capitol Hill to explain a Secret Service scandal to lawmakers.

In a statement Wednesday, the agency's third director in less than three years said he was "disappointed and disturbed at the apparent lack of judgment described in this report. Behavior of the type described in the report is unacceptable and will not be tolerated."

Inspector General John Roth's 18-page report on the incident said Ogilvie, Connolly and their two companions all denied drinking all the drinks Ogilvie paid for before driving his government sport utility vehicle into a secured area at the White House, pushing a large construction barrier with the vehicle's bumper and passing within inches of a suspicious item that had been left in the area.

Roth was expected to testify about his investigation before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Secret Service officers on duty and investigating the suspicious item when Ogilvie and Connolly drove through later told investigators they thought something was "not right" and the two were "not making sense" as they spoke to officers on the scene.

None of the on-duty officers gave the agents a field sobriety test.

Both instead were allowed to leave the White House complex driving government-owned vehicles, despite a watch commander's concern Connolly was not fit to drive.

In advance of the report's release late Wednesday, Connolly, the deputy special agent in charge of the Presidential Protection Division, notified the agency he would retire. Ogilvie has been placed on administrative leave.

The incident once again focused a congressional spotlight on an agency that didn't need more attention for scandals. The agency has been in the spotlight since 2012, when more than a dozen agents and officers were caught up in a prostitution scandal in advance of a presidential trip to Colombia. Since then, there have been a handful of other incidents, the most serious being a security breach at the White House in September.

In that incident, a Texas man armed with a knife was able to climb over a perimeter fence and run deep into the White House before being apprehended.

It later was revealed a few days before that incident, President Barack Obama rode an elevator in Atlanta with an armed contractor.

The Secret Service didn't know the man was armed until after Obama got off the elevator.

Pierson's handling of those incidents ultimately led to her ouster. An independent panel concluded the agency was "insular" and in need of new leadership.

The panel recommended hiring a new director from outside the agency, but Obama instead chose Clancy, a retired agent who once ran the president's protective detail.