Inspector finds 'serious lapse' at Secret Service

Agents were pulled from White House duty to employee's home

WASHINGTON -- A government investigation Wednesday criticized a Secret Service assignment that pulled agents from their duty near the White House and sent them to the rural Maryland home of a headquarters employee embroiled in a personal dispute with a neighbor.

The conduct amounted to a "serious lapse in judgment," the inspector general of the Homeland Security Department, John Roth, said in a statement accompanying an investigative memo he released. "These agents, who were there to protect the president and the White House, were improperly diverted for an impermissible purpose."

Although agency officials insisted President Barack Obama's safety was not compromised, the report notes Obama was at the White House on at least two days the agents were "a 50-minute drive (without traffic) from the White House" checking on the headquarters employee. It found no legal justification for using Secret Service agents for such a purpose.

"The Secret Service's mission is to protect the president of the United States, and not to involve itself in an employee's purely private dispute best handled by the local police," Roth said.

A Secret Service spokesman, Ed Donovan, said in a statement, "The Secret Service has received the OIG memorandum and is reviewing it for findings." Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said he'd asked Joe Clancy, the acting director of the Secret Service, which is part of DHS, to "take any appropriate disciplinary action that he deems necessary and report back to me."

The report comes as Congress is investigating the Secret Service over a series of security breaches and scandals, including a recent incident where a man with a knife scaled the White House fence and dashed all the way into the East Room.