OPINION:
Nothing illustrates so well how rotten the Secret Service’s management culture is as an assistant director’s effort to retaliate against a member of Congress by advocating leaking embarrassing information about him.
Referring to Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), the agency’s chief critic in Congress, Assistant Director Edward Lowery wrote in a March 31 email to the Secret Service assistant director in charge of congressional and public affairs, “Some information that he might find embarrassing needs to get out,” according to a report by the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general. “Just to be fair,” he added.
The information in question was that Mr. Chaffetz had once applied for a job as a Secret Service agent and had been turned down. Two days after Mr. Lowery sent his email, The Daily Beast ran a story reporting that Mr. Chaffetz had once been rejected for a job at the service. Later that evening, the Washington Post reported additional details.
Besides abusing his position, Mr. Lowery and dozens of others who accessed Mr. Chaffetz’ file or circulated information from it violated the Privacy Act, which protects information about individuals in government files, the DHS report flatly stated. The fact that anyone in Secret Service management would push to leak confidential agency information to punish a critic who is trying to reform the agency is shocking enough. But it also confirms what I wrote in an epilogue to my book “The First Family Detail”: that President Obama’s decision to name veteran agent Joseph Clancy as Secret Service director guarantees that the agency’s scandals will continue.
Mr. Lowery was one of those individuals Mr. Clancy promoted to replace existing management in an effort he claimed with much fanfare in the press would change the culture of the agency. But as I wrote in the epilogue, “Clancy replaced them with managers who came from that same culture: Clancy was rearranging the chairs on the Titanic.”
Moreover, the fact that Mr. Lowery would send his outrageous email to another high-ranking Secret Service official and that the information from Mr. Chaffetz’ file was widely shared among the agency’s top management demonstrates that Mr. Clancy has done nothing to change the culture of the agency. In fact, Mr. Clancy recently claimed in a CNN interview that the Secret Service has no culture problem.
Mr. Clancy initially told investigators he knew nothing about the unflattering information circulating about Mr. Chaffetz within his own agency until he was informed last April 1 that the Washington Post planned to publish a story about the matter. But last week, Mr. Clancy said he wanted to revise his account and now remembers that a top deputy told him about it earlier. Without acknowledging that he did nothing about it, Mr. Clancy said he considered the information a rumor that did not point to inappropriate action by employees.
Yet Mr. Clancy had to know the Chaffetz information could only have been obtained by violating the Privacy Act. Mr. Clancy’s failure to initiate an investigation into the matter alone is reason for him to step down as director.
Nor should Mr. Clancy’s inaction come as a surprise. The fact that Mr. Clancy would do nothing to change the agency’s cover-up mentality should have been clear when he bobbed and weaved at a House Judiciary Committee hearing when he was acting director. When asked whether anyone would be held accountable for making false statements to the press about Omar J. Gonzalez’s dramatic intrusion into the White House a year ago, even though the Secret Service knew instantly that Mr. Gonzalez had penetrated the White House and was armed with a knife, Mr. Clancy never batted an eye when he insisted that the Secret Service did not intentionally issue the false information. Yet when asked how he knew the lies were not intentional, Mr. Clancy admitted he had no idea how or why the false statements were made.
An all-star panel appointed by Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to recommend reforms concluded that the Secret Service is “starved for leadership that rewards innovation and excellence and demands accountability.” It recommended that Mr. Obama appoint a director from outside the agency who could shake up the Secret Service and would not be part of the existing disastrous culture. A former FBI official would be ideal.
Instead, Mr. Obama ignored the panel’s advice and as the new director named Clancy, who had led the president’s Secret Service detail before retiring from the agency. Ever since the Secret Service allowed Michaele and Tareq Salahi into a White House dinner in 2009 when they were not on the guest list, Mr. Obama has been defending the agency’s management and has been blind to the need for a shake-up.
What is most shocking is that the president is putting himself and his own family at risk.
• Ronald Kessler, a former Washington Post and Wall Street Journal investigative reporter, is the author of “The First Family Detail: Secret Service Agents Reveal the Hidden Lives of the Presidents” (Crown Forum).
Please read our comment policy before commenting.