Admitting They Have A Problem

Quite literally: Secret Service, go home, you're drunk. wapo.st/1gzLb1v via @washingtonpost—
Amanda Cormier (@amandalcormier) March 26, 2014

Ambinder believes the Secret Service needs an intervention:

The Secret Service has a drinking problem. It’s much worse than any other cultural deficit the elite agency has. It’s more widespread than sexism, certainly, and the other isms that have been attached to the agency since the prostitution scandal in Cartagena, Colombia. It’s something that every journalist who covers the White House kind of knows, intuitively, if they’ve ever traveled with the president. Pick your favorite White House correspondent and ask him or her whether agents on President George W. Bush’s detail created problems at the Wild West saloon in Waco. One former White House scribe told me that although reporters regularly witnessed agents drinking heavily before shifts, “we just assumed they could control themselves. After all, they were the ones who were the most responsible of all of us.”

For the most part, the agents are fine the next day. The job is stressful. But looking back at a string of incidents, many of them not well-publicized, over-consumption of alcohol is the common denominator. Sometimes, agents drinking alone make bad choices. But often, agents drinking with each other don’t have the foresight, or the ability, frankly, to tell their colleagues to stop drinking without losing face.

Margaret Carlson adds that the punishment for Colombia’s escapades obviously didn’t teach them a lesson:

Note that it wasn’t a supervisor or another agent who was worried that this behavior could compromise the agency. It was the locals — which gets to the real problem in the Secret Service. The job brings with it hours of boredom for men (it’s mostly men) ever-ready to take a bullet for the president (and a long list of lesser officials), followed by moments of danger, real and imagined. There are many nights and days away from home on an expense account, in exotic locales, some where prostitution is legal or easy to access. The temptation to turn advance trips into spring break is great.

Previous coverage of Secret Service shenanigans here.