(MintPress) – Fallout from the Secret Service’s prostitution scandal in Colombia last month continues as a recent Senate hearing saw Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman claim the agency has a litany of past sexual misbehavior and misconduct. But the Secret Service director says those claims are unfounded and that the group has been poorly portrayed since the scandal.
The director, Mark Sullivan, said that the scene in Colombia last month was an isolated incident and that the agents involved acted outside the values of the Secret Service, according to the Los Angeles Times.
“I’m confident this is not a cultural issue. This is not a systemic issue with us,” Sullivan said. “That type of behavior was just reckless.”
But several Secret Service agents and the findings of Liebermann may very well disagree with Sullivan’s stance. Recently, four agents fought back against their dismissal from the agency. According to a report from the Washington Post, several of the agents implicated in the scandal say the accounts of the trip have been misconstrued by media reports, claiming that many of the women the agents become acquainted with were not prostitutes.
The agents say their case is supported by an unwritten rule that condones sexual encounters with women while on official travel and that what they do on the road is not shared. The agents say that type of culture and activity has long been tolerated within the organization.
In an interview with the Washington Post, one of the implicated agents said they were told to follow loose guidelines when meeting women on the job. The agent said a senior security supervisor permitted one-night stands but told the agents that ties had to be cut when they left the country again.
A memo released to staff members after the incident emphasized self-awareness to the agents when they are on official duty.
“You should always assume you are being watched when on an official assignment,” the memo said. “Do not put yourself in a situation in your personal or professional life that would cause embarrassment to you, your family or the Secret Service.”
At a recent hearing, Sullivan publically apologized for the first time for the incident, noting that the agents did some “really dumb things,” saying, “I am deeply disappointed, and I apologize for the misconduct of these employees and the distraction that it has caused.’’
But Sullivan continued to deny that the culture detailed by other agents that describes unwritten rules allowing prostitution exists, standing by his story that the events in Colombia were an isolated incident.
Sen. Lieberman has assumed the role of contrarian to Sullivan’s claim, however, saying that an investigation he has led produced 64 instances of allegations of sexual misconduct made against agents of the Secret Service in the last five years, according to MercuryNews.
Lieberman said his investigation is incomplete, but that his findings have detailed agents sending sexually suggestive emails, while three instances charged that agents has inappropriate relations with a foreign national and another complaint claimed “non-consensual intercourse.”
“This was not a one-time event,” said Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee member Sen. Susan Collins of Maine. “The circumstances unfortunately suggest an issue of culture.”
Collins spoke against Sullivan at multiple hearings and dismissed his claim of the event as an isolated incident by saying two of the agents involved had tenure of 21 and 22 years, theorizing that their behavior was seen as appropriate by younger agents.
Lieberman also called Sullivan’s bluff, disagreeing with him that over the course of the Secret Service’s 147-year history that nothing like this has happened before abroad.
“It is hard for many people, including me, to believe that on one night in April 2012 in Cartagena, Colombia, 11 secret service agents – there to protect the president – suddenly and spontaneously did something they or other agents had never done before; that is to say, gone in groups of two, three or four to four different night clubs or strip joints and drank to excess and bring foreign national women back to their hotel rooms,” Lieberman said.