The Secret Service's Sexual Misconduct Stretched Across 17 Countries

This article is from the archive of our partner .

There were more revelations in the ongoing Secret Service scandal today, as whistleblowers accused agents of years of sexual misconduct, according to Washington Post's latest report on the Senate's Homeland Security subcommittee hearings on the matter.

It seems that the Secret Service's bad behavior wasn't limited just to drunken romps with Colombian prostitutes, breaking into women's hotel rooms, and sending sexually suggestive messages to female subordinates. Agents have been partying around the world with the knowledge and tacit approval of their supervisors as well. For years.

Carol D. Leonnig and David Nakamaura's report claims that 17 countries were besmirched by the agents, though only one is mentioned by name: Thailand, where, in 2009, an agent missed his plane to South Korea because he was wasted in a brothel. He was flown back to the United States on a commercial plane "at great expense" while our national debt climbs ever higher. According to the whistleblower's testimony, he was never punished.

Here's another fun tidbit: Ignacio Zamora Jr., whose name you might recognize as the senior agent who was removed from President Obama's detail for that whole hotel-room-breaking-into and sext-sending-on-his-work-phone deal, was one of the leaders of the investigation into the Colombia incident.

Sen. Ronald Johnson, subcommittee member and eager Movember participant, said in a statement that having Zamora in charge of an investigation into sexual misconduct was like "a fox guarding the hen house."

A final report on a review of the Secret Service's culture, launched by Homeland Security Inspector General Charles K. Edwards, will be released "shortly," but there's some question into how thorough Edwards' investigation will be. He, too, is under investigation, and Johnson, a Republican, and Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Democrat, recently came together in a show of bipartisan harmony to call for his resignation.

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.