The “stuff hit the fan” after the Washington Post put out the story about an ongoing investigation into what went on the night of March 4, 2015, when two Secret Service agents, one a top member of the president’s protective detail, drove a government car into White House security barricades after drinking at a late-night party eight blocks away.
Police officers on duty witnessed the incident and were going to arrest the two men and give them sobriety tests. But the officers were ordered by a supervisor on duty that night to let the men go home. This information was obtained from a current and a former government official familiar with the incident, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, according to the Washington Post.
But to make matters worse, the two agents, Mark Connolly, the second-in-command on Obama’s detail, and George Ogilvie, a senior supervisor in the Washington field office, apparently ran over a suspicious package before it had been determined to not be a threat. So basically, they disrupted a crime scene and destroyed the evidence, even though the threat was nothing more than a book.
According to witnesses, around 10:45 p.m., a woman got out of her blue Toyota car at the Southeast entrance to the White House and tossed a package wrapped in a green shirt at the entrance, yelling “It’s a bomb.” It was when police had cleared the scene and were investigating the suspicious package that the two Secret Service agents appeared on the scene.
A surveillance video is being studied, but witnesses say the agent’s car sped through police tape and ran into the barricade, toppling some barrels. The Pennsylvania woman in the car was tracked down two days later after getting away at the scene.
This latest incident involving the Secret Service is but one in a long string of mistakes the agency tasked with protecting the president has made. And again, there have been apparent attempts at covering the events up. This was true of past incidents, where an attempt to cover up unprofessional behavior came out in the media.
Now, all eyes are on Obama’s newly appointed Secret Service Director Joseph Clancy, deputy press secretary Eric Schultz told reporters on Thursday. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said he was concerned that the events of March 4 suggest some in the Secret Service feel they are above the law, and he may be right.
As many people could argue, if an ordinary citizen had run into that barricade, they would still be sitting behind bars today. So why must we allow two codes of conduct? What if that package had indeed been a bomb, instead of a book? The American public is being lied to and given misinformation, and worse still, it is on a need to know basis, and in this day and age, that is completely wrong.
Those two agents should have been arrested, we all know that. They should have been given sobriety tests. And what does our president have to say about his protective detail? Through a spokesman, he says he has complete confidence in Mr. Clancy.
