SilvaThe uproar over a dozen Secret Service agents and officers who solicited prostitutes while on duty in Cartagena, Colombia earlier this month is now the source of some tension between the United States and Colombia’s top diplomat here.
Ambassador Gabriel Silva would like an apology for the agents’ wild evening in which they, along with another dozen military officers, reportedly hired as many as 20 or 21 sex workers while in Cartagena preparing for President Obama’s participation in the Summit of the Americas in the resort city, according to statements Silva made to the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo.
Even though Colombia allows prostitution in designated zones, Silva believes the agents’ behavior sullied Cartagena’s reputation, and in return, the ambassador would like an apology from the White House.
“The U.S. should apologize further,” he said in comments translated by the New York Daily News. “It is necessary, and I want to hear it from the White House.”
While the Secret Service has completed its internal investigation into its agents’ nocturnal activities—nine of the employees implicated are no longer with the agency, including the high-ranking supervisor who also had a thing for Sarah Palin—new allegations have surfaced in the past day suggesting there may have been similar situations in other countries. On Thursday, Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, told The Washington Post he is investigating allegations that Secret Service agents may have acted in appropriately while in El Salvador.
Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) has one possible remedy to the Secret Service’s apparent knack for illicit behavior while working in a foreign country: Hire more female agents. In a press release from her office, Norton called on the agency to “to move aggressively to give women more opportunities for employment.” Currently, only 11 percent of Secret Service employees are women, Norton’s office said.
Norton held up the example set by Paula Reid, the Secret Service’s highest-ranking female agent, who as the Miami bureau chief was responsible for pulling the agents in Colombia from the field after the allegations about their activity was first reported.
“There is no vaccine against improper conduct except a person’s own integrity,” Norton said in the release.”However, the actions by the agents in Colombia are one more important reason for Director Sullivan and the Secret Service to go beyond the usual visits to colleges and other outreach that has clearly been ineffective in integrating the 90 percent male Secret Service agent workforce. Today, there are women who not only meet the necessary qualifications to be agents but who have chosen to live their lives no differently from the men who now serve, just as women in the Armed Services do.”
Since ensuring that the the agents involved in the Colombia scandal were publicly rebuked, Reid has become something of a rising star at the Secret Service. “If every boss was Paula Reid, the Secret Service would never have a problem,” one former agent told the Post earlier this week.
