There’s never a good time for Secret Service agents to have a lapse in judgment that potentially compromises the safety of the president, but there are times when such shortcomings are especially dangerous.
Now is that time.
Media outlets are reporting a second major failure by President Barack Obama’s Secret Service team.
An investigation about the first incident back in 2012 concluded that 10 personnel were involved in serious misconduct while cavorting with prostitutes in Colombia. President Obama chalked up the actions to that of a few “knuckleheads” and noted that 99.9 percent of the time, the Secret Service agents go above and beyond the call of duty. Officially, the investigation found that the president’s safety was not compromised (the agents were not on the president’s personal security detail at the time), but more than anything, the incident was an embarrassment and showed the agency’s perceived vulnerability.
The latest Secret Service failure is much more serious. Three agents who were on President Obama’s security detail in Amsterdam were put on administrative leave and flown back to the U.S. after they spent a night drinking and one of them ended up unconscious in a hotel hallway just hours before a classified briefing and the day before President Obama was scheduled to arrive in the country.
This is an especially troubling matter because these three men were part of the Secret Service Counter Assault Team, a unit that is directly responsible for fighting off assailants and drawing fire if the president or his motorcade is attacked. Lying unconscious in a hotel hallway leaves not only that agent’s personal safety at risk in that moment, but also negatively impacts his ability to perform a job that requires focus and acute attention to detail. Agents are forbidden to consume alcohol within 10 hours of an assignment, so this behavior seems to be in clear violation of that rule.
As for President Obama’s safety, it is a tense time internationally and at home. In addition to tough talks with Russia about Crimea, there are also important global discussions about nuclear security happening right now. Domestically, 2013 proved to be a heady time for White House security in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing and the much closer to home incident when a woman rammed a White House barricade with her car.
Obama received protection from a secret service detail during his first campaign for the presidency. That decision was made because of the unusually high number of credible threats to his safety. Now into his second term in office, President Obama is in need of just as much special attention, if not more.
The public is not privy to every threat made to the president and that is understandable. Only certain incidents make the news, but the negative sentiments of regular citizens and even elected officials are readily available and sometimes those sentiments are at worst frightening and at best disappointing. Some people still take issue with a black man being the leader of the free world. It is incomprehensible to them. Hence, the disgusting monkey photo a Belgian newspaper posted of President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama. Such ignorance could be taken as merely the unenlightened, but harmless, opinion of a few people.
However, there is no room to allow for the dehumanization of a world leader (or any other person) to go unchecked. A persistent narrative of a person not being human or deserving of respect is dangerous and creates an environment that encourages volatile behavior. President Obama has enough outside threats to deal with, he does not need his very own team to fail him at this critical time in history.
The president continued on his trip to the Netherlands without any other reported incidents.
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