The two Secret Service agents accused of driving into a White House security barricade after a night of drinking also disrupted an active bomb investigation, according the Washington Post. Further, the agents may have actually run over the suspicious package before it had been determined to be a non-threat, current and former government officials told the Post.
AP
At around 10:25 p.m. on March 4, a woman reportedly exited her car at the White House’s southeast entrance and tossed an unknown package wrapped in a green shirt. She is reported to have yelled at officers, “It’s a bomb.”
As police cleared the scene and conducted it’s bomb investigation, two “high-ranking” Secret Service agents were driving back to the White House from a “work party at a Chinatown bar,” according to the report. Read more:
According to people familiar with the incident, they drove through police tape and then hit a temporary barricade, using the car to push aside some barrels. An agency official said Thursday that the car was not damaged.The episode was caught on surveillance video. Investigators who have reviewed the tape of the incident say it is not clear if the pair drove very close to or over the suspicious item wrapped in the shirt, one law enforcement official said.
[…]
The agents under investigation are Mark Connolly, the second-in-command on Obama’s detail, and George Ogilvie, a senior supervisor in the Washington field office.
The suspicious package was eventually determined to be a non-threat and agents tracked down the woman responsible days later and questioned her about the incident.
But the Secret Service agents were not arrested. Senior supervisors apparently told officers, who wanted to make the arrests, to let the agents go. They have since been assigned to “non-supervisory, non-operational assignments,” an Secret Service official told the Post.
The incident is just the latest in a string of mistakes made by the agency tasked with protecting the president. The Associated Press reports:
In the last six months, several top agency officials, including former Director Julian Pierson, have been forced out amid revelations of multiple, serious presidential security breaches. In September, a Texas man armed with a knife was able to climb a White House fence and run deep into the executive mansion before being apprehended.
Read the Washington Post's full report here.
