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ATLANTA - Kenneth Tate, the private security guard fired after photographing President Obama at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, says the day went from being among the best he had ever had to "a nightmare."

Tate, 49, said the high point of his $42,000-a-year job was when he was assigned to accompany the president during his visit to the CDC's Atlanta headquarters seven weeks ago for a briefing on the Ebola epidemic, reports The New York Times.

An investigation conducted shortly after the president's visit revealed that Tate was carrying a CDC-issued firearm, a violation of Secret Service protocols — and a security lapse that the agency's director at the time, Julia Pierson, never mentioned to the White House, the paper adds.

The Washington Post initially reported that Tate had been convicted of crimes, but subsequently corrected the claim.

Tate was fired about a week after the incident. Tate says he was following company protocol by carrying a weapon and his job that day was to run the service elevator for the president.

"All of us had weapons ... No one told us anything about (that) we weren't supposed to have our weapons," he said.

The incident at the CDC later added to a growing debate over whether the Secret Service was failing in its basic duties.

Pierson resigned. Tate, who says he has not found another job, believes he is the real victim. He says he tried to get the cell phone photo of the president later on, outside the CDC.

"I was shocked, I was trying to find out what was the problem, what was the issue," Tate said. "I didn't have anything and the detail was completed. All this stuff was out there that I was out there trying to take pictures and record them. That stuff never happened."

Tate says he was reprimanded by the Secret Service for taking photos of the president and being too close to the motorcade, but at the time he didn't know he was doing anything wrong. His former employer, Professional Security Corporation, didn't report 11Alive's phone calls, but is quoted in the New York Times article as saying Tate's description of the day's events is inaccurate.

Tate said if he had to do it all over again, he would never have taken any photos of the president. "To end up like this, I mean, it wasn't worth it," he said. "But if I known ... it would never have happened."

A Secret Service official said the inspector general's office of the Department of Homeland Security was investigating the incident, the Times reported.