An Interior spokeswoman did not immediately answer questions on how much the security detail cost or why Secretary Ryan Zinke, a former Navy SEAL, required one for a European vacation. | Getty Images Zinke brought security team to vacation in Turkey and Greece, records show

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and his wife took a security detail on their vacation to Greece and Turkey last year, official documents show, in what one watchdog group said could be a "questionable" use of taxpayer resources.

Zinke has faced questions for months over his travel expenses and use of official resources, as have other members of President Donald Trump's administration such as EPA leader Scott Pruitt, who was revealed Tuesday to have spent $30,000 on security for an official trip to Italy last year.


Unlike Pruitt, Zinke was not conducting government business during his two-week vacation, which included stops in Istanbul and the Greek Isles. The documents do not reveal exactly how many security personnel accompanied the couple, who paid for them, how much they cost or whether they traveled with Zinke and his wife, Lola, for the entire trip.

Interior provided U.S. Park Police officers for Zinke’s security because of worries of violence in the region, department spokeswoman Heather Swift said.

“The United States secretary of the Interior is in the presidential line of succession and has access to sensitive and classified information, which makes his protection a matter of national security,” Swift said. “In 2016 there were at least 5 terrorist attacks in Istanbul where the secretary traveled. During the period of travel there were several security incidents and threats in the region. Both of these considerations further merited a prudent security presence.”

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Only two agencies — the State Department and the Secret Service — have specific authority allowing them to provide security to executive branch officials, according to a Government Accountability Office report. Despite that, Cabinet members in the 1990s came under scrutiny for traveling with security teams, a matter the GAO reported on in 1994.

“It's not necessarily an abuse of authority or a waste of taxpayer dollars if there's a credible threat, but it can be questionable if an agency chief just wants a big entourage and the trappings of power,” said Nick Schwellenbach, director of investigations at the government watchdog group Project On Government Oversight. “Security personnel are not errand boys or girls and agency leaders are not royalty."

He added: "When it's a private vacation, there must be even more scrutiny given to these security arrangements than usual."

Obama administration Interior Secretary Sally Jewell abstained from traveling with security teams, said Kate Kelly, who served as senior adviser to Jewell and is now director of the public lands program at the Center for American Progress.

“I think, in her mind, it would have defeated the point of ‘getting away' and would have amounted to a totally unnecessary expense to taxpayers,” Kelly said.

Jewell, who was born in London, was not eligible to be in the line of succession.

Traveling with security staff even on official business is “incredibly expensive,” although the actual cost would depend on the nature of the trip and which department supplied the detail, said Chris Lu, a senior fellow at the University of Virginia's Miller Center who was a White House Cabinet administrator during the Obama administration.

Cabinet secretaries who required security for official travel would generally take two security personnel, one a “body man” who would stay close to the secretary and one “advance” who would arrange things at the destination, Lu said. The advance person would help a Cabinet secretary bypass the regular airport security lines and customs, pick the secretary up at the airport and drive him or her to the hotel and other destinations, said one source familiar with the process.

If safety was an issue in a foreign country, the department in question would have been expected to rely on the U.S. embassy in that country to provide security, Lu said.

"Unless there's a compelling national security justification, a Cabinet member should not bring a security detail on a personal vacation," Lu said. “We would not have allowed this practice during the Obama administration. The U.S. Treasury should not be your personal piggy bank."

The emails from Interior Special Assistant to the Secretary Caroline Boulton show that multiple members of a security team, one of whom was sent to the region in advance, were given temporary cell phones through which Zinke could contact them while there. One security team member was flagged in the email to be in Turkey in advance.

“For contacting your detail when they’re with you in Europe, these will be their temporary numbers,” Boulton wrote to Zinke on Aug. 3, the day before he was scheduled to leave. (The numbers themselves were redacted before Interior made the emails public as part of a batch of records it recently released under the Freedom of Information Act.)

According to an itinerary, Zinke arrived in Istanbul on Aug. 5 following an overnight flight from Washington and met his wife, Lola, who had been visiting Italy for the previous three weeks. The trip included "courtesy" visits with U.S. diplomats stationed in Istanbul and Athens, but the couple spent most of their time vacationing before returning to Washington on Aug. 19.

Lola Zinke shared photos of their vacation on her Twitter page and wrote that the couple was celebrating 25 years of marriage.

At the time of the trip, Interior would say only that Zinke was out of the country and provided no indication of when he left or would return. The vacation coincided with the tail end of the period Zinke had set aside to review national monument borders for a report he submitted to Trump on whether some of the protected areas should be shrunk. He supplied a draft to the White House later in the month, missing the deadline for a final report.

Zinke has already come under fire for mixing personal and official Interior business. Interior’s inspector general is scheduled to release its findings on his attendance at political events while on official travel around the middle of next month.

