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WASHINGTON – Lawmakers expressed outrage on Tuesday at the punishments imposed on Drug Enforcement Administration agents who were accused of participating in sex parties with prostitutes while stationed in Colombia.

Democratic Representative Elijah Cummings said in a hearing that the panel had begun an investigation into a report by the Justice Department’s inspector general that detailed allegations of sexual misconduct and the misuse of government funds by 10 DEA agents.

Seven of the agents admitted to participating in the sex parties and those involved received suspensions of two to 10 days.

The report was released last month, but the committee disclosed new information showing that DEA agents in Bogota were taking part in sex parties with prostitutes as early as 2001 — years earlier than previously known.

“This new internal report describes not one or two isolated incidents, but literally dozens of parties with prostitutes,” Cummings said at the hearing, adding the report portrayed “a DEA agency as completely out of control.”

During the hearing, lawmakers asked Michele Leonhart, the DEA administrator, why the offences had not merited harsher penalties.

“When we have bad apples who repeatedly do the same type of behaviour, compromise our national security, then they need to lose their national security clearances and they need to be fired,” said committe chairman Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah.