Secret Service Director Joseph Clancy said that as of today that dozens of agents will receive short suspensions for inappropriately accessing a personnel file on Congressman Jason Chaffetz.

The agent who spearheaded the smear campaign on Chaffetz, the chairman of the House committee charged with Oversight of government departments, will also be punished, Clancy told lawmakers today.

The Department Homeland Security is still processing his case, though, he said, and has not yet decided how to deal with him.

'I've heard the comments that were made today, they're reprehensible, disturbing, embarrassing - I agree with everything that's been said here today, and my work workforce does as well,' Clancy said during the Capitol Hill hearing.

SORRY: Secret Service Director Joseph Clancy said that as of today, some 42 agents will receive short suspensions for illegally accessing a personnel file on Congressman Jason Chaffetz

Clancy said he welcomes congressional review of the agency because it helps to convey the seriousness of the wrongdoing to his employees.

The government agency sends law enforcement officers through training and ethics classes, he said, but a 'hearing like this puts a definitive stamp on our failures.'

A retired agent who served on Bill Clinton's protective detail when he lived in the White House, Clancy was installed as the acting Secret Service director a little under 14 months ago after his predecessor, Julia Pierson, stepped down during another scandal.

President Obama named him permanent director of the protective organization in February in spite of a November 2014 Department of Homeland Security review of the organization that called for new management from the outside.

Less than two months after Clancy formally took over the post, in April, the Daily Beast ran a story revealing that Chaffetz applied for and was rejected from a job with the Secret Service in 2003.

Around that time Chaffez, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, was looking into a report that two drunken Secret Service agents interrupted a suspicious package investigation when they collided a government vehicle into a barrier in front of the White House.

A DHS Office of Inspector General Report published at the end of September singled out Assistant Director Edward Lowery of the Secret Service as the instigator of the smear-campaign on Chaffetz, though it could not 'conclusively' determine he was the leaker.

'Some information that he might find embarrassing needs to get out,' Lowery told a colleague in a March 31 email that was later circulated within the department. 'Just to be fair,' he wrote.

Clancy first said he heard a 'rumor' about Chaffetz's application on April 1. He later amended his statement to say he knew about it on March 25.

But as he told lawmakers today, it was just prattle at the time, and he thought little of it.

'I've heard the comments that were made today, they're reprehensible, disturbing, embarrassing - I agree with everything that's been said here today, and my work workforce does as well,' Clancy said during the Capitol Hill hearing

After DHS's inspector general went public with his report, which accused 45 officers of misconduct in the case, Clancy personally called Chaffetz to apologize.

'That ain't good enough,' Chaffetz said at the time. 'I worry that if they're doing this to me, they're doing it to who knows how many other people.'

John Roth, the IG for DHS, told lawmakers today at a joint hearing between Homeland Security subcommittees in the House and Senate that it's impossible to know whether agents improperly accessed other Americans' personal information, as well.

The data base the Secret Service is using was created in 1994, he said, and it doesn't have the functionality to easily track those sort of records.

For that reason the IG's office had to narrowly search Congressman Chaffetz's name for its investigation, Roth said.

'That's a bit unsettling,' Congressman Scott Perry, the head of the House subcommittee sponsoring the hearing, told him.

Of the 45 agents implicated in the data breach, approximately 42 of them are being brought to justice today, Clancy disclosed at the hearing.

They are receiving three to 12 day suspensions, he said, in accordance with a writ handed down by DHS, the parent organization of the Secret Service.

The other agents' fates, including Lowery's, haven't been determined, he said. They could receive anything from a reprimand in the form of a letter to dismissal from their jobs.

'The misconduct outlined in the report is inexcusable and unacceptable,' Clancy told legislators.

Roth said his department believes that Secret Service agents violated the law when they looked into Chaffetz's records, and as such are subject to a misdemeanor charge and the resulting fine.

But the agents invoked their fifth amendment rights, 'se we could not interview individuals, compel their interview, which we ultimately had to do in this case for a lack of voluntary cooperation,' he said.

Without those interviews, Roth said the case against them was not strong enough, and the Department of Justice therefore declined to prosecute them.

Around the time that Chaffez, seen above with his wife on Capitol Hill on October, was looking into a report that two drunken Secret Service agents interrupted a suspicious package investigation when they collided a government vehicle into a barrier in front of the White House, someone at the Secret Service leaked his personnel file to a reporter

'It seems like all of this has happened with a great impunity...."You cant touch me," as the chairman just talked about, or it's OK to do this,' North Dakota Senator Heidi Heitkamp told Clancy.

Consequences are part of changing the culture at the Secret Service, she said, 'but what about the integrity at every level, of basically saying, We don't do this.'

'We don't go to hotels and, you know, hire people to service us...We don't drive into the White House and disrupt a major investigation. We don't access a congressman's secret records. We don't do that.....how are we training people at every level to stand up and stop this behavior?' the Democrat asked.

'Because I don't think we can do it, just having hearings like this,' she said.

The ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, Bennie Johnson, told Clancy in his opening statement, 'There must be some sweeping changes made at the Secret Service.'

'I know that the deeply-rooted problems will not cease over night, but we must get to the source of them, instead of continuing glossing over, putting on band aides, and going forward with business as usual,' the Mississippi Democrat said.

Since the report on Chaffetz this fall, the Secret Service has found itself in the spotlight two more times - once when agents were caught sleeping on the job and once when an agent got caught up in a criminal case that resulted in his arrest.

Lee Robert Moore, a 37 year-old-agent who worked at the White House, admitted last week to sending a picture of his genitals to someone he thought was a 14-year-old-girl. He was actually caught up in a predator fishing expedition by Delaware police.

If convicted of the crime, he could receive up to 10 years in prison.

Since the report on Chaffetz this fall, the Secret Service has found itself in the spotlight two more times - once when agents were caught sleeping on the job and once when a White House agent got caught up in a criminal case that resulted in his arrest

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said last Friday that the allegations against Moore 'are disgusting and allegations that the administration, including the Secret Service, takes quite seriously.'

After the Secret Service learned of Moore's misconduct, Earnest said they immediately took away his security clearance and cut off his access tp the White House.

Shortly after those steps were taken, the White House was informed, the Obama administration official said.

'And I think the prompt and decisive action that was taken...I think is an endorsement of their commitment to implementing the kinds of reforms that are needed at the Secret Service to ensure that that agency continues to live up to the high standard that they’ve established for themselves,' Earnest asserted.

The president's spokesman noted how well the agency handled Pope Francis' visit to the United States and the UN General Assembly meeting in New York in September, saying it was 'a strong performance by the agency.'

'And I think an indication that that is an agency that is both well-managed, but also stocked with professionals who are committed to their job,' he said.

Asked if the president still has 'confidence' in Clancy's ability to lead the scandal-plagued organization, Earnest promptly replied, 'Without a doubt.