The secret service has fresh allegations to add to its rapidly growing inbox of failures and scandals, after it was reported that one of its agents divulged sensitive information about President Obama’s movements in the final days of the 2012 presidential election to the campaign of Republican nominee Mitt Romney in an attempt to impress a woman.



The latest report comes from Shawn McCoy, who was communications chief for Romney in Iowa but wrote about the incident in his current capacity working for InsideSources, a website that describes itself as a “non-partisan news organisation”. According to McCoy, a secret service agent, on the ground in a swing state to prepare security arrangements ahead of a series of Obama campaign appearances, disclosed there key details about Obama’s schedule to an individual within the Romney camp, “in an apparent attempt to impress one of the staffers”.

Romney staffers were sceptical about the information received, and paid it little attention, McCoy reports. But the accuracy of the schedule that the agent divulged was confirmed when the Obama campaign made those details public several days later, he says.

In his report, McCoy says that the secret service lapses were witnessed by two separate Romney campaign workers who confirmed the events on an anonymous basis. The same agent who divulged Obama’s schedule is also alleged to have taken people on joy rides in a secret service vehicle with the lights flashing.

The secret service did not immediately respond to questions from the Guardian about the allegations.

The claim that Obama’s movements at such a critical moment in the presidential race were disclosed by an agent in the organisation dedicated to protecting presidents adds to the sense of crisis engulfing the secret service. On Wednesday its director, Julia Pierson, resigned amid a chorus of criticism. She said she was stepping down because “Congress had lost confidence in my ability to run the agency”.

In an attempt to settle the storm assailing the agency, the homeland security secretary, Jeh Johnson, whose department oversees the secret service, has created a panel of “independent experts” that will do its work with a particular focus on security at the White House. The new body has been given a deadline of 15 December to present its assessment and recommendations for changes.

A succession of scandals has struck the secret service in recent years, threatening its reputation as a rock of stability and safety amid the swirl of presidential politics. The most serious was the incident on 19 September in which an army veteran is accused of having breached the outer fence of the White House and penetrating as far as the East Room of the building armed with a knife before being tackled by an off-duty secret service agent.

Three days previously, an armed security contractor with a criminal record was allowed to enter an elevator with Obama in violation of secret service rules. Further back, there have been scandals involving drinking and the use of prostitutes by agents overseas.