Joseph Clancy acknowledges that recent incidents of drunk behaviour were symptomatic of a broader problem within the nation’s top security detail

The director of the US secret service told Congress on Tuesday that the agency charged with protecting the life of the president was struggling to address alcohol dependency among the nation’s top security detail – and a culture of hiding information instead of sharing it.

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“We do have an element that goes to alcohol” to cope with the stresses of the job, Director Joseph Clancy testified, following the most recent incident in which drunken or apparently drunken secret service agents were observed misbehaving in public.

In the most recent incident, on 4 March, two reportedly intoxicated secret service agents in a vehicle returning to the White House late at night hit a barricade. One of the agents was said to be a senior member of the president’s security unit. The agents were allowed to leave the scene and have not been publicly named.

The agents had been at a reception and were returning to the White House to pick up one of the agent’s cars, Clancy told a House appropriations subcommittee on Tuesday.

Clancy, who was brought out of retirement to fix an agency beset by public scandals and a private leadership crisis, admitted the incident was a symptom of a larger problem.

“We’ve got to find a way to help some of these people that are going towards alcohol as a coping mechanism” for a stressful job, Clancy said. “When you’re working 12 hours a day, and you think you have the next day off, and it’s cancelled … and the stress that we’re under. I know people don’t want to hear us talk about them.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Secret service director Joseph Clancy. Photograph: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

Clancy said the secret service had “kicked off a work-life initiative” around “three or four weeks ago” to help agents who need it.

Appropriations committee chairman Hal Rogers, a Republican from Kentucky, interrupted Clancy’s testimony at one point.



“I’m concerned about [agents’] health as well,” Rogers said. “But I’m more concerned about the health of the president … This is the latest episode of agents drinking, carousing, on and off duty, that this agency has suffered in the last few years. It’s not working right, Mr Director.”

A request for comment from the secret service was not immediately returned. The White House did not reply to a request for comment as to whether the agency retains the confidence of the president. In addition to protecting the life of the president and the vice-president, the secret service, which has about 4,600 employees, is in charge of policing counterfeiting and online fraud.

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Clancy further described a culture within the agency of covering for colleagues’ mistakes, saying he had not learned of the barricade-ramming incident at the White House until days afterward. “Why wasn’t it reported to my office? I think that’s a longstanding process possibly where people don’t want to relay bad information,” Clancy said. “We want to prevent that.”

Clancy said no disciplinary action could be taken in the latest incident until the completion of an internal inspector general’s report. “I don’t have the ability to just fire people at will. In the government – my understanding is that you cannot do that,” said Clancy, who did not offer a timetable for the report’s release.

“It will take time to change the culture,” Clancy said. “There’s no excuse for the actions,” he added.

Clancy, the former head of the president’s protective detail, replaced Julia Pierson, who resigned in October under pressure from repeated scandals, as director. The replacement of five of the agency’s eight assistant directors was separately announced in January. An independent panel found last year that the secret service was “starved for leadership”.

Last September, an army veteran jumped the White House fence and made it inside the building. In March 2014, a secret service agent on a trip to the Netherlands was found passed out inside a hotel hallway. In November 2013, an agent mistakenly left a bullet from his gun in the hotel room of a woman he met in a Washington bar and alerted hotel staff when she would not let him back into the room. In April 2012, 13 secret service employees were suspected of soliciting prostitutes and carousing in advance of a presidential visit to Colombia.

Clancy also asked the appropriations committee to support an $8m project to build a fake White House in Maryland to use for training, and he said the secret service was working on a plan for a new White House fence expected to be completed in a year and a half. The fence plan calls for “putting something on top of the fence that will deter people from climbing and prevent them from getting over”, he said.

“We recognize that that’s a long time to wait: a year and a half.”