So much for that drive to clean up the Secret Service.
An inspector-general report this week revealed that a top Secret Service official suggested leaking confidential information on a congressman critical of the agency.
Assistant Director Edward Lowery discovered that Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) had been rejected for a Service job back in 2003.
Chaffetz chairs the House Government Oversight Committee; he’s held multiple hearings into repeated Secret Service screw-ups in recent years — agents on the presidential detail getting drunk in Europe, others soliciting prostitutes in South America, people managing to jump the White House fence, etc.
“Some information that [Chaffetz] might find embarrassing needs to get out,” Lowery e-mailed another director. “Just to be fair.”
Boom: Little more than a week later, Chaffetz’s file had spread to all levels of the agency. Then someone fed it to the press — literally within minutes after a hearing.
The breach was so broad, the IG couldn’t pin down the leaker — too many Secret Service personnel had access to the info. All told, 18 Secret Service higher-ups knew Chaffetz’s file was circulating. More than 40 agents read through it.
Worse, Lowery was part of Director Joseph Clancy’s new team that was supposed to reform the agency. (Clancy canned two-thirds of the management when he took over. )
Democrats in Congress won’t cover for these guys. Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the ranking minority member on Government Oversight, declared that Secret Service folk “unwilling or unable to meet the highest ethical standards” should get out.
That starts with Lowery. But Chaffetz and Cummings need to grill Clancy, too — to figure out why the Secret Service is still rotting from the top.