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Source: Washington Times
The real Secret Service scandal
Agents should be required to regularly take polygraph tests
Secret Service agents scandal Preventative Testing Illustration by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times more
By Ronald Kessler | Saturday, April 16, 2022
OPINION:
The two men recently charged with impersonating federal officers while plying Secret Service agents and officers with gifts so far appear to be wannabes who sought to enhance their own importance by ingratiating themselves with law enforcement.
According to federal prosecutors, Arian Taherzadeh and Haider Ali posed as Homeland Security agents and offered Secret Service personnel gifts that included iPhones, surveillance systems, a drone, a flat-screen television, a generator, law enforcement paraphernalia and free rental apartments worth $40,000 a year.
The bizarre episode spotlights the potential danger to the president and other protectees if a terrorist organization or a foreign intelligence service were behind such a scheme. By buying off Secret Service personnel, perpetrators could gain access to the president to assassinate him, obtain highly classified information or install bugging devices in the Oval Office.
While a recent Washington Post story mentioned that agents are questioned about their finances every five years, the real solution has been ignored.
As I wrote in my book "The First Family Detail," applicants to be Secret Service agents must pass a polygraph exam. But after they sign up, agents are never again required to undergo regular lie detector testing. In contrast, the FBI polygraphs all employees — not just agents — every five years. FBI counterintelligence agents are polygraphed more often. Likewise, the CIA polygraphs its officers on a regular basis.
The FBI learned the hard way the importance of regular polygraph testing. After the arrest of CIA officer Aldrich Ames in 1994 for spying, Robert "Bear" Bryant, as head of the bureau's National Security Division, urged then FBI director Louis Freeh to approve regular polygraphs for all counterintelligence agents. But faced with opposition from many special agents in charge of field offices and from the FBI Agents Association, Freeh backed down and shelved the proposal.
While polygraph tests are not perfect, if nothing else, they are a deterrent. If Mr. Freeh had in fact approved Mr. Bryant's proposal in 1994 to polygraph counterintelligence agents, FBI agent Robert Hanssen likely would have decided to stop spying for the Russians. Instead, for seven years after Freeh refused to allow regular polygraphing, Hanssen continued to provide the Russians with some of the most damaging information in the history of American espionage.
In addition, FBI agents are required to attend annual updates on law, ethics and security. As an example of how negligent the Secret Service is about such matters, after I broke the scandal involving agents hiring prostitutes in Colombia, the Secret Service announced it would provide ethics training — but only to a hundred agents.
Please go to Washington Times to read more.
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News update on the Secret Service for 23 April 2022:
Secret Service corruption continues so nothing has changed since 1963. There has been no reform while there is presently a senile old man no longer capable as US president the SS is "protecting".
Secret Service agents assigned to Biden, Harris suspended in corruption probe
Secret Service agents assigned to Biden, Harris suspended in corruption probe
Hillary Clinton's uncle Wade J. Rodham was apparently a Secret Service agent who once protected JFK:
Past corruption:
The Secret Service and the price of sex:
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