Those times — involving strippers, hotels rooms, weapons and
presidents — when agencies meant to be undercover inadvertently made public
their activities
Recently, a PIL was filed alleging that there was the
involvement of the British Secret Service in the assassination of Mahatma
Gandhi. It was later deemed that there wasn’t substantive material to
re-investigate the case. Five other cases when the Secret Service was in the
news:
1 Stripped of duty
In April 2012, US Secret Service agents who were off-duty were
accused of bringing strippers back to their hotel in Cartagena, Colombia. This
incident allegedly occurred right before a presidential visit to the Summit of
the Americas. Some of the agents had their clearances revoked while a few of
the agents returned to duty and some others retired or resigned.
2 Spirit of the moment
In March 2014, scandal broke out in the Netherlands which
involved the US Secret Service. Three of the Secret Service agents went
drinking which ended with one agent allegedly passing out in the hotel hallway
in Amsterdam on a Sunday morning. It was later reported that the three agents
were part of the Counter Assault Team and have since been placed on
administrative leave.
3 A shot at recovering a bullet
In November 2013, US Secret Service supervisor Ignacio
Zamora was found allegedly trying to get into the room of a woman he met at a
hotel bar in order to recover a bullet from his Secret Service weapon he left
in her room. The woman denied him entry, he asked the hotel for access, which
made the hotel report the incident to the White House. This resulted in two of
the agents assigned to presidential detail, including Zamora, to be moved from
their positions.
4 I spy with my little eye
Recently, former British Secret Service agent Christopher
Steele was in the news for being the author of a controversial dossier that
alleged that Russia was collecting compromising data on American President
Donald Trump. Steele served with the MI6, which is the British Secret Service,
from 1987 to 2009. It also speculated that Steele was in communication with the
FBI. Steele is currently supposed to be in hiding with his family, after he was
reported as the author of the dossier.
5 Leakage issues
Last year, the US Secret Service apologised for leaking
private information about the Congressman who was investigating them for other
scandals. The Congressman was the chairman of the House Oversight Committee and
in charge of leading investigations into the Secret Service’s multiple security
failures in the past few years. It was reported that over 40 agents were given
disciplinary punishments after the information was leaked.
No comments:
Post a Comment