Report: Secret Service Agents 'More Likely Than Not' Impaired by Alcohol in Crash

White House Fence
Members of the U.S. Secret Service keep watch in March at the fence surrounding the White House. Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

One of President Barack Obama's top Secret Service agents reportedly is retiring amid allegations he was under the influence of alcohol when a vehicle he was riding in crashed into a White House barricade in March, according to a new report.

Marc Connolly's decision, disclosed Thursday by the Washington Post, comes ahead of a report asserting that he and another agent, George Ogilvie, "more likely than not" were under the influence of alcohol while investigating a bomb threat outside the first family's home on March 4. The agents' government vehicle drove into a temporary barricade and just missed a suspicious package, according to the document, which was released Wednesday by a government watchdog. Officials had been investigating the object as a possible bomb.

Homeland Security Inspector General John Roth found that Connolly and Ogilvie had spent about five hours at a bar, which was the venue for a colleague's retirement party, before driving to the White House. They had accumulated a "significant" bar tab.

Ogilvie is the assistant special agent in charge of the agency's Washington field office, and he has been placed on administrative leave, the Associated Press reported. At the time of the crash, Ogilvie was the driver and Connolly was his passenger.

The incident was the latest in a series of mishaps within the government agency. In September, a man scaled the 8-foot-tall White House fence and briefly entered the building. A week earlier, a different intruder jumped over the fence along the lawn, and yet another man tried to through a barricade onto the grounds.

Joseph Clancy took over the Secret Service in February, after acting as interim director when Julia Pierson resigned last October. She had joined the agency in March 2013 in the wake of disclosures that agents solicited prostitutes in Colombia before a presidential visit to the country.

Under Pierson's watch, Obama once took an elevator ride in Atlanta with an armed security contractor who had a record of assault convictions.

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Michele Gorman is a Newsweek political reporter, with a focus on gun policy. She previously worked at msnbc.com, where she ... Read more

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