“A decade ago, however, U.S. News and World Report published an investigative report detailing criminal activity and extreme partying as well as oversight problems. In one reported incident, members of Vice President Dick Cheney’s security detail got into a brawl outside a bar on a trip to the San Diego area.”
“This really is the biggest scandal in the history of the Secret Service,” Ron Kessler, author of “In the President’s Secret Service,” told NBC News earlier this week. He said the agencies problems are deeply rooted.
“There’s a culture in the Secret Service that’s fostered by the management of just nodding, winking, favoritism,” he said. “What the agency needs is an outside director who can come in, clean house, change the standards.”
According to a friend of mine who was a Secret Service Agent this sort of activity was prevalent 30 years ago, too.
The USSR used to regularly switch directors of the KGB (State secret police) and GRU (military intelligence). The KBG would be run by someone who came through the ranks of the GRU and the GRU by a career KGB man. That way there was no favoritism. And, since they were pitted against each other, it was hard to form the relationships necessary to stage a coup.