U.S. Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan, left, accompanied by Department of Homeland Security’s acting Inspector General Charles K. Edward, goes over his notes as they testified on Capitol Hill in Washington on Wednesday.By LAURIE KELLMAN and CALVIN WOODWARD
Associated Press
WASHINGTON – Senators investigating the Secret Service prostitution scandal said Wednesday that dozens of reported episodes of misconduct by agents point to a culture of carousing in the agency and urged Director Mark Sullivan to get past his insistence that the romp in Cartagena was a one-time mistake.
The disconnect between the senators and Sullivan reappeared again and again throughout the two-hour hearing, even as the Secret Service chief for the first time apologized for the incident that tarnished the elite presidential protection force. By the end, Sullivan’s job appeared secure even as new details emerged that left little doubt, senators said, that a pattern of sexual misbehavior had taken root in the agency.
“He kept saying over and over again that he basically does think this was an isolated incident and I don’t think he has any basis for that conclusion,” said Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the senior Republican on the Homeland Security panel that heard Sullivan’s first public accounting of the episode.