Secret Service Agents

WASHINGTON -- Denied legal protection by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, Secret Service bodyguards for President Clinton obeyed subpoenas yesterday and began answering prosecutors' questions about Monica Lewinsky.As Secret Service agents for the first time testified against their will to a grand jury, the protective force that prides itself on being nearly invisible found itself in the full glare of the media spotlight at the end of a feverish week of court activity.With independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr prevailing in the Supreme Court in a legal bout with the Secret Service that began in late January, three of the eight subpoenaed agents and officers went before a grand jury, including one retired agent.

Former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin has made another foray into Maryland politics, endorsing GOP candidate Dan Bongino in what she calls his "uphill battle" for the Senate, his campaign announced Monday. In 2010, the former Alaska governor backed Republican Brian Murphy in his unsuccessful GOP primary bid against former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. Bongino, a retired Secret Service agent, is challenging first-term Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin. "Dan has seen what politicians have done to our country, and he's decided, 'If I'm not part of the solution, I'm part of the problem,'" Palin said in a statement released by the Bongino campaign.

There's great fun to be had in seeing Michael Douglas and Kiefer Sutherland chew up the scenery (as well as their fellow actors) as Secret Service agents struggling to unravel a plot to assassinate the president. Too bad The Sentinel doesn't offer much more. Instead, the movie - based on a novel by Gerald Petievich - offers a setup that inexplicably goes away about halfway through, characters who seem to have missed much of their Secret Service basic training, atmosphere that doesn't really have to do with anything and way too many guys with machine guns within easy reach of the president of the United States.

Your article about Secret Service agents hiring prostitutes in Cartagena, Colombia, during a presidential trip suggests to me the agency has poor judgment from top to bottom ("Secret Service to receive ethics training at Hopkins," April 30). It's also come to light that in the past agents have indulged in similar behavior in Argentina and El Salvador. The top brass has mandated ethics training at Johns Hopkins University for agents, hoping that such training will help them steer clear of unethical behavior.

WASHINGTON -- Lawyers for Secret Service agents who were summoned to testify before a grand jury said yesterday that their clients did not know anything that would substantiate allegations that President Clinton had improper sexual conduct with an intern and sought to cover it up.John Kotelly, an attorney representing Larry Cockell, the head of the protective detail that follows virtually every step the president takes, said Cockell expects to be called this...

An unarmed Baltimore man was taken into custody by Secret Service agents yesterday after he jumped the 10-foot fence outside the White House, authorities said. Kevin Peterson, 23, was apprehended after scaling the iron fence shortly after 11:30 a.m., a Secret Service spokesman said. Peterson is expected to be charged with unlawful entry under District of Columbia law, according to Malcolm Wiley, a spokesman for the Secret Service. He was not carrying a weapon, Wiley said. The spokesman would not comment further about Peterson or the incident and would not confirm President Bush's whereabouts at the time of the incident.

A year ago, when six black Secret Service agents accused the Denny's restaurant in Annapolis of discrimination, reaction to the complaint split into two categories.There were those who believed that the agents experienced racial bias; after all, they were still waiting to be served an hour after arriving at the restaurant while their white colleagues, who had come with them, were finishing their breakfasts. There were also many who said they were sick and tired of hearing screams of "discrimination."

WASHINGTON -- Rushing back to court to open a new challenge to Kenneth W. Starr, Justice Department lawyers tried yesterday to prevent agents in the president's security detail from testifying before a federal grand jury.U.S. District Judge Norma Holloway Johnson held a 50-minute, closed-door hearing on the issue. The judge is presiding over the special grand jury looking into the Monica Lewinsky matter.Johnson had taken no action as of late last night, legal sources said. Fearing that her inaction would mean the subpoenas would have to be obeyed promptly, administration lawyers asked the federal appeals court here to step in.Meanwhile, the president's private lawyers threatened to start still another court battle with the independent counsel, accusing him of a "backdoor attempt" to learn what Clinton may have told them privately about Lewinsky, a former White House intern.

Civil rights lawyers in Washington are investigating scores o discrimination complaints against Denny's with an eye toward a class action lawsuit, in the wake of allegations by six black Secret Service agents who said they were not served at the chain's Annapolis restaurant."

A former nursing assistant at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center was charged yesterday with ringing up more than $15,000 worth of purchases on credit card numbers taken from a police officer undergoing surgery for three bullet wounds suffered in the line of duty.The assistant scribbled down James E. Beck's credit card and Social Security numbers as the Baltimore County officer clung to life on an operating table with wounds received in a Halloween 1993 attack, U.S. Secret Service agents reported.

The article "Ethics classes for Secret Service" (May 1) leaves one astonished and livid. I'm sure that the great majority of Secret Service employees don't need training in ethical behavior, having had ethical parents, educators, relatives and close friends from birth until they were hired by the Secret Service. If as adults they have not digested what ethical behavior is all about, we should examine the hiring process carefully in our assessment of what to do about the problem, not just send them to Johns Hopkins ethics classes.

We have learned a secret of the Secret Service: At least a few of those tight-lipped tough guys are not quite as straight-laced and serious as they appear to be. In fact, they apparently love to party like frat boys. Three Secret Service agents have already lost their jobs after it was revealed that 11 agents and 10 U.S. militarypersonnel engaged the services of as many as 20 prostitutes in one wild night while they were doing advance work for President Obama's visit to Colombia.

Many of us who labor in journalism inevitably have contact with U.S. Secret Service agentsand encounter men and women as devoted to their task, as serious of purpose, and as professional as any of the finest in law enforcement. So it is nothing short of shocking to learn not only of last week's scandal in Colombia but also of hints that the problem may run deeper than one night of wild partying with prostitutes in Cartagena. President Barack Obama has said that he will be "angry" if the allegations prove true, but it appears the White House is slightly behind the curve.

As a Secret Service agent assigned to protect Vice President Dick Cheney in 2001, Dan Esmond witnessed firsthand the events of Sept. 11 while on duty at the Pentagon. Still affected years later by the emotional upheaval of that day, he vowed to make a difference. In 2007, he decided to work at reigniting in his fellow citizens the same profound love of country that had risen from the ashes of 9/11 and enveloped the nation. "I drove home from work one day and told my wife, 'I know what I want to do with my life.

An unarmed Baltimore man was taken into custody by Secret Service agents yesterday after he jumped the 10-foot fence outside the White House, authorities said. Kevin Peterson, 23, was apprehended after scaling the iron fence shortly after 11:30 a.m., a Secret Service spokesman said. Peterson is expected to be charged with unlawful entry under District of Columbia law, according to Malcolm Wiley, a spokesman for the Secret Service. He was not carrying a weapon, Wiley said. The spokesman would not comment further about Peterson or the incident and would not confirm President Bush's whereabouts at the time of the incident.

Richard E. Mawhorr, a retired Secret Service agent and fraud inspector, died Tuesday of a stroke at Anne Arundel Medical Center. The longtime Arnold resident was 61. Mr. Mawhorr was born in Ashland, Ohio, and raised in Mansfield, Ohio. He was a 1965 graduate of Mansfield High School and earned a bachelor's degree in business from the University of Maryland, College Park, in 1978. During the Vietnam War, he served with the Air Force military police. He was a graduate of the FBI National Academy in Quantico, Va., and from 1970 until retiring in 1990, served as a lieutenant in the Secret Service's Uniformed Division.

U.S. Secret Service agents, aided by Baltimore police, have broken up a sophisticated counterfeiting operation that one official says had the potential of being the largest of its kind in Baltimore history.Joseph R. Coppola, special agent in charge of the Secret Service office in Baltimore, said the alleged counterfeiters were gearing up to print $50 million in U.S. $50 and $100 bills, and foreign currency as well, for distribution in European and Middle Eastern countries."We find a counterfeiting plant every now and then," Coppola said, "but to my knowledge we have never had one of this size in Baltimore.

Reading from a sheet of paper before he was sentenced to a term of 65 years in prison, the teen who brazenly fired a gun inside a packed Annapolis shopping mall last year, striking another teen and a Secret Service agent, apologized yesterday to his victims and the court. "I'm sorry," said Javaughn Norman Adams, 19, who turned to the agent and spoke directly during his sentencing hearing yesterday morning in Anne Arundel County Circuit Court. "I ask you to give me a chance to make up to society for what I have done."

Midshipman Roarke Baldwin was perusing books on the first floor of Border's at Westfield Annapolis mall, waiting for the next showing of the new James Bond flick, when he heard the pops, 13 in all. Then he heard the screaming, as parents called for their children and hundreds rushed from the food court to nearby exits. He called his friends and told them not to come to the mall because something was wrong, then, almost in a daze, he says, he sprinted toward the chaos and found a man lying on his back with a gunshot wound to the right thigh.