House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter King said Tuesday there was no threat to the president and nothing was compromised when Secret Service agents allegedly allowed prostitutes into their hotel rooms in Colombia.
Nonetheless, the New York Republican called it “the height of irresponsibility” just the same, and said his committee would conduct its own investigation of the scandal, which has brought disgrace on the agency charged with protecting the president at all costs.
“It’s a scandal,” King acknowledged during an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe," although he added that he still has “tremendous respect for the Secret Service” because they do “an outstanding job.”
“This was really a flagrant violation of security because of the potential dangers,” he said. But from all I’ve seen so far . . . there was no threat to the president. No one was compromised. Having said that, they certainly could have been.”
King insisted his committee’s investigation would not be used “to indict the entire Secret Service.” But he said it was important to national security to find out “how this was allowed to happen and how we can prevent this in the future.”
“You know, this is a story that’s as old as mankind, where you have enemies using women to go into a security zone and try to obtain secret information,” King continued.
He said that could have easily been the case in Colombia, where “narco-terrorism,” as he put it, occurs with some frequency. The president was in Cartagena, Colombia over the weekend attending the Summit of the Americas. The incident with the prostitutes allegedly took place before he arrived.
But King said, “It was the height of irresponsibility to allow anyone into that zone of security, especially prostitutes, where you’d be in a compromising position.”
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