Before we get to the dancing penises at the National Institutes of Health, let’s begin our discussion with the Secret Service agents’ dalliance with prostitutes in Cartagena, Colombia.

“We’re representing the people of the United States,” President Obama said Sunday when asked about the agents and military personnel who, after a night of heavy drinking, reportedly procured prostitutes at a strip club called the Pleyclub. “And when we travel to another country I expect us to observe the highest standards.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/misbehaving-government-employees-are-just-like-us/2012/04/17/gIQALZS0OT_story.html?hpid=z2

CARTAGENA, Colombia — A Secret Service agent preparing for President Obama’s arrival at an international summit meeting and a single mother from Colombia who makes a living as a high-priced escort faced off in a room at the Hotel Caribe a week ago over how much he owed her for the previous night’s intercourse. “I tell him, ‘Baby, my cash money,’ ” the woman said in her first public comments on a spat that would soon spiral into a full-blown scandal.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/19/world/americas/colombian-escort-speaks...       

THE COLOMBIAN call girl at the centre of the US Secret Service sex scandal has been named as Dania Suarez, a 24-year-old single mother, and US tabloid The New York Daily News has published pictures of her posing in a bikini. Meanwhile, other American media have identified two of the three agents who have been forced out of the US Secret Service over the affair.

CBS News said they were veterans David Chaney, who has retired, and Greg Stokes, who has been fired.

Read more: http://www.theweek.co.uk/us/46422/pictures-us-secret-service-prostitute-dania-suarez-emerge#ixzz1sezW1zKd

Leave it to a woman to keep the boys in line. According to the Washington Post, a top female member of the Secret Service was responsible for booting 11 agents out of Colombia after they allegedly solicited prostitutes while preparing for the President’s arrival in Cartagena.

Despite supervisor Paula Reid’s best efforts to contain the situation, the sex scandal that splashed across front pages back in the U.S. completely overshadowed the agents’ mission at the Summit of the Americas. But while details of the scandal from bar to brothel to bedroom have been widely reported, Reid’s actions to stop the agents’ misdeeds has flown largely under the radar.

The Post profile describes Reid as a 46-year-old black woman, tall and lean, with a reputation for being “exacting” and “steely.” The 21-year veteran of the Secret Service had recently been promoted to head of the agency’s Miami bureau, where she oversees the 150 agents that work throughout South America.

Jeffrey Robinson, who co-wrote the book Standing Next to History: An Agent’s Life Inside the Secret Service with Joseph Petro, a former assistant special agent in charge of the service’s Presidential Protection Division, has extensive ties to the agency and keeps in touch with current and former agents. “What these guys did was tarnish that polish of the Secret Service, and that offends these guys with the pride,” he says. “The agents I know are furious. It is a huge embarrassment. They are upset with the 11 guys for being schmucks.”

Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/04/18/other-agents-reportedly-furious-over-secret-service-sex-scandal/#ixzz1sxIxxRuO

There’s another major difference: One of the Secret Service agents did something no self-respecting seaman would have done.

When I worked on ships, seamen were a superstitious lot. When there was a bad storm, while the ship pitched and rolled, the crew, unable to eat or sleep, would gather in the messroom and grumble. Anyone who remembers Coleridge’s ancient mariner knows that seamen don’t blame the wind and tides for bad weather and rough seas. Rather, they blame a fellow member of the crew — someone who has, say, killed an albatross. During storms, they’d mumble darkly that a crew member had “Jonah’d” the ship — done something wicked, while ashore, that caused the seas to rise up and take revenge.

Inevitably, someone would point out that the likely cause of the foul weather was that one of our crew had committed the worst sin of all: not paying a whore. 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/what-the-secret-service-could-learn-from-drunken-sailors/2012/04/26/gIQAz0kzjT_story.html?hpid=z3

The US Secret Service has tightened staff guidelines in an attempt to stop any repeat of the Colombia sex scandal.

Agents travelling overseas will be banned from drinking on duty, visiting "disreputable establishments" and bringing foreigners into hotel rooms.

"Consider your conduct through the lens of the past several weeks," Director Mark Sullivan reportedly told staff.

The agency will also hold ethics sessions for staff as it attempts to move on from the Cartagena episode.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-17878067

UNITED NATIONS: The United States thinks the United Nations has a drinking problem.
Ambassador Joseph M. Torsella, who represents the US on the UN's budget committee, says that the tense process of negotiating the world body's annual budget is made more complicated by the number of diplomats who turn up drunk.
The UN budget is finalised in December, when holiday parties apparently lead to some revelry spilling over into budget negotiations.
Mr Torsella has told the UN General Assembly's budget committee the US is making "the modest proposal that the negotiating rooms should in future be an inebriation-free zone".

Some tipsy negotiating partners have left the US "truly grateful for the strategic opportunities", he said on Monday.

But Mr Torsella says annual talks on how much the global body spends have become increasingly tense as western nations call for spending cuts, and the committee should "save the champagne for toasting the successful end of the session".

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/un-diplomats-too-drunk-to-negotiate-us-20130305-2fhyn.html#ixzz2MdN8QIup

Three US Secret Service agents tasked with protecting President Barack Obama in the Netherlands have been sent home for "disciplinary reasons".

The Washington Post reported that one was found drunk and passed out in the hallway of an Amsterdam hotel.

A Secret Service spokesman declined to give details but said the three had been put on administrative leave pending an investigation.

The service has been trying to rebuild its reputation after previous scandals.

In 2013 two agents were removed from President Obama's security detail amid allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct.

And in 2012 several agents were dismissed following allegations that they hired prostitutes while in Cartagena, Colombia.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-26743893