Comments@THE GUSS REPORT-Little did anyone on the Los Angeles-area golf course that day know that the middle-aged duffer among them was a senior level United States Secret Service agent except, perhaps, for some of those in his entourage.
But little did that agent know he was the subject of an unauthorized surveillance conspiracy by a handful of other Secret Service agents in a dangerous, real-life game akin to Mad Magazine’s “Spy vs. Spy” series.
It is unknown whether the plot ever came to fruition. But that may become known in pending workplace harassment / sexual harassment / #MeToo litigation in various stages against the federal agency, alleging hostile workplace behavior by the senior agent who is said to be on permanent timeout (i.e. a desk job) until retirement.
The question is whether any of this will be stopped before someone gets hurt or killed.
This is just part of a heap of trouble at the downtown Los Angeles office of the United States Secret Service, and some of its outpost offices in the region. And it is far more dangerous than its agents’ colloquial Air Force One motto of “wheels-up, (wedding) rings-off.”
The stated goal for the surveillance conspiracy was rather ticky-tack – to catch the senior agent playing hooky on a work day. But the underlying goal – as I saw it – was to collect blackmail material for the lawsuits.
I know this firsthand because one of the conspiring agents asked me to help, to lend my vehicle for decoy purposes. I declined, stating I had other obligations. But the truth is that the agent believed a rental car would leave a paper trail that could inexplicably place him at the golf course that day. Involving civilians in this dangerous game also sounded like an especially bad idea, at least to me. Quite a statement about what’s going on at the agency which dates back to the Civil War, originally formed to combat counterfeit currency.
Nowadays it seems that the Secret Service has more than just one bad apple, or even a few conspiring agents, in its regional offices.
Some have complained that there is a cap on their overtime earnings, which is about $200,000 per year for higher level agents. When the cap is reached, agents gripe that they are working for free. Still, with that kind of scratch, one Secret Service couple, with a combined gross household income believed to be nearly $500,000 recently threatened to dump their two adopted dogs they had had for a decade because they did not want to pony up $1,000 to board them while they embarked on a recent multi-week family vacation. Tragic and disturbing as that might be, they allowed their parsimony to become semi-public fodder.
The agents retracted that threat when the founder of the prominent LA dog charity (whose pet adoption contract with them is binding) offered to help the couple, while simultaneously chewing them out for their heartlessness. Embarrassed, the husband, whose emails blamed the debacle on his fed-up wife, also had an about-face upon learning that the dogs’ microchips would trace back to their original rescue groups and trigger a $7,000 liquidated damages lawsuit. Despite the charity founder’s need to know the whereabouts of the dogs, (she offered to help find a home for their other dog, as well) the agents have refused to share that information. I had a ringside seat to the brouhaha, as I was the original rescuer of one of the dogs, and referred them to the rescue charity’s founder, who is a former LA Animal Services Commissioner appointed by former Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
The Secret Service also has a problem with misuse, handling and transporting of contraband by some agents which could jeopardize criminal cases, such as the currency and credit card fraud that the federal agency investigates.
In each of these instances, there is a common thread.
This calls into question the effectiveness of the Secret Service program which employs retired agents to check in with friends and relatives of current agents to see whether there is any odd behavior in their home lives ranging from substance abuse to financial troubles, or general chaos that could compromise the safety of the people they protect.
All in all, the misconduct is crushing morale, as some of the agents are hustling to hire workplace #MeToo attorneys and are filing job-related movie ideas with the Writer’s Guild of America on Fairfax Avenue before they consider jumping ship to grab up perceived high-paying gigs as bodyguards for celebrities and positions as Director of Security for movie studios and corporate honchos.
How close the agency came to a golf outing incident on the undisclosed Los Angeles links is unknown, but the risk was real. The Secret Service’s media relations office acknowledged receipt of my inquiry about these problems but has not yet responded with information. Still, some of its agents found enough time to poke around my LinkedIn account when they concluded that this subject might become a column. It is another misguided use of Secret Service time instead of cleaning up the dangerous games being played among its agents on its home turf.
(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a member of the Los Angeles Press Club, and has contributed to CityWatch, KFI AM-640, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter @TheGussReport. Verifiable tips and story ideas can be sent to him at [email protected]. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
