It appears that the two off-duty Secret Service agents who drove their black SUV through a crime scene near the White House on March 4 were quite intoxicated, according to surveillance tapes released by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on Tuesday during its hearing on the matter.
The footage shows the agents’s SUV ramming a low barricade close to a site where on-duty agents thought a bomb might have been planted.
The two agents, Mark Connolly and George Ogilvie, attended a colleague’s retirement party but did not take a sobriety test before leaving. Neither man attended Tuesday’s hearing.
Committee chair Jason Chaffetz and ranking member Elijah Cummings released a joint statement:
It has been nearly three weeks since senior agents disrupted a crime scene involving an alleged bomb outside of the White House complex with the president in the residence. It is extremely disappointing that agents with firsthand knowledge of the March 4 event have not been allowed to appear before this committee. In order to conduct proper oversight and initiate proper reforms, fundamental questions still need to be answered by this agency.
The committee had previously been shocked by the revelation that it is customary for the Secret Service agency to erase surveillance tapes of the White House 72 hours after they have been taken.