Full transcript. Excerpt below:
MR. GREGORY: Good morning. There are new details this morning in the prostitution scandal involving the Secret Service and the U.S. military. Here is the very latest. Now 12 Secret Service agents and 11 members of the U.S. military have been implicated in the scandal. Six agents have already been forced out of the Secret Service, including two supervisors. We're told investigators from the Secret Service and the Pentagon have sought to interview some of the 21 Colombian women who were involved. They've obtained security video from the Hotel El Caribe and have been able to identify the women. And the man you see there, director of the Secret Service Mark Sullivan, briefed the president in the Oval Office on Friday. Jay Carney, the president's spokesman, saying unequivocally that the president quote has "faith in the Secret Service and high regard for the agency." So that's where things stand.
Advertise | AdChoices
Where is it going? Joining me now, Republican congressman from Califorma--California, rather, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Darrell Issa and Republican congressman from New York, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee Peter King.
Welcome to both of you.
REP. PETER KING (R-NY): Good morning. Good morning, David.
REP. DARRELL ISSA (R-CA): Thank you, David.
MR. GREGORY: Congressman King, let me start with you. Where is this headed? Ultimately, will everyone involved lose their job?
REP. KING: I would say anyone who is found to be guilty will. As you know, there was one of the 11 has been partially exonerated and he will probably not be terminated. He will face administrative action. But I would expect within a very near future to have several other Secret Service agents leaving the agency of those 11, and there's, you know, one other person's been added on. So Director Sullivan from the moment this broke has moved effectively and this investigation is going full speed ahead. There are many, many agents in Colombia interviewing the women involved, interviewing the hotel employees. There's, I believe, hundreds of Colombian and--police are assisting the Secret Service in this. So it's going all out and from every indication I've seen from the moment this scandal broke until now, there's no attempt to cover anything over. Everything is being--every lead--possible lead is being examined.
My staff, I began an investigation last week. I've sent a detailed letter to Director Sullivan with a list of questions that we need to be answered. We're in contact with the Secret Service and other sources of law enforcement and from all I've seen so far, this investigation is going at a very proper rate and is going to be carried all the way and it has to be.
MR. GREGORY: But Congressman King, what else needs to be known? What else do you want to know?
REP. KING: Well, first of all, we have to know exactly what happened, when it began, who was involved, who in the chain of command found out about it and what they did. Secondly, we have to make sure that there is--there were no security violations, that nothing was made available to anyone other than Secret Service, that there was no--the president was never compromised and no, no information was ever made available to anyone else. Then we have to find out what is going to be done to ensure or to minimize the possibility of this ever happening again because I have great regard for the Secret Service. I believe Director Sullivan has done a fine job, but the fact is that you can't allow 11 men like this to tarnish what, what--the great reputation of that agency and we have to make sure that others are not doing it and that precautions are put in place and procedures in place to ensure it never happens again.
No comments:
Post a Comment