Federal agents are embroiled in a new prostitution scandal – but this time it doesn’t involve the Secret Service.
The Justice Department’s Inspector General this morning dropped a blistering new report alleging that federal officers with the Drug Enforcement Agency had “sex parties” with prostitutes that were paid for by drug cartels abroad. The incidents occurred between 2005 and 2008.
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The parties were reportedly held at the DEA’s government-leased quarters in Colombia.
Separately, Secret Service agents were busted for hiring prostitutes in Colombia back in 2010. This time, however, the investigators allege that the prostitutes were paid for by drug cartels – and that the DEA agents were likely aware of this.
“Three DEA SSAs [supervisory special agents] in particular were provided money, expensive gifts, and weapons from drug cartel members,” the report said.
Seven of the 10 agents accused of being involved admitted to attending the parties. They each received between two and 10 days of suspension, auditors said.
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Investigators from the DEA’s Office of Professional Responsibility first became aware of the behavior in 2010. They concluded that hosting the parties in the agents’ government-leased quarters presented a potential security risk, since all of the agents’ laptops, BlackBerrys, and other government-issued devices could have been stolen.
That in turn could have exposed them to extortion, blackmail or coercion, the report said.
The allegations resulted from an IG probe in which auditors were looking into claims of sexual harassment at a handful of DOJ agencies. Those agencies include DEA, FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service.
After the report’s release, House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) promised his committee will be holding a number of hearings on the allegations when Congress returns from its two-week recess, which begins this Friday afternoon.
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“This is terribly embarrassing and fundamentally not right,” Chaffetz said in a statement. “We need to understand what’s happening with the culture.”
Aside from the numerous troubling allegations, the IG report also suggests that the DEA intentionally withheld crucial information from investigators, which delayed their entire probe.
“The OIG was not given access to this case file information until several months after our request, and only after the misconduct case was closed,” the IG said. “Once we became aware of the information, we interviewed DEA employees who said that they were given the impression that they were not to discuss this case with the OIG while the case remained open.”
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