Two Secret Service officials likely drunk near scene of White House bomb inquiry

WASHINGTON – Two senior Secret Service supervisors were probably drunk when they drove through emergency barriers onto the White House grounds on the night of March 4, shoving a protective barrel aside and passing inches from a package that officers feared might contain a bomb.

That’s the conclusion of a scathing 55-page report issued Thursday by John Roth, the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security.

The misconduct by two veteran agents is the latest embarrassing episode for the troubled presidential protective service, and it led to a further shakeup of top ranks.

One of the supervisors involved, Marc Connolly, who was responsible for White House security, has indicated he will retire, according to a law enforcement official who was not authorized to discuss the matter in public. Disciplinary action is reportedly being considered against the other supervisor, George Ogilvie, who is an assistant to the head of the Washington field office.

Roth’s report says Connolly and Ogilvie spent five hours at a retirement party in an Irish bar six blocks from the White House. Just before 11 p.m., they drove through a police roadblock and onto White House grounds at the E Street entrance, unaware that a woman had fled moments earlier after throwing a package that she said was a bomb.

Rather than stopping at an orange barrel placed to block the entrance to secure the crime scene, they pushed it more than 5 feet with the car’s bumper, the report says.

“This was no mere ‘bump,’ but rather extended contact to shove the barrel out of the way,” the report says. Apparently unknown to the pair, it adds, their car “passed within inches of the suspicious package.”

Although the two men denied they had been drinking to excess, uniformed officers at the scene said “they were not making sense” and one reported that they appeared “hammered.” Ogilvie’s post-party bar tab listed nine drinks he could not account for, the report says.

“We conclude that it was more likely than not that both Connolly’s and Ogilvie’s judgment was impaired by alcohol,” the report says.

No sobriety tests were administered, and the two drove to their homes in government-issued cars.

The Secret Service director, Joseph Clancy, who had taken over the agency after several earlier scandals, learned about the incident from a retired friend five days later.