Hi. I’m the Secret Service. And I’m an Alcoholic.

By: American Decency Staff

Since I was a kid, I have been fascinated by the Secret Service; they have been my heroes. I remember cornering a presidential candidate, Paul Tsongas, when I was 13, just so could I ask him about his detail. (I knew even then that agents assigned were assigned as “details.”) A year later, at 14, I hand-wrote a letter to the director at the time, praising the professionalism of agents assigned to Bill Clinton. He wrote me back. I still remember the day when I received his reply in a fancy Secret Service envelope.

I could never shake my childhood fascination with the Secret Service, and as an adult, when I’ve written about them, I sometimes have to shake off my hero worship. This latest incident—where two high ranking Secret Service agents, while drunk, allegedly drove themselves into a crash barrier at the White House, disrupting a tense investigation into a suspicious package nearby, is heartbreaking.

There is nothing scandalous about the conduct of high-functioning alcoholics in the Secret Service. It’s not a scandal. It’s a stupid. There is something that is sadly, essentially, and just so obviously stupid about the tales of drunken agents getting into fights, hiring prostitutes, passing out in hallways. The agency has become a Seth Rogen movie.

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