Three of President Barack Obama's Secret Service agents were disciplined and sent home from the Netherlands after getting drunk in a hotel a day before the commander-in-chief's arrival Monday.
According to the anonymous sources familiar with the embarrassing incident, one of the mentioned agents was found passed out in a hotel hallway by hotel staff on Sunday morning.
Secret Service spokesman Brian Leary confirmed that three employees were sent home for disciplinary reasons.
The agents’ duty was to prepare for Obama’s arrival and ensure his safety, including his attendance at the Nuclear Security Summit in The Hague, the Netherlands.
Barack Obama's visit to the Netherlands started with a brief stop at the Rijksmuseum, a fine-arts museum in Amsterdam, before he attended a nuclear security summit in The Hague and met fellow G7 leaders for talks on the Ukraine crisis.
The three men were members of the Secret Service's Counter Assault Team, CAT.
CAT staff are required to be highly skilled shooters and extremely physically fit, with a demanding training
regime.
That unit goes into action if the president or his motorcade comes under attack -- they aim to fight off any attackers and draw fire while the president's protective detail removes him from the area.
The awkward episode comes two years after an April 2012 scandal involving Secret Service agents and prostitutes in the Colombian Caribbean resort of Cartagena.
Then, a dozen agents and officers drank heavily and brought prostitutes to their hotel before the president's arrival for an economic summit.
Their activities came to light when one of the call girls had an argument in a hotel hallway after an agent refused to pay her.
In the new case, the alleged behavior would violate Secret Service rules adopted after the Cartagena scandal.
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