Having an Awesome Time at the Latest Secret Service Embarrassment

Is that what it sounded like when a senior Secret Service supervisor counseled the two agents who drunk-drove through a police crime scene in front of the White House the other day? Could be.

Okay, so here's my theory of what's really behind all these Secret Service scandals. They are actually a Machiavellian plot to recruit new agents. Specifically, to attract the government-averse millennial generation to Federal law enforcement jobs by making those jobs appear to be a never-ending Will Ferrell movie.

The Service's agents can't possibly be so reckless and undisciplined as you would think from all the embarrassing incidents they have racked up from Colombia to Key West to the Netherlands, can they? They can't possibly spend so much time drinking and partying on duty and getting away with it, can they?

But, if they could, then the average twenty-something male slacker might get the impression that it would be totally AWESOME to be a Secret Service agent!

I am convinced of this after reading the WaPo's report on the awesome time two USSS agents had the other night:

Two Secret Service agents suspected of being under the influence while striking a White House security barricade drove through an active bomb investigation and directly beside the suspicious package, according to current and former government officials familiar with the incident.

-- snip --

Police quickly secured [the scene of a suspected unexploded bomb] with tape and called an inspection team to check the package for potential explosive materials or other dangers.

But shortly before 11 p.m., the two high-ranking Secret Service agents, returning from a work party at a Chinatown bar about eight blocks from the White House, drove their government car through the crime scene. According to people familiar with the incident, they drove through police tape and then hit a temporary barricade, using the car to push aside some barrels. An agency official said Thursday that the car was not damaged.

The episode was caught on surveillance video. Investigators who reviewed the video of the incident initially said they could not be sure whether the pair drove very close to or over the suspicious item wrapped in the shirt, one law enforcement official said. But after reviewing more video later Thursday afternoon, the official said, they concluded that the agents’ government car drove directly next to the package.

Secret Service officers on duty that night considered the agents’ behavior to be erratic and suspected they were drunk, according to current and former officials familiar with the incident.

The officers wanted to arrest the agents — but a more senior supervisor at the complex told them to let the agents go, the officials said.

The Secret Service had a late night "work party" at a Chinatown bar? That's major awesomeness points right there. And then their boss told the cops to let them go after they bulldozed through a crime scene in their government car? The boss must have been playing the Vince Vaughn role, then. Tell me it wouldn't be super-awesome to have Vince Vaughn as your boss and Will Ferrell as your partner.

Mark my words: the Secret Service will be flooded with recruits, so long as they keep these scandals coming.