US Secret Service agents fell asleep at their posts

[Concorde]

US Secret Service agents fell asleep at their posts

Report finds agents are being overworked, jeopardising security at the top echelons of the US government

Members of the U.S. Secret Service stand watch over Marine One at LAX Airport Photo: WireImage

By Ruth Sherlock, Washington
11:45PM BST 23 Oct 2015

Two US Secret Service agents fell asleep at their posts, the agency’s watchdog has found, in a report that warns that its people are being overworked, jeopardising security at the top echelons of the US government.

Fatigue from travel and long hours “may pose an immediate or potential danger” to agents and those they protected, the Department of Homeland Security — the Secret Service's parent agency, said in an alert that was made public this week.

The watchdog cited "an exhausted work force with low morale" at the White House in particular.

The alert cited a December 2014 inquiry into security at the White House compound, which found that "officers reported regularly working 13 days of 12-hour shifts, followed by one day off".

"The most common refrain that the panel heard from all sources within the Service, from line agents and officers to the director, from special agents to UD [Uniformed Division] officers, is that the Service is overstretched, with personnel working far too many hours," the inspector general's alert said.

Investigators examined two cases in which agents were discovered sleeping at their posts during the summer.

They revealed a gruelling schedule of travel and chronic overtime. One of the officers had travelled from Kenya to Washington for a protected assignment, recording a 36-hour shift.

The officers had worked 60 hours of overtime in that period.

But colleagues described that amount as minimal ”compared to the schedules of other officers in the unit”.

The alert said the Secret Service promised to pursue a strategy to identify staffing needs, increase its workforce and "effectively retain current staff".

The elite protection service has been slammed with several allegations of lapses and wrongdoing in recent years and has been the focus of investigations by Congress and the Department of Homeland Security.

Earlier this month, the Secret Service apologised to Jason Chaffetz, a Republican congressman, for violating federal privacy law by improperly accessing sensitive personal information about him dozens of times in little more than a week.