and Democratic opponents are unfairly and inaccurately maligning the work of the United States Secret Service.In a Cybercast News Service article today titled, "Clinton Campaign Denies Secret Service Vetting of Fugitive," writer Fred Lucas argued that Hillary Clinton must have known about Hsu's fugitive status for one simple reason: the Secret Service performs background checks of everyone who comes in contact with the former first lady. CNS interviewed law enforcement "experts" who made several statements that, if true, would establish a Clinton conspiracy in which Hillary's campaign staff or Hillary herself were ordering the Secret Service to ignore an outstanding criminal warrant to protect Senator Clinton from embarrassment. The CNS article contained a number of factual errors put forth by the so-called experts who contributed to the story.
The article opened by stating the contention that since Norman Hsu has been seen in news photographs standing next to Hillary at fundraising events, he must have been "vetted" by the Secret Service. According to the first "expert" cited by CNS:
"I would absolutely be shocked if the protective intelligence division of the Secret Service was not fully aware of Mr. Hsu's status as a fugitive," Carl Rowan, a federal agent with both the FBI and the U.S. Marshalls for a decade, said in an interview. Rowan, now president of Securitas, a private security firm, said he has worked closely with the U.S. Secret Service in the past.
"It is standard operating procedure to run the names and Social Security numbers of anyone who will be close to the protectee," Rowan continued. "Besides the safety concerns, the Secret Service works hard to avoid embarrassing situations for the protectee."
Rowan claimed to have worked closely with the Secret Service during his ten year federal career split between two agencies, but his contention that the Secret Service "works hard to avoid embarrassing situations for the protectee" was overstated and not applicable to the Hsu donations debacle.
The Secret Service provides physical security by employing a number of protective measures, all of which are designed to be as unobtrusive as possible, thus allowing a protectee to go about their business in a safe environment. Of course, unobtrusive becomes unrealistic when it comes to the security surrounding a sitting president or vice president, but even in that high threat environment a protectee still retains ample opportunity for embarrassing himself or herself. Rowan's contention is simply false from an operational perspective. The Secret Service is there to provide a secure environment but allows a protectee to engage in personal or political behavior that could be embarrassing as long as that behavior does not compromise the safety of the protectee.
The media criticized the Secret Service years ago when President Bush's twin daughters were caught by local police in Texas while drinking underage and using fake identification when ordering drinks. The criticisms then, as now, were focused on the perception that agents failed to protect the daughters from drinking underage and the ensuing embarrassment to the president and first lady. However, the Secret Service fulfilled its role in providing a secure environment and safely transporting the daughters home after their escapade to face the ire of their father and a media firestorm. The family suffered ample embarrassment due to the daughters' behavior, and it was not the Secret Service's duty to prevent the daughters from doing something that could lead to embarrassment.
Likewise, if the Secret Service was mandated to help a protectee avoid potential embarrassment, agents never would have allowed candidate Michael Dukakis to be photographed in a tank, or John Kerry to ski with news photographers in Idaho, where he promptly fell and berated his security detail with ample profanity for getting in his way. The Secret Service would surely never have allowed then-President Bill Clinton to "entertain" Monica Lewinsky anywhere, especially not in the Oval Office. The Secret Service does its job remarkably well, and the result is that protectees operate in an environment where they are perfectly safe enough to occasionally make fools of themselves.
CNS next cited another "expert":
"There are all kinds of levels of background checks that would make law enforcement raise their eyebrows," said Ted Deeds, chief operating officer of the Law Enforcement Alliance of America.
"I'm sure the Secret Service knew he was a wanted felon fugitive. What a scandal it would be if they didn't warn a president or first lady they were standing next to a convicted felon," he added.
It's standard operating procedure to check the Social Security number and date of birth of anyone who is going to be in a room with the president or first lady, Deeds said.
"If the Secret Service did not do the basic due-diligence check, then the questions are even more pointed," said Deeds. "Who ordered them not to do it and why? Was the Clinton campaign, and by extension the Democrat fundraising machine, so focused on money that they would violate basic security protocol?"
Deeds, like Rowan, may have some association with law enforcement, but apparently insufficient to have obtained accurate information about the Secret Service. It is entirely possible that the Secret Service had no idea that Hsu was a fugitive in a financial crime case, and it is also possible that a high level donor such as Hsu could be photographed next to Hillary Clinton without having been name checked. Since those two possibilities are separate issues, we will address them individually.
First we will tackle Deeds' inaccurate statement that the Social Security and date of birth of everyone who will be in the room with Hillary Clinton is checked. Imagine this scenario: Hillary Clinton will make a campaign appearance at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. The arena seats approximately 18,000, and Hillary's campaign staff estimates that 8,000 free tickets have been distributed for the event. Hillary will, as Deeds contended, "be in a room" with this crowd of 8,000, but did her campaign staff record the name, date of birth, and social security number of every person who received a free ticket to the Staples Center event? No, because the event was free and open to anyone who wanted a ticket. Without that information, can the Secret Service perform name checks for everyone who will "be in a room" with Hillary during that event? The answer is obvious.
It is precisely because such name checks cannot be conducted for large crowds that those wishing to attend must pass through metal detectors and purse/bag screening before they can "be in a room" with Hillary. The environment for the protectee is safe of weapons and the Secret Service can provide close personal protection. As Hillary shakes hands with the crowd, photographs are routinely taken, thus on any given day her picture is taken with many voters or donors without providing their personal identifying information. Hillary is safe, but certainly unaware of the criminal records of the 8,000 in attendance.
The second inaccuracy set forth by Deeds and further supported by another "expert" quoted by CNS was the notion that Hillary's staff could have ordered the Secret Service not to perform a name check on Hsu (or anyone else), and that the more likely explanation was that the Secret Service knew Hsu was a fugitive but Hillary's staff told agents to ignore the outstanding warrant. This, according to CNS and the "experts" cited, is the only conceivable way that a fugitive who donated $850,000 could be photographed standing next to Hillary. This is how CNS's third expert stated it:
Clinton critic Gary Aldrich - an FBI agent for 26 years who was assigned from 1990 to 1995 to the White House during both the George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations to conduct background checks - thinks the Secret Service must have told someone on the campaign staff about the shady past of certain donors.
"Fundraising events, you don't want to be melees, so the guest list is carefully scrutinized," Aldrich told Cybercast News Service.
"It's likely the Secret Service would see there was a warrant for someone's arrest, and go to the point person. They may have been told to disregard the warrant. The Secret Service wouldn't tell the candidate, but the handlers, so she (Clinton) would have plausible deniability," he added.
Aldrich clearly knows very little about the Secret Service despite his assignment at the White House in the 1990's. Many people volunteer to work for political campaigns, usually as local volunteers. When their volunteer duties might bring them in proximity to a protectee like Hillary, perhaps as a driver of a staff car in a motorcade, the Secret Service demands personal identifying information and performs standard name checks. If a volunteer is found to have a criminal history that suggests a potential security risk, that volunteer is rejected and the Secret Service advises the permanent political staff to find another volunteer. The political staff cannot override the rejection.
The same principle applies to donors or celebrities who will be in close contact, such as meeting in small groups, with Hillary. If the Secret Service, in performing name checks for such meetings discovered that a potential guest was the subject of an outstanding criminal warrant, the agency would contact the jurisdiction that issued the warrant, verify that it is a currently valid warrant, and notify that jurisdiction of the subject's location. Aldrich, a known Clinton critic, also ignored the possibility that the state of California may have been unwilling to extradite Hsu. It is possible, if a name check was performed for Hsu, that the Secret Service contacted California officials, established that the warrant for Hsu was valid, but also learned that California would not extradite Hsu for a financial crime as opposed to a violent crime.
Not all local law enforcement agencies have the resources or legal authority to extradite fugitives, especially non-violent fugitives, from other states or Washington, DC. In that circumstance, the Secret Service would only be concerned with whether Hsu posed a safety risk to Hillary, which he clearly did not, and allow him access as requested by her staff. Unless California was willing to extradite, the Secret Service could not request that local police take Hsu into custody.
Conservative Clinton critics have seized upon the photos of Hsu standing with Hillary as proof positive that either she or the Secret Service, or both, knew about his warrant and did nothing about it either out of greed for campaign donations or a desire to avoid embarrassing a protectee. In the Hsu donation situation, however, there are more than enough plausible explanations to establish reasonable doubt that Hillary, her staff, or the Secret Service were aware of the outstanding warrant for Hsu. Best-selling fiction author Vince Flynn and the Clint Eastwood action thriller In the Line of Fire
both offered plausible scenarios in which wealthy campaign donors get close to a protectee without raising red flags with the political staff or security detail. Political staff members have far too much freedom to personally vouch for visitors, which under some circumstances can bypass the Secret Service altogether. That was the weak link in security that Vince Flynn captured effectively in his novel Transfer of Power
. A similar tactic is employed by John Malkovich's character in the film In the Line of Fire
.Rather than launching an opportunistic attack on Hillary Clinton by maligning the integrity and professionalism of the Secret Service, CNS should have more thoroughly researched the working relationships between a protectee's staff and security detail and the very different roles each plays. A political staff concerns itself with avoiding embarrassment, and Hillary's staff has vowed to be more proactive in checking the backgrounds of significant donors. The security detail concerns itself with keeping a protectee safe from harm, not embarrassment. Not surprisingly, the Secret Service declined to comment to CNS on the Hsu situation, as it is a political rather than security matter.
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