Secret Service agent commits suicide

This AP article is posted at Lucianne.com:

A senior Secret Service agent being formally investigated by the government for failing to disclose a long-standing relationship with a foreign citizen killed himself last week. People familiar with the matter say Rafael Prieto, a married father assigned to President Barack Obama’s security detail, acknowledged the affair after U.S. authorities began investigating. These people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss Prieto’s death or the investigation. The sources say Prieto’s relationship was revealed to Secret Service investigators by an agent who had been entangled in the Colombian prostitution scandal earlier this year.

Ever since the Secret Service scandal in Colombia broke, I have had the thought that the wild, unheard-of misbehavior in the Service had something to do with the large number of nonwhites that Obama had hired to increase diversity and conspicuously surround the President with nonwhite (and female) guards. But there was no way of knowing, because the names and photos of the agents being investigated in the scandal were not given. Now we have the unprecedented spectacle of a Secret Service agent (a type of man who historically has represented the height of psychological stability and reliability) killing himself, and his name is Rafael Prieto. Which strengthens the suspicion (still not confirmed) that the disarray in the Secret Service has much to do with the hiring of less capable, less responsible, less stable minority hires. However, since much the same thing has happened in every urban police department that sought to increase its diversity, doesn’t it stand to reason that the same phenomenon has happened in the Secret Service?

America will never learn the lesson about black and Hispanic dysfunction provided by every day’s headlines. It would rather commit national suicide than admit that race matters.

- end of initial entry -

November 3

John C. writes:

Good post re the Secret Service agent killing himself. Doubtless an affirmative action hire. But this was not the first Secret Service agent committing suicide. Twenty years ago it happened under the first Bush.

Matthew H. writes:

Maybe we shouldn’t make too much of the minority component of recent Secret Service scandals. When the Colombian prostitute story was in the news I recalled that JFK’s security men had been criticized for their partying the night before his assassination. It seems this was not uncommon behavior for them. It isn’t hard to imagine the kinds of women who probably were part of those scenes.

There’s not much out there about this incident. One piece I found deals mostly with the recent case but notes that:

The most serious misconduct by a Secret Service advance team occurred on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas. Six members of the president’s security detail were seen drinking at the local press club until 3 a.m., and then reportedly took the party to an after-hours club. Less than six hours later, President John F. Kennedy was shot dead in his motorcade.

I have read elsewhere that the men got quite drunk and that some were likely impaired the next day. It happens that this was around the time when Kennedy had appointed the first black Secret Service agent, Abraham Boldon (who apparently was not involved).

I don’t think it’s surprising to find wild after-hours conduct by fit young men traveling from city to city in the high-adrenaline entourage of the world’s most powerful executive. Yes, it’s a problem, but not a new one. One might suppose it’s worse under presidents like Obama or JFK.

LA replies:

If it turns that out my suspicions about the racial component of the Secret Service’s current troubles are wrong, I’ll admit it. I’ve given my reasons for having those suspicions. An additional reason I didn’t mention was that the identities of the agents have been kept secret. Would they have remained secret all these months if they were not diversity hires?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 02, 2012 05:14 PM | Send