In 2013, Pierson demoted a very well respected member of the PPD. He had left a bullet in the hotel room of a woman he was seeing; having consumed alcohol that night, he tried to go back into the room and, intoxicated, was stopped by the hotel’s security team.
When, in March of 2014, three members of a CAT team drank too much before a presidential trip to the Netherlands, with one passing out in the hallway, they were sent home and immediately disciplined.
About a week later, a PPD agent got drunk and crashed a car in the Florida Keys. Then Pierson made it a rule that agents on the CAT and CS teams could not drink alcohol within 24 hours of the president’s arrival on a foreign trip. A number of managers were re-assigned.
As part of its investigations into the Secret Service’s culture, the Department of Homeland Security asked Secret Service employees if they knew colleagues with drinking problems. Only 10 percent said yes.
That tells me that the Secret Service still does not believe it has a drinking problem. And whatever leadership failures or protocol malfunctions it may be dealing with in the wake of the elevator mishap, the agency clearly has a drinking problem.
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