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SALT LAKE CITY — Rep. Jason Chaffetz said Thursday it was "scary and concerning" that so many U.S. Secret Service employees accessed his unsuccessful decade-old application to join the agency that was leaked to the news media earlier this year.
"This was not one or two people just getting a little upset," Chaffetz, R-Utah, told KSL Newsradio's Doug Wright, citing "the fact that it was at the senior most levels, that it was so many agents, that nobody really stepped up to say, 'Let's stop this.'"
The chairman of the House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee said the breach first made public in April and the subject of a government report released Wednesday underscore why his committee is looking into the agency.
"It's just beyond belief that they would do this," Chaffetz said. "But they're also demonstrating why, over the last year and half, two years, I have been investigating the Secret Service because I do think they have a deep, cultural problem."
He questioned why no action has been taken against those involved, including Assistant Director Ed Lowery, who, according to the report, wrote an email suggesting Chaffetz's 2003 application be made public "just to be fair" after the start of an oversight committee hearing about the agency.
"Nothing has happened internally. They still have not disciplined or done anything to any personnel," Chaffetz said. "I think that's coming, but here we are, October, and nothing has happened."
The report by Homeland Security's inspector general said the actions may be criminal under the U.S. Privacy Act. At least 45 employees were said to have viewed Chaffetz's application.
Chaffetz said both the "pervasive nature" of the breach and the motives behind it are "scary and concerning," especially given the mission of the Secret Service.
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Scores of U.S. Secret Service employees improperly accessed the decade-old, unsuccessful job application of a congressman who was investigating scandals inside the agency, a new government report said Wednesday."We entrust them to be by heads of state, the president. They're seeing and hearing things of the utmost sensitivity," he said, and yet they used their police powers to access his private information.
"If this is the cavalier attitude and the way they approach it," the congressman said, "I don't understand why any one of them would continue to have a security clearance."
And while Chaffetz said the leaking of his application was "not the colonoscopy I was expecting," it still had an effect.
"We laugh about it, and I'm supposed to put on this tough face and all that. But it was intended to intimidate, and in many ways it does," he said, raising the possibility he's not the first victim.
"Once they have my Social Security number, my birthdate and other intimate details, what scares me is, who knows what else they have done with it," he said. "I don't get the sense this was the first time they've ever done it."
The news that his application has been leaked came when The Daily Beast called for a comment on an article about his rejection by the Secret Service that was posted online April 2.
"That was the first inkling I got about it," Chaffetz sad. "Then, when it came out in the subsequent days, I got an apology from the Secret Service director and the head of Homeland Security. But they were already off to the races at that point."
