Secret Service head revises account of "rumor" about Chaffetz smear
Secret Service Director Joseph Clancy knew of rumors that his agents had accessed an old employment file of Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah -- an action that broke the law, as well as the agency's own policies.
A report issued earlier this week by the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general found that Secret Service agents had violated the Privacy Act and accessed the congressman's employment record on approximately 60 separate occasions.
The employment history goes back to 2003, when Chaffetz, who now chairs the committee charged with investigating the agency's numerous scandals, had applied to work for the Secret Service and was rejected.
According to the DHS report, Clancy said that it was only on April 1, 2015 - as the Washington Post was preparing to publish a story about the incident - that he first heard whispers about agents accessing Chaffetz's employment application.
But on Friday, Clancy amended that information, saying that after the report was released, he actually "recalled being aware of this speculative rumor as early as March 25, 2015."
"What I heard on March 25 was not credible and was not attributed to a source of information or indicative of any action - inappropriate or otherwise - by any Secret Service employee," Clancy said in a statement. "It was not until later that I became aware that this rumor had developed as Agency employees had used an Agency database to gain access to this information."
Clancy also said that he had "personally spoken" to Chaffetz about the additional information. He also corrected the record for the DHS inspector general.
In an earlier interview with CBS News, Chaffetz said, "This should never happened to me, it shouldn't happen to anybody else. I worry that if they did this to me they might be doing it somebody else."
"The more I learn about the Secret Service the more I recognize there is a deep-seated cultural problem," he said.