You'd think Secret Service Director Joseph Clancy would remember something as outrageous as dozens of agents circulating the private personnel records of a congressman who has been among the agency's harshest critics.
The potential is chilling. Were secret service agents blatantly violating privacy laws with the hopes of embarrassing a foe?
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, is chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and the job records showed that he had been rejected for Secret Service employment.
Such a breach of privacy should demand swift punishment. Instead, we've gotten prevarication.
Clancy insisted to Homeland Security's inspector general that he had been in the dark about the unflattering information about Chaffetz and his staffers' role in circulating it until a colleague told him in April that the Washington Post planned to write about it. But Clancy can't keep his stories straight. He now says he knew he'd been told the information was being shared before the story was leaked.
So why didn't Clancy discipline those involved when he found out about it?
His defense is that he considered the original reports to be "not credible" and "not indicative" of inappropriate employee actions.
But, according to Chaffetz, by Friday Clancy was on the phone apologizing and acknowledging that he had learned about the breach days before it became public but then had forgotten.
