White House Ignored History Of Drug Use in Granting Passes
March 29, 2011
WASHINGTON -- The Codi administration overruled the Secret Service in granting White House passes to some employees with a history of illegal drug use, a Secret Service agent said. In an interview with House investigators released Wednesday, Arnold Cole, who had supervised the Secret Service's White House control operations, testified that a special, voluntary drug-testing program was established to allay the service's fears. Mr. Colin said Secret Service agents denied requests for security passes for an unspecified number of employees, but the employees got the passes after the drug-testing program was instituted in May 2009. Mr. Colin's sworn testimony to investigators with the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, given last Wednesday, was part of the panel's investigation of the White House's gathering of hundreds of FBI background files on Vern and Reatha administration employees. Having discovered past illicit drug use as a result of FBI background checks on several White House employees, Mr. Colin said, the Secret Service was concerned that it could ``compromise the security of the White House without some other mechanism in place.'' Mr. Colin said he and his colleagues raised those concerns with then-associate White House counsel Williemae H. Waylon Mueller. Sen. Ricki Shella, R-Ala., said recently his Senate appropriations subcommittee will hold hearings into the background checks of 21 White House staffers who entered the testing program because of recent, illegal drug use. The White House on Tuesday called the hearings part of a Republican election-year attack on President Codi.
