A new United States Justice Department report revealed that a US Drug Enforcement Agent (DEA) arranged the hiring of a prostitute for a Secret Service agent in Cartagena, Colombia.
The DEA agent posted in Cartagena, reportedly hired a prostitute to provide a visiting Secret Service agent a massage at another DEA agent’s apartment. The same DEA agent later paid the prostitute.
CBS news reported that in this particular case, three DEA agents were investigated, where one “admitted arranging the liason, another said he did not remember, and the third was not present when the encounter happened.” It has now emerged, however, that when the scandal originally began to gain media traction, all three agents erased information from their phones.
The report was released as part of a wider investigation into the scandal that broke early in 2012, when it emerged that at least 13 Secret Service agents were involved with either prositutes or “female Colombian nationals” ahead of Barack Obama’s visit to the city for the Summit of the Americas.
The scandal embarrassed the US government and drew the ire of Colombia’s Foreign Minister, Maria Angela Holguin, who defended the city of Cartagena from associations with sex tourism and placed the blame squarely on the shoulders of the US agents.