Secret Service Chief ‘Frustrated’ by Latest Incident, Concedes It’s His ‘First Test’

iStock/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) — The new head of the Secret Service conceded Tuesday that the latest allegations of misconduct within his agency are his “first test” as he tries to chart a new course for the service.

Speaking before a House panel, director Joseph Clancy also expressed concern that he learned about the allegations five days after initial reports that two senior-level Secret Service agents were “inebriated” and crashed into the White House grounds.

“I should have been informed … and there will be accountability,” Clancy said after intense questioning from members of the House Appropriations Committee. “I’m frustrated. I’m very frustrated that we didn’t know about this until Monday.”

As soon as he and his staff found out about the allegations — through an “anonymous email” — Clancy says he held a meeting discuss why there was such a delay.

“We had a good stern talk about that,” he said. “There’s no excuse for this information to not come up the chain,” he said.

Nevertheless, he said he has “been impressed” by those within his ranks, despite recent scandals like the one that erupted last week, after two senior agents on President Obama’s protective detail allegedly drove a government vehicle under the influence of alcohol and collided with a White House barricade before leaving the scene, administration and Capitol Hill sources told ABC News.

The agents, Mark Connolly and George Ogilvie, have been reassigned while the investigation is pending, according to the Secret Service.

The March 4 incident took place at the southeast entrance to the White House complex at 15th Street and E Street in downtown Washington, D.C.  No one was charged and no police reports were filed.

In particular, ABC News learned the agents drove through crime scene tape that was set up at that location from an earlier investigation of a suspicious package. The vehicle collided with an orange plastic barrel but sustained no damage, sources said. Multiple sources insisted there was no “crash,” but that the behavior was suspicious enough to raise concerns of uniformed officers on the scene.

“Apparently two agents who have supervisory roles had been at a retirement party, and they left that party and went to the White House in a vehicle, in a Secret Service vehicle, and when they got to the entrance of the White House, they apparently flashed their badges or whatever, and it was obvious that…to the guards that were there, that they may have been a bit impaired,” Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, told ABC News.

“They went on to go through what was then an active crime scene investigation,” Cummings said.

When uniformed officers confronted the agents, a supervisor ordered them to let the agents go without charge, government sources said. House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, told ABC News unlike the agents in the car, the supervisor is still on the job and has not been reassigned pending the investigation.

Many consider the episode the first major test for Clancy, a Secret Service veteran who assumed the post last month.  In an exclusive interview with ABC News’ Pierre Thomas three weeks ago, Clancy vowed to chart a new course for the Secret Service.

“We have not received an unfair rap,” he conceded. “I think when you fail, and we have failed, we own it. Now, it’s up to us to correct it.”

In September, a man with a small knife in his pocket jumped the White House’s perimeter fence and made it deep inside the presidential building. That incident came more than two years after the Secret Service was shaken by the 2012 prostitution scandal out of Cartagena, Colombia.

At the time those scandals and others unfolded, Clancy was the head of security for Comcast, having left the government in 2011 after 27 years with the Secret Service. He was “shocked” by those incidents, he said.

Then, last month, a small drone flew over the fence and crashed on the White House grounds, prompting a pre-dawn security scare. President Obama was in India at the time, and although the incident turned out to be a recreational flight gone awry, Clancy said he’s “certainly concerned” about the threat a drone like that could pose. The newly-appointed Secret Service director was with President Obama in India at the time, and said the president “was very concerned, as he should be” about the breach.

“He wanted to know what happened,” and he “had very specific questions,” Clancy recalled. “But he has faith in the work that we’re doing.”

In retrospect, Clancy said, the poor judgment in Cartagena and the failures at the White House five months ago came down to one thing: “Just a lack of self-discipline.” He dismissed suggestions the high-profile scandals were the product of a culture within the Secret Service that condones poor behavior.

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