Secret Service scandal escalates

WASHINGTON -- The Secret Service prostitution scandal escalated yesterday with the disclosure that 20 women had been in hotel rooms with U.S. agents and military personnel just before President Barack Obama arrived for a summit with Latin American leaders.

Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan said he had referred the matter to an independent government investigator.

Sullivan, shuttling between briefings for lawmakers on Capitol Hill, was peppered with questions about whether the women had access to sensitive information that could have jeopardized Obama's security.

Sullivan said the 11 Secret Service agents and 10 military personnel under investigation were telling different stories about who the women were. He has dispatched more investigators to Colombia to interview the women, said Rep. Peter King (R-Seaford), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.

"Some are admitting [the women] were prostitutes, others are saying they're not, they're just women they met at the hotel bar," King said.

Sullivan said the women, who had to surrender their IDs at the hotel, were not minors. "But, prostitutes or not, to be bringing a foreign national back into a secure zone is a problem."

King said it appeared the agency actually had "really lucked out." If the women were working for a terrorist organization or other anti-American group, he said, they could have had access to information about the president's whereabouts or security protocols while in the agents' rooms. "This could have been disastrous," King said.

The burgeoning scandal has been a growing election-year embarrassment for Obama, who has said he would be angry if the allegations proved to be true.

At the White House, Obama was asked at the end of a Rose Garden news conference whether he believed Sullivan should resign. The president ignored the shouted inquiries; later, his spokesman said Obama had confidence in the Secret Service chief.