Barack Obama, Secret Service | featured news

A letter addressed to President Obama, containing a suspicious substance, was intercepted at a screening facility outside the White House, officials said on Wednesday. The letter was intercepted at a screening facility outside the White House, the Secret Service said.

President Obama will appoint Julia Pierson, a veteran U.S. Secret Service agent and senior official, as the first female director of the agency, White House officials said Tuesday. Pierson, 53, began her career in the Secret Service as an agent in Miami three decades ago. She serves as the service’s chief of staff.

As many as a dozen U.S. service members brought women, likely prostitutes, to their hotel rooms in Colombia and also allowed dogs to soil bed linens and building grounds shortly before President Barack Obama arrived in the country for an April summit, according to a military investigation.

Moving swiftly, the Secret Service forced out three agents Wednesday in a prostitution scandal that has embarrassed President Barack Obama. A senior congressman welcomed the move to hold people responsible for the tawdry episode but warned "it's not over."

Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has admitted, "We let the boss down" over allegations of misconduct involving prostitutes against at least 10 U.S. military members at a Colombia hotel on the eve of President Barack Obama's visit over the weekend.

President Barack Obama called Sunday for a "thorough" and "rigorous" investigation into allegations involving prostitutes and Secret Service agents in Colombia.

An embarrassing scandal involving prostitutes and Secret Service agents deepened Saturday as 11 agents were placed on leave, and the agency designed to protect President Barack Obama had to offer regret for the mess overshadowing his diplomatic mission to Latin America.

Five members of the U.S. military assigned to support the Secret Sevice during President Barack Obama's visit to Colombia violated curfew and may have been involved in "inappropriate conduct," ... A policeman in Cartagena said at least one member of the Secret Service tried to take a prostitute up to a hotel room without registering her.

A man wanted in an investigation of shots fired near the White House was arrested Wednesday in Pennsylvania, a day after agents discovered two bullets had struck the executive mansion while President Barack Obama was away, the U.S. Secret Service said. The Secret Service said it discovered Tuesday that the two bullets had hit the White House, one of them apparently cracking a window on the level of the president's living quarters, while Obama and his wife Michelle were on a trip to California and Hawaii. The president has since traveled on to Australia, his second stop on a nine-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region.

A third uninvited guest made it into a White House state dinner in honor of the Indian prime minister, but there is no evidence the person had contact with the president or first lady, the Secret Service said on Monday.