not-so-secret service

Prostitute-Sexing Secret Service Agents Even Cheaper Than Initially Realized [Updated]

A general view of the Hotel Caribe in Cartagena, Colombia on April 15, 2012. US secret service agents who have been accused of misconduct amid a sex scandal had reportedly stayed at the Hotel Caribe before being set back to the US.
The hotel where it all went down. Photo: MAndel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

Previously, it had been reported that one agent’s cheapness instigated the Secret Service prostitute scandal which has quickly become a historic embarrassment for the agency. He didn’t want to pay her, she made a fuss, police were called, word got out, etc. But according to NBC News, it was actually the even greater cheapness of two agents that caused the dispute:

The Colombian prostitute who triggered the scandal that has rocked the Secret Service got angry with two agents who refused to pay her full price for servicing the two of them, leading to a financial dispute over between $40 and $60, according to a government source who has been briefed on the investigation

The controversy arose after one of the women went back to a hotel room with two agents. The woman wanted to be paid for serving both agents, the source who has been briefed on the probe told NBC News. Instead, the agents would only agree to split her price, prompting the woman to complain to local police who were stationed in the lobby of the Hotel Caribe, the source said.

We don’t know (and don’t want to know) what went on in that room, but the prostitute definitely deserved full price for it.

Update: Okay, here is a completely different version of events, courtesy of the Times, which talked to the prostitute — er, escort — in question:

A Secret Service agent preparing for President Obama’s arrival at an international summit meeting and a single mother from Colombia who makes a living as a high-priced escort faced off in a room at the Hotel Caribe a week ago over how much he owed her for the previous night’s intercourse. “I tell him, ‘Baby, my cash money,’ ” the woman said in her first public comments on a spat that would soon spiral into a full-blown scandal.

The dispute — he offered $30 for services she thought they had agreed were worth 25 times that — triggered a tense early morning struggle in the hallway of the posh hotel involving the woman, another prostitute, Colombian police officers arguing on the women’s behalf and American federal agents who tried but failed to keep the matter — which has shaken the reputation of the Secret Service — from escalating.

This is like Rashomon, with prostitutes.

Secret Service Agents Wanted to Split Bill