Did Obama Compromise Secret Service Agent?

If Barack Obama can’t be trusted to safeguard information about his own Secret Service agents, can he be trusted with vital national security secrets?

I ask the question above after observing the president-elect engaging in post-news conference “happy talk” (i.e., non-political banter) with members of the Washington press corps this morning.

After bringing up the subject of the BCS National Championship Game won by Florida Thursday night, the soon-to-be-44th president mentioned that the leader of his Secret Service detail had shown keen interest in the outcome of the game — #2 Florida beat #1 Oklahoma, 24-14 — because his son was a member of one of the teams involved in the season-ending college football showcase in Miami.*

Do you think that any member of of a Secret Service detail wants information about his family and personal life shared with the public via the national and international news media?  I seriously doubt it for two reasons.

By divulging such personal information about his Secret Service agent, Obama may have:

1.  Compromised that agent’s ability to perform his duties as a protector of the president; and

2. Compromised the security that agent’s family members were able to enjoy while living in the relative anonymity that existed in their lives prior to Obama’s disclosure of information about them.

I won’t go into detail about how a person with less-than-honorable intentions might attempt to capitalize on Obama’s reckless statements, but I can tell you that it took only a few mouse clicks for this blogger to pare the list of players who might be related to that Secret Service agent down to a manageable few.

Why am I concerned?  As a former Air Force officer who was both entrusted with national security secrets and helped safeguard the same, I can only hope that the president-elect will learn from this grave misstep and not compromise or endanger anyone else as a result of such a loose-lipped approach to leadership.

*Not only did Obama mention the name of the school attended by the Secret Service agent’s son, but he also mentioned the position the young man plays and the fact that he was a starter for his team in yesterday’s game.  Conversely, I’ve opted to omit that information from this post and thereby attempt to make it more difficult for anyone to make use of those details in a manner that could be detrimental to the agent, to members of his family and to the president-elect.

-- Bob McCarty Writes