You have to be pretty ignorant of institutional cultures to imagine that what happened in Cartagena was an isolated incident. Was it just a coincidence that everyone assigned to that detail just happened to go along with it, that no one tried to get their colleagues to behave? No, they obviously all came from a much larger pool of individuals, from a culture in which such things were at least tolerated, if not reinforced and encouraged.

[Update a while later]

What did I tell you?

This source witnessed the majority of the men drink heavily (“wasted,” “heavily intoxicated”) at the strip club. He says most of the Secret Service “advance-team” members also paid extra for access to the VIP section of the club where they were provided a number of sexual favors in return for their cash. Although our source says he told the agents it was a “really bad idea” to take the strippers back to their hotel rooms, several agents bragged that they “did this all the time” and “not to worry about it.” Our source says at least two agents had escorts check into their rooms. It is unclear whether the escorts who returned to the hotels were some of the strippers from the same club.

These alleged incidents in El Salvador occurred a full year prior to recent revelations that secret service agents used prostitutes in Cartagena, Colombia, on a presidential trip this month.

This wasn’t an anomaly; it was standard operating procedure.