Dozens of Secret Service agents suspended for unauthorized access of database

Dozens of Secret Service agents will be suspended for looking up Congressman’s personal information in bid to smear him, admits scandal-hit agency director

*Some 42 agents will receive short suspensions for illegally accessing a personnel file on Congressman Jason Chaffetz
*Earlier this year someone in the department told the press that Chaffetz applied for and was rejected from a job with the Secret Service in 2003
*Secret Service Director Joseph Clancy said Homeland Security hasn’t decided how to punish the agent who spearheaded the smear campaign
*He said this at a joint hearing held by House and Senate Homeland Security subcommittees today on Capitol Hill
*The agents’ actions were ‘reprehensible, disturbing, embarrassing,’ he said. ‘I agree with everything that’s been said here today’

So, let me get this straight, some people with TS-SCI clearances can access an extremely sensitive database, without authorization, to use information gathered there from to disseminate as part of a smear campaign. Yet there is no mention, and thus presumably no action taken, of immediate suspension of their security clearances??

Hasn’t decided how to punish the agent?

How about immediate termination and criminal prosecution?