Obama briefed on discipline of Secret Service agents

President Barack Obama has been briefed on an incident involving three Secret Service agents who were sent home from Obama’s trip to the Netherlands for drinking alcohol.

White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters on Wednesday that Obama believes “that everybody representing the United States of America overseas needs to hold himself or herself to the highest standards.”

Carney said Obama supports Secret Service Director Julia Pierson’s “zero-tolerance” approach to misconduct and drinking but had no other comment. The agency named its first female director in March 2013.

Just before President Barack Obama’s arrival in the Netherlands on Monday, three agents were suspended from their assignment and sent home for “disciplinary reasons” related to drinking alcohol, the Secret Service said on Tuesday.

One agent was found drunk and unconscious at a hotel in Amsterdam after going out for a night of drinking. The other two agents were deemed complicit because they did not intervene despite being in a position to assist the drunken agent or tamp down his behavior.

According to The Washington Post, which first reported the incident, the agents are members of the elite Secret Service’s Counter Assault Team, which defends the president if he comes under attack, and that one agent was a ‘‘team leader.’’

Obama arrived in the Netherlands on Monday for the start of a week-long four-country trip which will also take him to Brussels, Rome, and Saudi Arabia.

The Secret Service scandal comes amid efforts by the agency to repair its image tarnished by misconduct. In April 2012, a dozen Secret Service agents were fired or resigned for drinking heavily and bringing prostitutes to their hotel rooms in Cartagena, Colombia, prior to Obama’s arrival for an economic summit.