Three US secret service agents sent home for drinking ahead of Obama’s Dutch visit

Three US secret service agents responsible for protecting President Barack Obama in Amsterdam on his European tour this week were sent home at the weekend after spending a night out drinking.

One agent was found drunk and unconscious in the hallway of a hotel on Sunday, a day before Mr Obama's arrival for a week-long trip to Europe and Saudi Arabia, the Washington Post reported.

Three employees were sent home “for disciplinary reasons” and put on administration leave pending an investigation, a spokesman for the secret service told the newspaper on Tuesday evening.

Staff at the Huis ter Duin Hotel in Noordwijk, a resort town about 15 miles outside The Hague, alerted the US embassy in the Netherlands after discovering the passed-out agent.

The incident is further embarrassment for the secret service following controversy in 2012 when a dozen agents and officers were found to have been drinking heavily and to have brought prostitutes back to their hotel rooms in Cartagena, Colombia, ahead of Mr Obama's visit for an economic summit.

Secret service rules introduced in the wake of that affair prohibited agents from consuming alcohol for up to 10 hours before a work assignment.

Agents working on Mr Obama's Dutch visit would have had to attend a briefing on Sunday to discuss the president's visit to the
Netherlands the following day.

Mr Obama criticised the behaviour of the agents on the Colombia trip, saying he expected them “to observe the highest standards because we’re not just representing ourselves”.