A DEA agent kept his job even after agency was alerted to extramarital affair with convict

An unnamed agent for the Drug Enforcement Agency was allowed to keep his job and security clearance even after carrying out an extramarital affair with a convicted criminal.

“The Special Agent admitted to [investigators] that he had, among other things: carried on an extramarital affair with a woman who was a convicted criminal; allowed her after-hours access to a DEA office, including a drug evidence room; allowed her to listen to recorded telephone calls of subjects of DEA investigations; and had sex with her on numerous occasions in the DEA office and his DEA vehicle,” read a damning internal report.

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The Office of Professional Responsibility first learned of the misconduct in 2013 and the Investigators from the Security Programs was alerted in 2014. The agent did not lose his security clearance until 2015, though it was reinstated three days later by then-Acting Chief Inspector Herman “Chuck” Whaley. Whaley also told DEA Administrator Michele M. Leonhart to turn a blind eye to the agent’s “serious misconduct.”

The initial investigation was launched after the agent’s mistress called the office in 2013 after the agent denied fathering her child, born in 2014. Paternity of the child is not officially established.

The agent was fired from the DEA in March 2016. Whaley retired in September 2016 while Leonhart resigned in 2015.