Secret Service Officials Reported Agents Did Not Appear Intoxicated, Documents Show

— -- New documents obtained by ABC News reveal conflicting accounts by top Secret Service officials about whether two senior agents were drunk when they drove into the White House complex.

It all started with an allegation -- via anonymous email -- that Secret Service agents were “extremely intoxicated” as they drove through an active crime scene set up just outside the White House complex on the evening of March 4. But documents obtained by ABC News show that two senior Secret Service officials who believed the two agents involved in the now infamous incident were not intoxicated, based on their interactions with the agents that evening. The agents, Marc Connolly and George Ogilvie, had been accused of driving through the crime scene near a White House gate while possibly under the influence of alcohol after attending a retirement party for a colleague.

The accusation of drunkenness was slow to move up the chain of command and word of the anonymous e-mail only reached Secret Service Director Clancy five days later on March 9. Secret Service officials then gathered information on the allegations of agent misconduct to be passed on to the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General, in accordance with agency policy. The information was based in part on recollections of some of the supervisors involved in the incident five days earlier.

The documents were part of the material presented to the DHS Inspector General by the Secret Service. One of those documents details some of the recollections of Secret Service Deputy Chief Alfonso Dyson and Captain Michael Braun, both of the Uniformed Division.

“Deputy Chief Dyson advised that based on his conversation with DSAIC Connolly, it did not appear as though DSAIC Connolly [was] impaired,” according to Dyson’s account of his phone conversation with Connolly described in the document. Dyson called Connolly on the evening of March 4, after he was alerted to the incident. Connolly told Dyson that he had made a mistake, which Dyson believed to be referring to driving into the crime scene at that entrance caused by a suspicious package tossed at that location by a woman earlier that evening.

The document goes on to say, “Captain Braun advised that the driver of the [government vehicle] (ATSAIC Ogilvie) did not appear to be intoxicated.” And though Braun advised that Connolly’s eyes appeared glassy, he commented, “that he did not believe that DSAIC Connolly or ATSAIC Ogilvie was intoxicated.”

According to documents, Deputy Chief Dyson had been briefed on the incident on the evening of March 4 by Uniformed Division Inspector Keith Williams. Citing an “unknown source,” Williams said he was told Connolly, a passenger in the car, “smelled of alcohol,” the document states.

According to congressional sources, no other evidence other than the anonymous email and the unknown source has been presented to suggest that either agent was drunk. Multiple sources who have reviewed video of the incident tell ABC News that it does not provide any conclusive evidence of impairment.

The documents also show that the Connolly told Dyson that he and Ogilvie did not realize that the White House complex was under alert condition yellow due to the suspicious package investigation at that entrance. Only when they noticed that the security post was unoccupied did they check their BlackBerry devices and learn of the alert.

A detailed timeline of events obtained by ABC News shows that Director Clancy was called at 10:48 p.m. on the evening of March 4 to inform him of the suspicious package. The two agents arrived at the White House only 10 minutes later, at 10:58. Yet, records show, no one from the Secret Service bothered to call Clancy back that evening to inform him of alleged misconduct.

Video of the incident released Tuesday shows no drama, no collision and at most, a low-speed vehicle maneuver which bumped a temporary traffic barrel out of the path of the entrance of the White House complex. The video has a limited view, but does not show indications of a particularly active crime scene.

The video also does not show that the agents flipped on their lights to go around the barrier, as they are accused of doing in the anonymous email. It does show a vehicle moving just behind the agents’ car followed closely by a police car that did have its rooftop light bar flashing.

Rep. Elijah Cummings was troubled by the e-mail, telling the Director Clancy at a Tuesday hearing, “It appears that we have an agency at war against itself. The idea that in an organization like this that somebody would create this kind of document to bring this kind of disruption when they are supposed to be guarding the president of the United States of America. We are better than that.”

It is now up to the inspector general to determine whether the allegations of misconduct have merit, why they were not communicated more quickly up the chain of command and what can be done to get the Secret Service can get back on track. That process, sources say, could take several weeks.