Secret Service scandal a national embarrassment?

This is a rush transcript from "Hannity," April 16, 2012. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

SEAN HANNITY, HOST OF "HANNITY": A prostitution scandal has rocked the United States secret service and has the Obama administration scrambling to contain this national embarrassment. Now, 11 agents assigned to protect the life of the President during the summit of the Americas in Colombia have been suspended amid allegations that they hired prostitutes, some of whom may have been under age. And many of the accused agents are married. Now, two of them are supervisors and all had to secret clearances raising very serious concerns about whether or not their actions compromised President Obama's security. And the President has said, publicly he would be quote, "angry if these reports are true." Both he and other top administration officials don't seem to understand the gravity of this incident on Saturday night. Just hours after this bombshell story broke; Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was seen partying at a Colombian nightclub, drinking beer, dancing with friends. And apparently, she is not the only one impressed with, well, Colombia's night life. Take a look at this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I want to thank President Santos and the people of Colombia for the extraordinary hospitality and the beautiful city of Cartagena. We are having a wonderful time. And usually, when I take the summit trips part of my job is to scout out where I may want to bring Michelle back later for vacations. So, we'll make sure to come back some time in the near future.

(APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HANNITY: And here now with reaction to the administration bizarre response to this developing scandal are the author of "In The President's Secret Service" Ronald Kessler who actually broke this story. And United States Senate candidate Dan Bongino, a former U.S. secret service agent himself. Guys, welcome to the program. Good to see you again. Welcome back.

DAN BONGINO, FORMER SECRET SERVICE AGENT: Good to see you, Sean. First of all, congratulations. You won the primary and on your way to the general. All right. How many years were you in the Secret Service?

BONGINO: Twelve years.

HANNITY: All right. And you made a really tough family decision. You got out of the service. Look, I have a Secret Service flag pin on. I have met many of the guys. Know them. You worked with them. I got to admit, when I heard this, I was pretty shocked. But then I thought all right, probably within any organization, you got to have a few bad apples. But with the Secret Service, it's a little different.

BONGINO: Sure. The penalty is that much greater. It's a human agency full of human beings that made a human mistake and a grave mistake. A tremendous, tremendous lapse in judgment. There's no question about that. This is devastating to me both personally, professionally. It's not the kind of story you want to be talking about. Personally, during a campaign.

HANNITY: You know who these agents are?

BONGINO: Yes. I have very personal relationships, with a number of them. Very personal. And it's really deeply impacted me. It's a very emotional story. It's not one I enjoyed coming up here to talk about it.

HANNITY: And you found out immediately after you made the decision because you served under two presidents.

BONGINO: That's right.

HANNITY: At the White House. And you were close to President Obama. You did a lot of detail work for him. But you decided to run a campaign against President Obama.

BONGINO: That's right.

HANNITY: And against his policies.

BONGINO: Right. That's right. I say all the time I have no personal gripe with President Obama at all. This is strictly a political difference and a very serious one. I disagree just about all of his policies. But this is an issue I think we were talking off the air, we agree on. This is just a national embarrassment; it's above the partisan politics. There is no republican smiling about this. This embarrassed our country. When the President is overseas, he is our President. That's the way it always was.

HANNITY: Not only that, their job is to keep him safe. That is for all of our elected officials that he represents, he is the President of the United States. And Ron, let me go to you, you even reported on Newsmax today that there is a possibility that these girls may be under age. Tell us how you might know that?

RONALD KESSLER, JOURNALIST AND AUTHOR: Well, that is the question that is being looked into, because it's very common for girls to be put into trafficking, underage, it's just an issue to be explored. But you mention that the administration is taking it lightly. I think you saw that when President Obama was asked about this on Sunday. And he said well, if these allegations in the press turn out to be true, I'll be very angry. First of all, as we know, it's not about the allegation in the press. It's the secret service itself which said, in a statement issued after I broke the story that this conduct occurred. And that is why these agents are being sent back. And so, he's sort of behind the law. And secondly, being angry is not the way to reform his agency. The way to reform it is to replace the director Mark Sullivan who's presided over all these fiascoes. This one, the Salahis intruding at the state dinner, dozen examples in my book in the present Secret Service that are even more serious than some of these examples such as letting people in events without magnetometers.

It's just like putting passengers into an airplane without magnetometers, not insisting on physical fitness and firearms requalification testing.

Instead, they will sometimes ask agents to fill out their own test scores, which is dishonest, on and on. This leads to the kind of thing we saw in Colombia.

HANNITY: All right, you served there. You hear what Mr. Kessler is saying. I know one of the things they are likely to do is go back and look and see whether or not this is a lone incident. I have to believe that there is a possibility if agents would act this way one day that it probably happened in the past. Is that a jump for me?

BONGINO: Well, having done leaves overseas, foreign leaves where I was in charge. It all ended with me, the decision-making. I can tell you when we had incidents, not like this, but even minor incidents where someone was drinking off duty and it didn't look right, it was always dealt with very harshly.

I remember being in hotel rooms with supervisor on a trip and me and addressing a guy that was intoxicated. It did not end well for him. He was immediately sent home. The Secret Service reputation to them is paramount. It's everything.

HANNITY: But they had two supervisors in this case who were pulled.

BONGINO: Yes, and that's what makes it particularly disturbing. I mean, Sean, there's really no way to square this circle.

HANNITY: Is there any way from your experience that this would compromise the safety and security of the president?

BONGINO: On this trip, fortunately, it doesn't appear to be the case.

HANNITY: Could it have happened?

BONGINO: Of course, and I think that's what bothers the service the most. I say that the reputation matters most. The reputation that is most because the security of the president matters most.

Securing the life of the executive office of the president of the United States that is no small mission. I think they are going to do a very severe review of the policies. You will see changes that matter. I can't imagine it wouldn't happen.

HANNITY: Guys, thank you very much. Good luck in your Senate campaign.

BONGINO: Appreciate it.

HANNITY: Coming up, we continue the process of vetting the president of the things that the mainstream media will not do. We're going to bring you our next installment of the real Obama.

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