Perhaps the public should have expected a scandal when the Secret Service traveled to Amsterdam, Netherlands, ahead of President Barack Obama's visit this past weekend.

Amsterdam is known for wild parties — as is the agency in charge of protecting the United States' commander-in-chief.

When employees found one agent passed out drunk on the floor of a hallway of the Huis Ter Duin Hotel in the wee hours of the morning on March 23, it was an example of yet another wild Secret Service night with a very public ending.

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said the agency has "cultural problems," The Washington Post reported, and many feel that managers tolerate rowdy behavior to the point that such things don't always affect promotions.

Plenty of others have leveled similar charges against the Secret Service for well over a decade. The accusations stem from agency parties and other forms of misconduct (though they're hardly the only ones), so we decided it was high time to round up some of the most flagrant incidents, below.

1997: Drugs and sex with a minor

Agent Timothy O'Brien, a guard for former President Ronald Reagan, pulled a gun on his neighbor in Los Angeles before he was arrested for possession of methamphetamine and having sex with a 16-year-old girl. The neighbor, who was the father of the 16-year-old O'Brien slept with, went over to O'Brien's house to ask why his daughter was leaving the agent's home one morning wearing only pajamas. O'Brien was found guilty of having sex with a minor, drug possession and violently resisting arrest.

1999: Bar fight becomes a gun fight

A minor gun battle broke out at the now-defunct Lulu's Club in Washington, D.C. The culprits were an unnamed Air Force enlistee and Secret Service agent Manuel Puente; both men were injured. The agency asked Puente to resign.

2002: Pulling a Mike Tyson

On Feb. 1, 2002, a hotel manager in Provo, Utah, phoned up to a room full of people that he had already asked to quiet down. Twenty Secret Service agents were in the room at the Western Inn, and someone quickly hung up the phone after answering. When the manager visited the room yet again ask them to keep it down, an agent reportedly pushed the manager out and threatened to put a gun to his head he came up again. The agents were also reportedly drinking with underage girls, and local police later investigated the possibility of a sexual assault. One agent resigned and two others were put on administrative leave.

That same month, former Vice President Dick Cheney took a trip to San Diego. Some of the Secret Service agents on his detail went to a bar after their shift, and four of them wound up in a fight with 15 locals. The agents allegedly ran off, but not before one pulled a Mike Tyson and bit off the tip of Zachary Elson's ear. Elson, one of the locals injured by the Secret Service agents, went to a local hospital for treatment. No one found the tip of Elson's ear, and the repercussions of the incident remain unclear.

2011: Drinks and prostitutes

A team of Secret Service agents was visiting San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador, to scout the city in March 2011 ahead of President Barack Obama's trip there. While there, the agents allegedly got plastered at a strip club.

KIRO-TV in Seattle, Wash., reported that about a dozen agents got VIP access to one of the clubs and consumed more than a few drinks before two of them brought escorts back to their rooms. According to the report, the agents said they did this "all the time." The Secret Service is reportedly still investigating those claims.

2012: More drinks, more prostitutes

An agency party in Cartagena, Colombia, is arguably what truly opened up the public's eyes about the Secret Service's party culture.

Eleven agents were put on administrative leave in April after one became embroiled in a dispute over money with a prostitute he brought back to the hotel. Hotel security and local police got involved, and it quickly became clear that more than one agent was cavorting with a prostitute that night. Most of the group had been drinking heavily.

The ruckus wasn't much different from the incident the previous year, in 2011, but the event surrounding it was. Obama would soon arrive in Cartagena to attend the Summit of the Americas, a gathering of world leaders throughout North, Central and South America, but press surrounding the Secret Service allegations drowned out event coverage and even prompted a response from the president. Eight agents were forced out of their jobs while three others were cleared of misconduct.

2014: Passed out in the hallway

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Three agents were sent home from Amsterdam in the Netherlands hours after a night of heavy drinking. The agents were scoping out the area before Obama was to arrive at an international summit to discuss nuclear weapons security.

Staff at the Huis Ter Duin Hotel, where Obama stayed on March 24, notified the U.S. embassy in The Hague when they found an agent passed out in the hallway a few feet from his room.

The three agents had been drinking until about 2:30 a.m., even though they had to be at work by 10 a.m. The Secret Service forbids alcohol consumption in the 10 hours prior to an assignment, and those agents are now on administrative leave.

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Despite these incidents, a report conducted by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General in December 2013 concluded the Secret Service does not have a culture that allows for unprofessional behavior. While no one has argued that the behavior described above represents the majority of Secret Service agents, the consistent trickle of scandals has led to a reputation for irresponsibility in the 149-year-old organization that has proven difficult to shake.

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