More Blacks Join Secret Service Suit

More black agents joined a racial discrimination lawsuit against the Secret Service on Thursday, adding new claims that they frequently endure racial slurs.

The 19, who include some former agents, join 38 others in a lawsuit first filed in February. They claim their white colleagues and supervisors regularly use a racial epithet to refer to criminal suspects and black leaders of other countries.

Secret Service spokesman Jim Mackin said “any allegation of racial insensitivity, whether 20 years ago or 20 days ago, is troubling to the Secret Service.” Blacks hold 233 of the agency’s 2,700 agent positions. Mackin said seven of the Secret Service’s 11 largest field offices are headed by minorities.

David Shaffer, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said the Secret Service has not improved working conditions for blacks in the past year.

“There have been some cosmetic changes, token promotions,” he said.

One black agent, Eldridge Armstrong, said he was insulted this month while protecting former President Clinton during a trip to Asia.

He said a special agent assigned him to keep reporters in a secured area, then told someone else, “Don’t worry about the press pen, we have King Kong over there to watch over it.”

“I was stunned,” the 6-foot-2 Armstrong wrote in papers filed Thursday in federal court in Washington.

Armstrong said he received an apology but was told he was too sensitive.

“It shows that racism is tolerated to this day,” Shaffer said.

Also filed in the lawsuit were pictures allegedly showing a stripper performing at a birthday party for a top officer in the Ohio Secret Service office in 1989. The suit claims the stripper was allowed in the office at a time when a black agent had been told his parents could not visit him because of security.

Shaffer is seeking class-action status for the lawsuit, which claims blacks are subjected to discrimination in promotions, performance evaluations, assignments, training and transfers.