Sen. Grassley: Was Secret Service Involved with Colombian Hookers, or Russian Spies?

After the Secret Service prostitution scandal came to light, Glenn Beck wondered whether it was possible that our Secret Service agents were "set up" by those not friendly to the United States.

"What is the best way to discredit those that you despise?" he asked.  Russia has a long history of resorting to such tactics, whether it's planting drugs on a prominent dissident or "setting up" a politician with a prostitute.

Often called "honey traps," TIME explains the strategy:

The way it usually worked was that a camera had been concealed in an air-conditioning vent to record the event, along with sound. The prostitute hired by the foreign agency enters frame and gets down to business with the mark. After a couple of minutes the spy agency has what it needs, and its thugs burst through the door, guns in hand. Confronted with exposure, the mark quickly agreed to whatever it is the security service wanted from him.

And now, Senator Chuck Grassley is seemingly confirming the possibility that foreign agents may have been involved, though no one is insisting they're responsible-- only that the possibility should evaluated.

“We’re looking at something that is very, very serious when national security might not be protected properly,” the senator told Radio Iowa.  “Who knows who might be using prostitutes?  The Russians are famous for that to get information out of us.”

In this scenario, the prostitutes themselves may not have actually been undercover Russian agents, but just individuals who were paid or manipulated by a higher authority.  Glenn Beck noted that a police officer was reportedly waiting in the hallway after the altercation, and this is in keeping with the Russian strategy to "catch" individuals in the compromising situation you have helped arrange for them.

Grassley has been unrelenting in his examination of all possibilities regarding the Cartagena scandal, writing a letter to White House counsel Kathryn H. Ruemmler questioning the White House's internal investigation that cleared any of its staffers of similar wrongdoing.

"At the beginning of his administration President Obama released a memorandum entitled 'Transparency and Open Government' and stated, 'My administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in government.'"  He continued, "However, declining to provide details of the internal review conducted over the weekend, contradicts that goal set by President Obama."

The exhaustive investigation is necessary, according to Grassley, because it concerns the president's safety.

“The issue here isn’t just people messing around with prostitutes, the issue is the security of the president of the United States and the issue is any national security implications that it might have because of the secrecy and the documents and things of that nature."