The U.S. Secret Service agents were doing routine rounds on Sunday when they found suspicious white powder called cocaine in an area highly accessible to tour groups, not in any particular West Wing office, the officials said.
The U.S. Secret Service has launched an investigation after this incident happened inside the West Wing of the White House on Sunday night.
The discovery prompted an elevated security alert and a brief evacuation of the supervisor mansion, Guglielmi said. He said President Biden wasn’t in the White House at the time. Guglielmi said there’s “a disquisition into the cause and manner ” of how the substance entered the White House.
President Biden and his family were down at Camp David when a uniformed Secret Service agent set up the substance during command of the West Wing around 6 p.m. on Sunday, the person said, egging a brief arrestment of some of the White House lot as response workers assessed whether the substance was dangerous.
Latterly that evening, a test of the substance by hazmat crew officers returned a result “We have an unheroic bar saying cocaine hydrochloride, ” a functionary said on a dispatch transferred at 8:45 p.m. and logged by a website that gathers the agency’s radio dispatches.
A person familiar with the disquisition, who spoke on the condition of obscurity to bandy an open inquiry, said that the radio dispatch agitating the test of the substance was placed between the District of Columbia Fire Department’s hazmat platoon and other officers within the department.
The West Wing is a large, multi-level part of the White House that contains the services of the chairman of the United States, including the Oval Office and the Situation Room. It also houses the services of the vice president, the White House chief of staff, the press clerk, and hundreds of other staff who have access.
The discovered cocaine has been transferred to a lab for farther evaluation.
