Secret Service Told to Watch Aide

Secret Service agents assigned to a Washington investigative team were asked to monitor the safety of an aide to the agency’s director, the Washington Post reported Sunday, though the duties of the agents and the length of observation were disputed by a Secret Service spokesman.

The Post, in an article citing three people familiar with the operation, reported that agents within the service’s “Prowler” program went twice per day to the Maryland home of Lisa Chopey, the assistant to then-Director Mark Sullivan.

Top Secret Service officials ­ordered members of a special unit responsible for patrolling the White House perimeter to abandon their posts over at least two months in 2011 in order to protect a personal friend of the agency’s director, according to three people familiar with the operation.

The new assignment, known internally as Operation Moonlight, diverted agents to a rural area outside the southern Maryland town of La Plata, nearly an hour’s drive from Washington. Agents were told that then-Director Mark Sullivan was concerned that his assistant was being harassed...