They later interviewed a prostitute who identified Mr. Nieland in a photograph and said he had paid her for sex. Nieland resigned after he refused to answer a series of questions from the Department of Homeland Security inspector general about the incident, the officials said.
Nieland resigned in August. In an email message on Tuesday, Mr. But Mr. Nieland has not been charged by federal or local authorities in connection with the incident. For months, Mr. Nieland has been at the center of a dispute over whether the Obama administration tried to cover up the involvement of a volunteer member of a White House advance team in the scandal that resulted in the firing of eight Secret Service agents who were on assignment in Cartagena, Colombia, for a visit by President Obama in April The agents were dismissed after it became known that they had had prostitutes in their hotel rooms.
In an interview with staff members of a Senate Homeland Security subcommittee after the report became public, Mr. Nieland said that during its preparation, he had been asked to delete derogatory information because it was potentially damaging to the administration during an election year. That information, he told the subcommittee investigators, was that a volunteer member of the White House advance team in Cartagena also had a prostitute in his room.
The White House also denied that it had intervened in the preparation of the report, and said it had investigated the allegations against the White House volunteer but determined that they were not true. In recent months, congressional Republicans have cited Mr. In , according to department officials, Mr. The intern asked to be transferred out of the office after the incident. Nieland, according to the officials, said he had circulated the images as a joke.
When deputies in Florida stopped Mr. Nieland last May after seeing him leave the building they had under surveillance, he showed them a badge, officials said, and told them that he was part of an undercover human trafficking operation with agents from the Department of Homeland Security. Nieland from a photograph and said he had paid her for sex that night.
