President Barack Obama prides himself on rejecting donations from registered lobbyists, but a newly released list of campaign fundraisers is peppered with leaders from companies and law firms that lobby the federal government.

New bundlers, whose names were released this week, include Anthony Welters, executive vice president of UnitedHealth Group, and Qualcomm co-founder and former chairman Irwin Jacobs and his wife Joan.

Each raised at least $500,000 for the Obama Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee that includes Obama’s presidential campaign, the Democratic National Committee and party committees in several battleground states.

The exact amounts are unknown. The campaign only divulges bundlers’ fundraising activity in broad ranges, with a top category of “more than $500,000.”

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Qualcomm has spent at least $6 million each year since 2007 on federally reportable lobbying efforts, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. UnitedHealth spent at least $2.5 million annually in the same period.

None of these individuals were bundlers for Obama during his 2008 presidential campaign, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. However, Welters’ wife, Beatrice, raised between $200,000 and $500,000 for Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.

Bundlers are elite political fundraisers who turn to relatives, friends and business associates to raise large sums and deliver the funds in a “bundle” to the candidate. They are often given perks and special access — both on the campaign trail and once politicians are elected.

Beatrice Welters was one of about two dozen bundlers who were named ambassadors during the president’s first term. Welters was appointed to serve as the U.S. ambassador to the Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago, a post from which she resigned last November.

There’s nothing illegal about registered lobbyists contributing to a presidential campaign, as long as those donations are reported. But Obama’s campaign went further and voluntarily rejected such contributions. Still, some of his bundlers lead or work for law firms that also provide government lobbying services, although they are not lobbyists themselves.

Other newly disclosed bundlers include:

• Andy Sandler, the chairman and executive partner at BuckleySandler, which provides legal counsel and lobbying services for the financial services industry. He bundled between $50,000 and $100,000. Records indicate that his firm’s several recent lobbying clients have included the California-based East West Bank, Virginia-based Genworth Financial and the Electronic Signature and Records Association.
• Walter White, a London-based partner at the multinational legal powerhouse McGuireWoods, who bundled between $50,000 and $100,000. White is the head of McGuireWoods’ emerging markets transactions practice, according to his official bio. McGuireWoods’ current lobbying clients in the United States include Alpha Natural Resources, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Duke Energy, Progress Energy and Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), according to federal records.
• Jim Black, a Germany-based partner at the law firm White & Case, who bundled between $100,000 and $200,000. Black specializes in equity capital markets and mergers and acquisitions, according to his official company bio. Domestically, White & Case’s several lobbying clients include the National Association of Publicly Traded Partnerships. 
• Rick Mayo-Smith, the managing director of Indochina Land, who bundled between $100,000 and $200,000. Indochina Land is the real estate division of Indochina Capital Corp., one of Vietnam's leading financial services groups.

The White House directed inquiries to Katie Hogan, a spokeswoman for the Obama campaign and Obama’s new nonprofit advocacy group, Organizing for Action. Hogan did not respond to requests for comment.

Overall, the Obama campaign reaped financial riches from 769 bundlers, who collectively raised more than $186 million. Twenty-eight of these bundlers moved into higher dollar categories during the fourth quarter of 2012, the new disclosure reveals.

Another newly listed Obama campaign bundler is Imad Husain, Obama's freshman-year roommate at Occidental College, who is now a banker in Boston. Husain raised between $50,000 and $100,000, according to the campaign.

Hollywood is also represented among Obama’s newly identified top fundraisers, with super couple Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith collecting more than $500,000. While hardly a professional lobbyist, Pinkett Smith last year pressed lawmakers to take a stand against human trafficking and forced labor, testifying before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations with her husband present.

They join the ranks of previously identified bundlers such as pop star Gwen Stefani and Warner Brothers CEO and Chairman Barry Meyer.

Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign did not volunteer bundler information, releasing only the names of registered federal lobbyists who bundled, as federal law compelled it to do. Nearly six dozen lobbyists collectively raised more than $17 million for the Republican’s unsuccessful presidential bid, as the Center for Public Integrity previously reported.

While Obama is safely in the White House for another four years, his chase for cash may not be over.

These elite moneymen and women could be tapped to fundraise for Obama’s presidential library, and are already being pursued by Organizing for Action, which is promoting the president’s legislative agenda over the next four years.

Organizing for Action will host a fundraiser in Washington, D.C., next week where a minimum contribution of $50,000 is required to attend, Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times reported Monday.

Obama’s nonprofit group will, on a quarterly basis, voluntarily disclose the names and donation amounts of contributors giving $250 or more, Organizing for America National Chairman Jim Messina wrote Thursday in an opinion piece posted on CNN.com.

The group, to date, has not revealed any donors.

The Center for Public Integrity is a non-profit, independent, investigative news outlet.  For more of its stories go to publicintegrity.org.

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Super PACs and nonprofits unleashed by the Citizens United Supreme Court decision have spent more than $840 million on the 2012 election, with the overwhelming majority favoring Republicans, particularly GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

An estimated $577 million, or roughly 69 percent, was spent by conservative groups, compared with $237 million spent by liberal groups, or about 28 percent, with the remainder expended by other organizations.

Of all outside spending in the 2012 election, more than $450 million was dedicated to the presidential election with more than $350 million spent helping Romney and about $100 million spent to help President Barack Obama.

The spending helped close the gap on Obama’s considerable fundraising advantage over Romney. As Election Day approaches, Romney and Obama are neck-and-neck in national polls.

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The totals are from a joint analysis of Federal Election Commission data by the Center for Responsive Politics and the Center for Public Integrity. The analysis covers the period from Jan. 1, 2011, through Oct. 28, 2012, and does not include independent spending by the political party committees.

The final tally will be higher as spending continues to accelerate before Election Day.

Obama's campaign raised more than $632 million in the 2012 election, 62 percent more than Romney's $389 million. Even when including money raised by the Democratic and Republican National Committees, Obama still has an edge of more than $166 million: $924 million for the president’s re-election team vs. $758 million for Romney and the GOP.

The president’s campaign committee was bankrolled to a great degree by money from grassroots supporters, while Romney relied more heavily on larger donors. Individuals who gave $200 or less accounted for 34 percent of Obama’s war chest. Meanwhile, such small-dollar donors were responsible for only 18 percent of the Romney campaign’s haul.

The deluge of outside spending was made possible by the 2010 Citizens United decision and a lower court ruling that allowed individuals, labor unions and corporations to give money to outside spending groups — mostly nonprofits and super PACs — to buy advertising attacking or supporting candidates.

Super PACs were generally backed by super donors. Billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and his family, for example, gave $54 million to Republican super PACs as of mid-October, far more than any other donor this election cycle.

Nonprofit “social welfare” groups and trade associations can raise just as much money, but are not required to report their donors. The lack of transparency sparked legislation to require disclosure, but it was defeated.

Nonprofits were responsible for more than $245 million, or about 30 percent, of the $840 million in total outside spending. That’s about $100 million more than they spent in 2010.

Spending surge helps Romney
During the week of Sept. 30, about $16.5 million was spent by outside groups benefiting Romney, mostly on ads attacking Obama. Three weeks later, the seven-day total jumped to more than $55 million, according to FEC filings.

Outside spending benefiting Obama over the same period never exceeded $14 million, records show.

The GOP candidate, facing the Obama fundraising juggernaut, needed the help of outside groups to keep pace.

The Obama campaign aired nearly three times as many ads as the Romney campaign between late April and late October, according to a recent study by the Wesleyan Media Project.

Wesleyan found that the 460,500 ads aired by the Obama campaign in the presidential election was more than the Romney campaign, the RNC and seven other Republican-aligned outside spending groups combined — including the top GOP super PACs Restore Our Future and American Crossroads and conservative nonprofits Crossroads GPS and Americans for Prosperity.

Super PACs in the 2012 election raised about $660 million.

Restore Our Future alone accounted for about $1 out of every $5 of all super PAC donations received. The pro-Romney group raised more than $130 million, much of which was spent decimating Romney’s rivals during the GOP primaries.

The Obama-backing Priorities USA Action, by contrast, raised $64 million.

In 2010, during their first year of existence, all super PACs combined raised just $85 million.

The top 149 individual super PAC donors — each of whom has contributed at least $500,000 — are responsible for $290 million of funds raised.

And 858 individuals who contributed at least $50,000 to super PACs accounted for nearly 60 percent of all money the groups collected in the 2012 election. The median household income in 2011, by way of comparison, was $50,054, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Donations from large, publicly traded corporations have been relatively rare, but in the waning weeks of the campaign, oil and gas giant Chevron wrote a $2.5 million check to the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC backing Republican candidates that is closely associated with House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.

The emergence of super PACs has been heralded by some, such as Republican lawyer Brad Smith, the former chairman of the Federal Election Commission who co-founded the conservative Center for Competitive Politics.

“(Super PACs) have helped to level the playing field between Romney and Obama, whereas otherwise Obama’s spending advantage would have been substantial,” said Smith. “And in some cases they have raised issues that concern voters that the candidates have chosen to avoid.”

Others disagree.

“When elected officials rely on the most-wealthy of wealthy Americans, it means the voices of everyday people lose out,” said Nick Nyhart, president of the advocacy group Public Campaign, which favors publicly financed elections.

Unlike traditional political action committees, super PACs have no contribution limits and the funds they raise can't be directly donated to candidates. Instead, the money they raise has primarily been used to fund attack ads.

Prior to Citizens United, groups that wanted to expressly advocate for or against a candidate were limited to receiving no more than $5,000 per donor per calendar year.

Donations shrouded in secrecy
As important as super PACs were in the 2012 election, the loosening of political spending rules for non-disclosing, nonprofit organizations was also a key development following the Citizens United decision.

GOP-aligned nonprofits have outspent their Democratic counterparts by a ratio of more than 8 to 1.

Notably, this figure represents a conservative tally of nonprofits’ political spending.

Federal law requires spending to be reported only if a group's advertisements encourage viewers to vote for or against a candidate, or if they mention a candidate shortly before a political convention or election.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, the author of the Court's Citizens United 5-4 opinion, made a point of saying that disclosure was a key part of the court’s rationale. Disclosure would allow citizens to monitor the new political activity.

"This transparency enables the electorate to make informed decisions and give proper weight to different speakers and messages," he wrote.

But the tax-exempt groups — some of which clearly exist for no other reason than to elect favored candidates — are spared by Internal Revenue Service and FEC rules from having to publicly reveal their donors.

Crossroads GPS, co-founded by GOP strategist Karl Rove, claims in press releases to have spent more than $120 million since January 2011, of which only $57 million has been reported to the FEC. At least $12 million has been spent attacking Obama, according to FEC records.

Voters watching its ads have no idea where the money is coming from. Nor do they know who is funding the work of liberal organizations doing the same thing, albeit with a lot less money.

Patriot Majority has reported spending $6.5 million on ads, more than half of which has opposed Rep. Dean Heller, the Republican who is running for U.S. Senate in Nevada.

Not all secret money is coming from nonprofits. Throughout the election season, mystery corporations have popped up, spending huge sums.

Specialty Group Inc. of Knoxville, Tenn., wrote seven checks totaling $5.2 million to pro-Tea Party super PAC FreedomWorks for America in early October. The corporation was created on Sept. 26. The name and address listed on incorporation records are those of a Knoxville, Tenn., area attorney. His published phone line has been disconnected.

The source of the funds, as of this writing, is unknown.

Meanwhile, more than $10 million in funds given to super PACs, which disclose donors regularly, have come from nonprofits, showing that even the groups required to be transparent about their funding sources can still shield the names of donors.

Going negative

The explosion in outside spending has coarsened the political debate, flooding the airwaves in Ohio, Florida, Virginia and other battleground states with negative, often inaccurate ads.

Roughly 80 percent of all spending by both conservative groups and liberal groups has been negative, FEC records indicate.

Fully 100 percent of the nearly $57 million Priorities USA Action reported spending has been on negative ads.

The group, which coined the slogan “If Mitt Romney wins, the middle class loses,” linked Romney to the death of a woman who lost her battle with cancer.

Another of the super PAC’s most memorable ads featured a worker describing how building the stage on which officials announced the plant’s closure, after it was bought by Bain Capital, was like building his “own coffin” and made him “sick.”

Eighty-eight percent of Restore Our Future's spending went toward negative ads, as did 95 percent of American Crossroads' expenditures.

Many of these ads have criticized Obama’s handling of the economy, arguing that the country “can’t afford” four more years of Obama’s policies. One spot features a small-business owner saying, “We can’t create more jobs until Obama loses his.”

Others ads have featured disillusioned Obama supporters from 2008 expressing disappointment with the president.

The winners in the post-Citizens United campaign finance regime won’t be known for certain until after Election Day. But Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, an assistant professor of law at Stetson University's law school who previously worked as an attorney with the Brennan Center for Justice, said it won’t be the voters.

“I fear that we have lost elections on a human scale with post-Citizens United spending by super PACs” and non-disclosing groups, she said. “The losers here are voters who get carpet bombed with political ads full of half-truths and distortions.”

Researchers Robert Maguire of the Center for Responsive Politics and Alexandra Duszak of the Center for Public Integrity contributed to this report. 

This story is a collaboration between the Center for Public Integrity and the Center for Responsive Politics. For up-to-date news on outside spending in the 2012 election, follow our Source2012 Tumblr and the hashtag #Source2012 on Twitter.

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'Hurricane tort king' wires another $1 million to pro-Obama Super PAC

 

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A wealthy Texas trial lawyer -- known as the king of hurricane torts -- wired $1 million to the main Super PAC backing President Barack Obama late last week, solidifying his standing as one of the chief bankrollers of Democratic causes in this year’s election.

With his latest seven figure donation, Houston personal injury lawyer Steve Mostyn -- an ardent foe of tort reform -- has now contributed $3 million to Priorities USA Action, a Super PAC run by two former White House aides. His latest contribution -- in addition to another $500,000  given by his wife to an allied group -- underscores the heavy reliance of Democratic Super PACs on a small number of mega donors. (Super PACs are allowed to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money from corporations, unions and individuals.)  

Mostyn told NBC News that he agreed to wire the additional $1 million last week after watching the second debate at Hofstra University on Long Island and getting energized by the president’s more forceful performance than during the first debate.

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“I needed to see some fight,” he said of the president’s performance. He also said he expects the Super PAC to use his cash to help fund more attack ads hammering Republican rival Mitt Romney over his Bain Capital past, portraying him as a heartless executive who destroys jobs rather than creates them. Although Priorities USA Action ads (and Obama campaign ads) hit that theme hard over the summer, now is when “you’re speaking to low-information voters,” Mostyn said.

New campaign finance reports filed over the weekend show the Obama Super PAC is in relatively good shape to send the message. The group reported that it collected $15.2 million in September – outraising Restore Our Future, the main pro-Romney Super PAC, for the second month in a row. (This figure predates Mostyn’s latest cash infusion.)

While GOP Super PACs have still outraised and so far outspent their Democratic counterparts, the combined total of $31.4 million raised by Priorities USA and its two allies (Majority PAC and House Majority PAC) shows they are now fully armed to compete against an expected pro-GOP ad blitz in the last two weeks.

But while the Obama campaign has touted its reliance on small donors, the most striking feature of the latest Democratic Super PAC numbers is the outsized role played by just a handful of super-rich mega donors in funding the group.

Of the $52 million that Priorities USA Action has raised for the entire election cycle, $19 million (or nearly 40) percent came from just six individuals. Besides Mostyn, these include: Jeffrey Katzenberg, the CEO of Dreamworks Animation, who has given $3 million;  Fred Eychaner, a Chicago based media mogul whose print empire includes the Chicago Reader, who has given $3.5 million;  James  Simons, the hedge fund billionaire founder of Renaissance Technologies, who has given $3.5 million;  Irwin Jacobs, a San Diego billionaire and the founder and former CEO of Qualcomm ($2 million); and  Jon Stryker, a philanthropist and gay rights activist ($2 million.) Other big donations to Priorities USA Action last month included $1 million from director Steven Spielberg, $1 million from famed trial lawyer David Boies (who argued for Al Gore in the 2000 Florida recount case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court) and $300,000 from Sam Walton, the chairman of Walmart.   

The mega donor phenomenon is hardly unique to the Democrats, of course. These donations still pale next to the $40 million that Las Vegas gambling magnate Sheldon Adelson has funneled this cycle into GOP Super PACs, including $10 million to the pro-Romney Restore Our Future. And the Romney Super PAC reported that Bob Perry, the publicity shy Texas homebuilder best known for helping fund the Swift Boat ads against John Kerry in 2004, gave another $2 million last month, bringing his total donations to $9 million. That means that Perry and Adelson alone have accounted for nearly 20 percent of the Restore Our Future’s total $111 million haul. 

Twinned with Perry’s cash, the Mostyn donations to Priorities USA Action gives the presidential contest the flavor of a Texas grudge match. The two men have been among the major funders of the years-long fight in Texas over tort reform. Perry (whose home-building company has been hit with massive multimillion-dollar lawsuits brought by trial lawyers) has helped bankroll Texans for Lawsuit Reform, a pro-business group that has fought to rein in lawsuits.  Mostyn, who has specialized in mass class-action lawsuits brought by hurricane victims, has been a major financier of the opposition.

A past president of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association, Mostyn has also been a somewhat controversial figure in state legal circles. He’s known as “Hurricane Mostyn” due to the class-action lawsuit he brought against the Texas Wind Insurance Association (TWIA) on behalf of the victims of  Hurricane Ike, which devastated the Texas coast in 2008. The lawsuit, alleging the mishandling of insurance claims, led to a $189 million settlement -- $86 million of which reportedly went in fees to his law firm. That, in turn, triggered an increase in premium payments by the TWIA and calls by Republicans in the state Legislature to curb what were called the association’s “out-of-control legal expenses.”

Like most big donors, Mostyn tells NBC News that his main concern is good government, not any special benefits he might receive from the White House (such as his private meeting with the president last spring at the W Hotel after he gave his first $2 million to Priorities USA Action.) He said he shares the general liberal distaste for Super PACs, but given the vast amounts flowing into the GOP Super PACs, he was persuaded to contribute to Priorities USA Action by Paul Begala and Bill Burton during a meeting aboard his yacht last spring: “You don’t bring a knife to a gun fight,” he said.

Michael Isikoff is a national investigative correspondent for NBC News.

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Judicial Watch has released hundreds of Defense Department and CIA communications that reveal the Obama administration leaked classified information to filmmakers on the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

Judicial Watch claims the secrets were provided for a film on the bin Laden raid that was first scheduled to be released Oct. 12, just in time to boost the president's image shortly before the November elections. Sony Pictures has since pushed the release back to December.

According to the documents, the filmmakers were granted access to a Navy SEAL captain who was the "planner, operator and commander of SEAL Team Six," which killed bin Laden.  In one memo one of the filmmakers says he had a "good meeting with Brennan and McDonough" and says "they were forward leaning, sharing their point of view on command and control."

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John Brennan is the president's chief counterterrorism adviser, and Denis McDonough is deputy national security adviser.

In putting the filmmakers together with the SEAL Team Six commander on the raid, Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Michael Vickers writes in one document, "The only thing I ask is that you not reveal his name in any way ... because he shouldn't be talking out of school." 

The filmmakers include Kathryn Bigelow, Academy Award-winning director of "The Hurt Locker," and screenwriter Mark Boal.

Pentagon Press Secretary George Little told NBC News on Tuesday that the Defense Department and other agencies regularly engage with the entertainment industry to inform book and movie projects.

"Many individuals in the industry expressed interest in developing projects on what can only be described as one of the top intelligence and military successes of a generation," Little said. "Our engagement on these projects was driven by a desire to inform the public, not by timing."

Judicial Watch, a self-described "conservative, non-partisan educational foundation" that often points out federal spending that it believes is suspect, obtained the documents through the Freedom of Information Act.

Jim Miklaszewski is the chief Pentagon correspondent for NBC News; Courtney Kube is Pentagon producer.

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The Washington Post has an excellent look at visits by lobbyists to senior officials in the Obama administration, based on White House visitor records. An excerpt:

More than any president before him, Obama pledged to change the political culture that has fueled the influence of lobbyists. He barred recent lobbyists from joining his administration and banned them from advisory boards throughout the executive branch. The president went so far as to forbid what had been staples of political interaction — federal employees could no longer accept free admission to receptions and conferences sponsored by lobbying groups.

"A lot of folks," Obama said last month, "see the amounts of money that are being spent and the special interests that dominate and the lobbyists that always have access, and they say to themselves, maybe I don’t count."

The White House visitor records make it clear that Obama’s senior officials are granting that access to some of K Street’s most influential representatives. In many cases, those lobbyists have long-standing connections to the president or his aides. Republican lobbyists coming to visit are rare, while Democratic lobbyists are common, whether they are representing corporate clients or liberal causes. 

Is lobbying greater under Obama than under his predecessors? It's impossible to know, because President Obama is the first president to release records of White House visitors. Score one for transparency, and score one for the lobbyists, too.

You may recall that msnbc.com covered the issue of White House visitor logs, pressing repeatedly for the White House to release all the records. That still hasn't happened. Records of visitors for the first eight months of the Obama presidency have not been released.

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Here's the Post story, by reporter T.W. Farnam 

 

You can search for names of visitors

The Obama administration released records to settle a lawsuit, and another lawsuit is pending to try to force the White House to release all the records. The president's attorneys continue to make the claim, as previous administrations had made, that the records are not covered under the Freedom of Information Act, despite two federal court decisions calling for all the records to be released. So the disclosures made so far are, in the White House view, voluntary. Presumed Republican nominee Mitt Romney has not said whether he will release White House visitor logs.

Stories in our msnbc.com series on the White House visitor logs:

• Obama blocks list of visitors to White House
• After lawsuit, Obama opens a bit of info on meetings with health care executives.
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Updated at 8:16 a.m. ET: MADRID, Spain -- A woman identifying herself as the Colombian prostitute at the center of a scandal involving U.S. Secret Service personnel has called the group of agents "stupid brutes" who put partying above President Barack Obama's security. 

"These seem like completely stupid, idiotic people," Dania Londono Suarez said in an interview which aired on Monday's TODAY. "I don't know how Obama had them in his security force."

She also accused the agents of "leaving their duty behind" and described them as "stupid brutes."

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The scandal broke in April when, in advance of Obama's arrival at the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia, agents allegedly brought prostitutes to their hotel rooms.  One of the men, Suarez told NBC News, refused to pay her for sex so she went to the police.

So far, eight agents have lost their jobs as a result of the incident.

Suarez, 24, said three men who approached and propositioned her and her friends were drinking vodka like it was water.

"They liked to show off their bodies, great bodies, well-defined abs," Saurez said of the men she first met at a nightclub. "They liked attention." 

The mother of a nine-year-old son said she made it perfectly clear to one that a night with her would cost $800.

"And he accepted. And it was clear," she said. 

But in the morning after they had had sex, the man gave her only $50 and ordered her out of the room, Suarez said. 

"I am not to blame for being attractive," she told TODAY. "They are to blame -- for leaving their duty behind."

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A woman identifying herself as the Colombian prostitute at the center of a scandal involving U.S. Secret Service agents spoke publicly about the incident for the first time on Friday, telling a Colombian radio network that, had she been a terrorist, she could have easily pried loose details of President Barack Obama’s planned visit to Cartagena from the liquored-up agents. 

“At that moment, if I had wanted to, or if I had been part of one of those terrorist groups, it's obvious I would have been able to get everything," the woman, Dania Londono Suarez, told Caracol Radio. 

Suarez said the Secret Service personnel did not consume drugs, but “bought alcohol like one buys water” while partying at a discotheque in the tourist destination before inviting some of the “escorts” to return with them to the Hotel Caribe, where many members of Obama’s security detail were staying.

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Suarez said she didn't know if there were other girls or how many agents were involved. "I was at the bar with another girl, but left with him by myself. I was the only one." 

 

 

Suarez said she made clear that she expected to be paid before departing with the agent whose refusal to pay her led to exposure of the misconduct. 

“I was at a disco and he came over and told me 'sex,'" she said. "... I said, 'Baby, Cash, Money,' that I wanted money. He said, 'OK, baby. How much?' 'Eight hundred.' He told me, 'Eight hundred. OK, let's go. Come, come to hotel.'

"It was obvious. I can't believe he would be so dumb or so stupid to think I wasn't going to charge him money."

But she said that the agent had a change of heart when they awoke in his room about 6 a.m.

Watch the most-viewed videos on msnbc.com 

“When he was drunk he was the nicest guy, but when he woke up sober, he was another person,” Suarez said. “When I asked him for the money, he told me ‘Let go, bitch.’ He pushed me into the hallway and closed the door. He wouldn't come out. I kept pounding on the door. Hotel security came.  The called the head of the hotel's security and I explained what happened to him on the phone.” 

Suarez, who has a 9-year-old son, said she traveled to Dubai after the incident but had returned to Colombia despite concern that she could face retaliation from the tarnished Secret Service personnel. 

"I fear they will retaliate against me," she said. "I left my country, practically fled. Yes I am scared. I fear or my family and for my son. No one has threatened me, no one has come to see me, but their marriages have been wrecked, they're sharp shooters, because I've been doing some research and I know they do that."

She also said her career as an escort is over: "I do not plan to that ever again," she said. "They ruined my life. They should have never published my pictures, my name." 

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The Secret Service has declined to comment on the interview. According to an official with the Secret Service the agency is close to completing its internal investigation of the incident, which occurred prior to the Summit of the Americas on April 14-15. 

The 12 Secret Service personnel at the center of the investigation were among 175 members of the service in Colombia during Obama’s visit. They were among 135 staying at the Hotel Caribe, the source said.

Seven of those members of the agency have resigned, one has been terminated and one has retired, NBC News has reported previously. Three others have been cleared of serious misconduct but given administrative punishment.  

Meantime, a separate investigation into U.S. military personnel who were allegedly involved in the incident has been concluded and forwarded to a commander for review, military and defense officials tell NBC News. 

According to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, the U.S. military investigator looking into the incident zeroed in on a dozen uniformed personnel assigned to the security operation -- seven Army personnel (six Special Forces Green Berets and one White House communications specialist); two Navy bomb detection specialists, two Marine dog handlers and one member of the Air Force whose duties were not specified. 

SOUTHCOM commander Gen. Douglas Frazier will review the report and determine what, if any, punishment should be meted out. Once he formally accepts the findings of the investigation, he has four options: 

• Clear any or all the individuals of any wrongdoing.
• Administrative action (a letter of reprimand, usually a career-ender).
• Non-Judicial punishment (reduction in rank and pay).
• Criminal charges and court martial. 

In the Uniformed Code of Military Justice, consorting with or procuring the services of a prostitute is prohibited and considered a criminal act.

Erika Angulo is an NBC News producer based in Miami; NBC's Chief Pentagon Correspondent Jim Miklaszewski and Kristen Welker of NBC's Washington, D.C., bureau also contributed to this report.

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When President Barack Obama arrived Tuesday in Afghanistan on the first anniversary of the killing of Osama Bin Laden, it was supposed to be a secret, like his earlier visits to the dangerous region. But news of the trip leaked out hours earlier, raising new alarm bells about the president's security.

The Afghan news station TOLONews reported early Tuesday that Obama had arrived in Kabul, hours before the White House's embargo on reporting the news was lifted. Other news organizations, including The New York Post and the official Chinese news agency, Xinhua, cited that report, which was attributed to unnamed Afghan officials.

The U.S. National Security Council and the U.S. Embassy in Kabul both denied the report, and Obama's official schedule indicated that he was still in Washington, meeting with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta in the Oval Office:

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In fact, he had left Joint Base Andrews, Md., aboard Air Force One shortly after midnight Tuesday morning.

In the face of the official denials, the Post removed its report, as did Buzzfeed, which deleted a tweet noting the news after an NSC official called it to argue that its report endangered Obama's life, it said.

Obama's previous visits to Afghanistan, in March and December 2010, were unannounced for security reasons, and news of them didn't leak out. And strict security measures were in place Tuesday as well, including a White House embargo that prevented journalists traveling with the president from reporting the trip until Obama arrived at the Afghan Presidential Palace about 11:30 p.m. (2:30 p.m. ET), hours after the TOLONews report was published.

But this time the news did get out, and at an uncomfortable time for U.S. security officials.

The apparent breach comes in the wake of an incident last month in which members of the president's advance security team were reported to have picked up prostitutes in Cartagena, Colombia, before Obama's visit to the Summit of the Americas. Eight Secret Service agents have been forced to leave the agency as a result of the scandal.

The Defense Department said it couldn't discuss the incident, and the White House didn't immediately return calls for comment. Editors at TOLONews did not respond to an email seeking comment.

Ronald Kessler, a longtime political reporter who interviewed more than 100 active and former Secret Service agents for "In the President's Secret Service," a book on presidential security arrangements, told msnbc.com that an early report on a surprise visit "clearly endangers the president when he's going into a war zone."

The biggest concern, he said, "is the possibility of attacks on the ground when (Obama) lands and thereafter."

NBC News and other news organizations learned about the trip Tuesday but withheld reporting it until Obama arrived at the palace. But "the fact so many U.S. reporters knew about it made it easier for it to disseminate," Kessler said.

Kessler suggested that the Obama administration follow the example of the administration of former President George W. Bush, "which did not let reporters know beforehand at all" when Bush traveled to Afghanistan.

"They told the press pool that they were going to go on a trip, (but) they weren't told where," Kessler said. "It was not until they got on the airplane that they were told they were going to Afghanistan."

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