WASHINGTON — The lawmaker leading an inquiry into the Secret Service prostitution scandal reported dozens of “troubling” episodes of past misbehavior today and appealed to insiders to come forward with what they know as investigators try to determine whether a culture of misconduct took root in the storied agency.

“We can only know what the records of the Secret Service reveal,” Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman said in opening the first Senate hearing into the matter. And those records, however incomplete, show 64 instances of allegations or complaints of sexual misconduct made against Secret Service employees in the last five years, he said.

Many of the instances involved employees sending sexually suggestive e-mails. But three were about charges of inappropriate relationships with a foreign national and one was a complaint of “non-consensual intercourse,” Lieberman said in his opening statement. He said the reports did not necessarily show a historical pattern of wrongdoing by agents but he and other lawmakers made clear their conviction that what happened in Columbia was far from an aberration.

Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan, speaking to the inquiry, apologized for the conduct of the employees in Colombia.

By The Associated Press