Tuesday’s House Oversight subcommittee hearing on the debacle that is the U.S. Secret Service was framed by several recent and explosive stories about security breaches at the White House.
The Washington Post revealed at the weekend that a November 2011 sniper attack on the White House was much worse than the agency let on. When a crazed conspiracy theorist fired shots at the executive mansion, it took the Secret Service four days to figure out he had actually hit the walls and a window of the residence with one of President Obama’s daughters and his mother-in-law inside — and only after a housekeeper noticed debris from one of the shots. Supervisors had ordered agents to stand down, asserting that no shots had actually been fired at the building.
Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., grilled Secret Service director Julia Pierson, who was the agency’s chief of staff at the time, about this grave lapse. “Why not search every inch of the White House, given the very small investment of resources?” Gowdy asked. “This is just processing a crime scene. This is not high math.” Pierson, admitting the sweep of the premises was slipshod, said that the bullets hit a part of the White House “not frequented” by Secret Service personnel, which raises further concerns about Obama’s and other presidents’ safety.
Another story concerned a disturbed military veteran who last month cleared the White House fence, ran 70 yards across the lawn and entered the building’s unlocked front door. The Post reported Monday that the intruder, Omar Gonzalez, overpowered a female Secret Service agent and nearly crossed the entire building before he was finally caught, not by alert agents reacting to a threat (as another story revealed) but by an off-duty agent who just happened to be clocking out.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, angrily noted that the Secret Service had issued a self-congratulatory press release, praising their “tremendous restraint” and “discipline” when in truth they had put together a catastrophic security failure.
“If one person can hop that fence and run unimpeded all the way into an open door at the White House, don’t praise them for ‘tremendous restraint,’ ” he said, adding that agents erred in failing to use “overwhelming” and “lethal force” quickly under the circumstances.
Add to these the Washington Examiner‘s scoop Tuesday of another Secret Service breach during Obama’s trip to Atlanta last month, in which a man with a gun rode in an elevator with President Obama during his visit to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, plus earlier scandals involving agents drunk and hiring prostitutes while on overseas visits with the president, and the picture that emerges is of a Secret Service abysmally run, unaccountable, sloppy and hostile to whistleblowers.
This is completely unacceptable. The Secret Service has no margin for error in its mission of protecting the president. Pierson must be replaced and others responsible for these far-reaching problems should also be fired. The entire force needs a thorough overhaul of its training and procedures before Obama can be guaranteed the security that every US president (and the public) should be able to take for granted.
Pierson said she accepts full responsibility for the security failures that have been revealed. “Taking responsibility,” used to be more than a form of words crafted to convey contrition and a determination to do better in future — in other words, to keep ones job. Taking responsibility used to mean handing in one’s resignation, and it should mean that this time, too.
