Several members of Congress involved in investigating the latest embarrassing Secret Service incident at the White House say they are keeping Secret Service Director Joseph Clancy on a short leash.
“I think the next 30 or 60 days will tell whether he’s going to be a director who really wants a cultural change or he’s a director who’s gong to continue the status quo of talking a good game but not walking the walk,” Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee told the Washington Examiner.
Other lawmakers said they’re watching Clancy’s next steps very closely.
Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., who also sits on the panel, said he wants Clancy to be successful but the agency cannot afford one more misstep.
“He’s a career guy — he’s obviously a good law enforcement officer — it takes time — but we cannot afford any more missteps,” he said in a brief interview Wednesday. “… He ought to be rolling heads right now.”
President Obama hand-picked Clancy to come out of retirement and leave a lucrative job in the private sector to help clean up the agency after a string of security lapses and embarrassing misconduct issues forced former Director Julia Pierson to resign last fall.
Clancy was selected to serve as the acting director when Pierson resigned in September, and Obama elevated him permanently in late January.
A little more than a month into his tenure, however, the agency was rocked by another allegation of serious misconduct by two senior agents. The pair are accused of disrupting an active bomb investigation on the night of March 4 in a government-owned vehicle after a night of drinking.
That allegation shook Capitol Hill, as well as the confidence of the American public, and lawmakers dragged Clancy up to three hearings over the last week to question why the latest incident occurred on his watch and whether he was doing enough to instill discipline at the once-vaunted agency charged with protecting the president and the first family.
None of the members the Examiner talked to for this story said they had lost patience and confidence in Clancy and the director already had to go.
Instead, they expressed deep concerns about his ability to take decisive action to turn the agency around. And criticism of the official tasked with the president’s security has been coming from both parties.
“I believe when the chain of command is broken, there is no command,” Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., said during Clancy’s testimony before the Oversight Committee Tuesday. “It’s like a body without a head, and when there is no command, there is vulnerability, and the vulnerability goes to the [security] of the president of the United States.”
An independent panel set up by Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson investigated the Secret Service’s problems last fall and concluded that the agency was “starving for leadership” and needed a new director from outside the agency to restore discipline and shake things up.
Obama, however, tapped Clancy, someone he knew and trusted who had spent 26 years at the agency. Clancy retired in 2011 as the head of the Protective Division charged with direct responsibility for the president’s and first family’s personal safety.
If the latest case of alleged misconduct is any indication, members said Clancy may be too close to some of his friends and colleagues in the agency to make the tough decisions that restoring the agency’s discipline and elite reputation requires.
Rep. Steven Lynch, D-Mass., takes issue with Clancy’s decision not to fire the agents involved in the March 4 incident immediately and instead wait for a DHS inspector general’s investigation to wrap up before taking any disciplinary steps. Clancy reassigned the two agents in question to non-operational, non-supervisory roles at the agency until the IG gets back to him with its findings.
Secret Service officers and agents are considered civil service employees and are guaranteed due process rights, Clancy argues.
But Lynch says Clancy could still fire the agents and allow them to appeal the decision to a government review board if they think it’s unfair.
“Basically, he gave them desk jobs and kept them on the clock,” Lynch said. “He’s got to be harsher with these folks when they do violate the protocols within the organization. One of the things he can do is to start disciplining people when they mess up.”
The FBI, the Transportation Security Administration air marshals and other national security agencies have both higher penalties for alcohol offenses and fewer appeal options for disciplinary action taken against them.
“When you have the FBI and the TSA with higher standards than the Secret Service, I would say the average American would have a problem with that,” Meadows said.
The House oversight committee has spent the most time looking into the Secret Service’s problems — scrutinizing the string of conduct and security lapses for more than a year.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, the panel’s chairman, led the questioning in Clancy’s harshest grilling to date on Wednesday.
He took particular exception to Clancy’s refusal to allow four key witnesses to testify in an open committee hearing. Clancy has since said he would allow the witnesses to appear before a closed-door panel for transcribed interviews. He said initially he didn’t think the witnesses should testify before the House panel because it could interfere with the IG’s investigation.
“It is unclear why Director Clancy is choosing at the start of his tenure to be so unhelpful to Congress,” Chaffetz said at the start of Wednesday’s hearing. “While I was hopeful Director Clancy would assist Congress in understanding how we can restore the agency to its prior stature, this does not appear to be the case.”
He also instructed Clancy that “I don’t know” is not going to sit well with our committee.
But Clancy could not answer many of the questions the panel asked because he said he had not launched his own investigation, instead immediately deferring to the IG in order to the protect the integrity of its review.
In fact, Clancy admitted Wednesday that he did not ask his senior leadership team whether any of them knew about the March 4 incident but withheld the information from him for five days.
Clancy first found out about the allegations when he received a phone call from a former agent letting him know an anonymous email laying out some details about what transpired that night was circulating inside and outside the agency.
Toward the end of grueling hearing, Clancy pleaded with lawmakers to let him follow up on the new efforts he has initiated help hire more agents and officers to respond to a manpower shortage, build trust up and down the ranks, improve communication and instill tighter discipline.
“This is my life’s work,” he said. “I spent my life — 27, 28 years — protecting four presidents. I’ve given everything I’ve had at great expense, personal expense, to ensure that our protectees, our presidents, are safe.”
“I didn’t come back from private industry to just enjoy the ride,” he continued. “This is critical for me, it’s critical for the country. I’m going to give it everything I have. I’m immersed in it.”
While Republicans and Democrats alike lauded Clancy for his record of distinguished service, they were openly hostile to his reluctance to ask even the most basic questions about the March 4 allegations.
“We’re not playing games. This is the life safety and security of the President of the United States and the White House … I want to see determination. I want those officers and those agents to know we got their back. You take those people down. You do not let that happen,” Chaffetz said during Clancy’s hearing. “This is the United States of America, the threat is real. But I don’t feel [the determination], I don’t see it, and it’s unacceptable.”
