The U.S. Secret Service is hiring 1,100 new officers and agents amid concerns about its ability to protect the White House.
Reuters reported Saturday that the agency will add “700 uniformed division officers and 400 agents” over the next five years, increasing its size by nearly a fifth.
Secret Service spokeswoman Nicole Mainor declined to cite a specific number, but said that the agency was “conducting a massive hiring initiative.”
Ramping up hiring, Mainor told the Washington Examiner, is one of three items the Secret Service is working on to respond to the recommendations of an outside review panel, which concluded earlier late last year that the Secret Service is “stretched too thin and, in many cases, beyond its limits.”
The other two items are making improvements to security at the White House, including a new study of its architectural design, and increasing and diversifying the training that agents receive. “We’ve been aggressively trying to make sure we achieve completion of these recommendations,” Mainor said.
The Secret Service has been scrutinized by the public and Congress this year after the revelation of a number of high-profile incidents in which President Obama’s safety was called into question.
Those included reports of a fence-jumper overpowering an agency and entering deep into the White House, a shooter firing into the White House, and a man with a gun entering an elevator with the president.
All that news came well after the 2012 Cartagena, Colombia prostitution scandal. The scandal led to the resignation of director Julia Pierson last year, to be replaced by Joseph Clancy.
The Secret Service did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
