The Secret Service is facing even more serious questions about the agency’s ability to protect the president after news that a White House intruder made it much farther into the building than previously known.
Secret Service Director Julia Pierson will be on the hot seat Tuesday morning after lawmakers rejected her request that the hearing be held in a closed, classified forum.
The House Oversight and Government Reform hearing will be public but may move into a closed session before it ends, the panel noted Monday.
Angry congressional investigators have even more questions after new details emerged that the man accused of jumping the fence and sprinting through the White House front door earlier this month made it through a large portion of the main floor before agents detained him.
The Washington Post reported the startling new information late Monday afternoon. Secret Service officials had earlier said agents stopped the intruder at the main entry.
Over the weekend, the Washington Post also reported on the Secret Service’s botched response to a shooting in 2011 that left seven bullet holes in the White House near the presidential living quarters.
The revelations are the latest evidence of what one former Secret Service employee told the Washington Examiner is a “complete culture of covering up for people.”
House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas, on Monday said the Secret Service must explain why it followed lax protocols and didn’t properly communicate information about threats to the president and his family.
In a letter to Secret Service Director Julia Pierson, McCaul said he and his colleagues are concerned about a number of security breaches and also about a potential breakdown in communications between state law enforcement and the Secret Service.
“We are also concerned about what could be perceived as a lack of communication between states officials and the U.S. Secret Service concerning potential threats to the president,” he wrote, asking the agency to provide responses to a list of questions by Oct. 10.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest on Monday said the Obamas “like all parents, are concerned about the safety of their children.”
But he quickly noted that Obama has full confidence in the Secret Service’s ability to protect the first family and the White House and “also protect the ability of tourists and members of the public to conduct their business or even tour the White House.”
“This requires balancing a wide range of equities, which makes for a very difficult task,” he said. “But it is a task that the Secret Service is dedicated to.”
Eighteen months ago, Obama appointed Pierson, a 31-year veteran of the Secret Service, to help rehabilitate the agency’s reputation after a series of security lapses and a particularly embarrassing episode in 2012 when a dozen agents were caught with prostitutes in their hotel rooms in Cartagena, Colombia.
The appointment of the first woman director of the agency charged with protecting the president sent a unequivocal message that its male-dominated, “wheels-up, rings-off culture,” would no longer be tolerated.
Just a few months after her appointment, Pierson, 55, sent two agents home from an official trip to Amsterdam after both became drunk and one passed out in the hallway of a hotel. She then had to explain the incident to Obama in person.
The security breach 11 days ago is far more serious and will force Pierson to not just defend the agency’s culture but its core function: its ability to protect the president.
Months before the incident, the Virginia State Police had warned the Secret Service that it had arrested Omar Gonzales, 42, the man accused of scaling the fence and sprinting inside the White House, after a police chase in July.
Police found a map with the White House circled on it, as well as the Masonic Temple in Alexandria, Va. Agents reportedly interviewed him in a hotel room where he was living shortly after his arrest, but concluded that he didn’t pose a threat to the president.
Then on Aug. 25 Secret Service agents found Gonzales acting suspiciously outside the perimeter of the White House. Gonzales had a hatchet in his rear waistband at the time and agents searched his car, releasing him after finding only two dogs and camping equipment.
A month later, after Gonzales breached security and sprinted into the White House, the Secret Service found more than 800 rounds of ammunition in his car, along with two hatchets and a machete.
The series of incidents have raised new questions about why Gonzales wasn’t detained for further questioning and placed under close monitoring.
Lawmakers also want to know why agents didn’t release trained guard dogs to catch the suspect and why the front door to the White House wasn’t locked that day.
Along with Pierson, lawmakers will hear from hearing witnesses Ralph Basham and Todd Keil.
Basham served as director of the Secret Service from 2003 to 2006 and headed three other Homeland Security Department agencies, including the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Transportation Security Administration and the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.
Keil is the former assistant secretary for infrastructure protection at the Homeland Security Department and served in that position from 2009 to 2012. He also spent more than 22 years working for the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service.
