Politics Secret Service fumbled response after gunman hit White House residence in 2011

[AdamSmith]

Secret Service fumbled response after gunman hit White House residence in 2011

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/secret-service-stumbled-after-gunman-hit-white-house-residence-in-2011/2014/09/27/d176b6ac-442a-11e4-b437-1a7368204804_story.html?tid=HP_more

[RA1]

Interesting how annoyed some people get when they start getting shot at, isn't it? Not to make too light of this serious Federal crime, but the WH is virtually impervious to small arms fire. It does provide work for the painters and other construction type workers.

In this case the emperor has no clothes, meaning the SS officers in charge neglected or refused to see what had actually happened. The SS is charged with protecting the President and it is an impossible task. In the first place someone determined to do harm with only a little luck can do so. In the second place, being on constant alert is humanly impossible. In general the procedures do a lot but are not perfect. Being nearby and "watching" the crowd or surroundings is useful but far from perfect.

Many years ago I had occasion to watch the SS up close simply because they wanted to be where I happened to be. It was easy for me to see faults in their system.

Generally the President is safe just as airliners are safe and that is because so few wish to do harm to either one. Eternal vigilance to prevent such is impossible but I suppose a worthy goal.

Best regards,

RA1

[AdamSmith]

but the WH is virtually impervious to small arms fire.

Although, as the article notes, its inhabitants do occasionally venture in and out. Including onto the Truman Balcony, where these shots struck.

And the guy who made it inside the door the other day could have been a real nuisance had he not left his firearms in his car.

Of course you're right that the bubble around a moving President is very difficult to make airtight. But it does seem that securing a fenced fixed asset like the White House could be done rather better than the SS has managed lately.

[TotallyOz]

The White House is where the President lives. I have loved visiting it. But, I do not see the need to allow any visitors. It should be a fortress and not accessible to anyone without clearance. That includes the streets around it. Just my opinion.

[RA1]

My handgun defense instructor always says to not leave your gun in the car. If accosted, it seems unlikely you can call a time out to retrieve your firearm from the glove box.

If we make the WH a fortress it will shatter the illusion that our government officials are accessible to the voters. Of course, this has not been true since Andrew Jackson and less and less so with every passing year. Still pols apparently feel the need to press the flesh and vice versa, so "forcing" them to recluse themselves in a fortress will give them ulcers, depression or speed the development of their Kim Jong Un syndrome. Of course, one has to be somewhat of a megalomaniac to even run for President so let's not encourage that aspect.

Already, the grounds are fenced, there is no parking on the street, anti-aircraft missiles are installed, SS agents on the rooftop and those who have permission for access are the ones inconvenienced the most. So, what is wrong with this picture? One thing is that the SS agents are unwilling to shoot first and ask questions later. After all, most of the American citizens around and about are innocent and have no desire to do anything other than "shoot" a ballot to get rid of a non-performing pol. That certainly is the method that I prefer.

There is no additional answer. Adding security will only alienate both the public and the pols (further).

Best regards,

RA1

[AdamSmith]

Armed intruder had penetrated farther into White House than admitted

Revelation came ahead of a congressional hearing on Tuesday and heaped pressure on the beleaguered US secret service

An armed intruder said by prosecutors to have been a threat to the president made it far further into the White House after jumping a perimeter fence than the secret service first admitted, according to damning new evidence to be heard by a congressional panel on Tuesday.

Witnesses have told the House oversight committee that Omar Gonzalez overpowered an officer at the front door and was not stopped until he reached a separate room toward the back of the White House, according to testimony first reported by the Washington Post.

After running past a stairway leading to the first familys living quarters, Gonzalez, a former army sniper, sprinted the 80-foot length of the East Room and was finally apprehended at the doorway to the Green Room another formal room overlooking the South Lawn the Post reports.

The account differs starkly from a press release issued by the secret service the day after the incident which merely says he was physically apprehended after entering the White House North Portico doors.

The impression that this meant he was stopped immediately after entering the doors is something administration officials did nothing to counter in the days after the event.

The ground-floor rooms of the main White House residence are normally highly guarded, as they are used for a range of public visits and guided tours, and the fact that Gonzalez was able to travel a considerable distance will compound concerns that the incident has revealed serious weaknesses in the protection given to President Obama and his family.

Utah Republican Jason Chaffetz, who chairs the House oversight subcommittee on homeland security, is expected to seize on the alleged evidence from whistleblowers to demand an explanation of why the door through which Gonzalez entered the building was not locked, as well as on suggestions that an internal alarm system was suspended because it had irritated ushers who worked at the door.

Obama and his family had left by helicopter from the South Lawn just minutes before Gonzalez, a former Iraq veteran allegedly carrying a pocket knife, scaled a fence outside the North Lawn and made it across the stretch of grass in front of the White House without being challenged by the snipers and dog patrols intended to guard against intruders.

Neither the secret service nor congressman Chaffetzs office immediately responded to requests for comment, but the White House earlier downplayed a separate Washington Post report into a shooting incident in 2011, which the Post says the secret service failed to properly investigate.

As you would expect, the president and first lady, like all parents, are concerned about the safety of their children, said spokesman Josh Earnest when asked about the Posts reporting that Michelle Obama was furious about the attack, which saw seven bullets strike the upstairs residence.

But the president and first lady also have confidence in the men and women of the secret service to do a very important job, which is to protect the first family, to protect the White House, but also protect the ability of tourists and members of the public to conduct their business or even tour the White House.

Gonzalez, who was allegedly found to have 800 round of ammunition and a machete in his nearby car, was described as a danger to the president by assistant US attorney David Mudd during a court hearing regarding the fence-jumping incident.

Chaffetz on Monday criticised the Secret Service for claiming it was exercising restraint by not shooting Gonzalez who was originally reported to be unarmed and argued there had been epic failure from top to bottom and that lethal force should be used stop to intruders entering the White House.

I have deep concern that the president is not as safe as we need him to be, he told CNN. These incidents seem to be getting worse, not better.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/29/white-house-intruder-east-room

[AdamSmith]

Julia Pierson Wanted To Run Secret Service 'Like Disney World'

Washington Post

Benjamin Hart The Huffington Post 10/02/14 09:19 AM ET

Julia Pierson resigned as the head of the scandal-ridden Secret Service on Wednesday, but details about her shaky tenure at the agency keep emerging.

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/5920468

[RA1]

BO and his appointees suck.

Best regards,

RA1

[AdamSmith]

How to make President safe again

By Jeffrey Robinson

updated 1:20 PM EDT, Fri October 3, 2014

CNN.com

Editor's note: Jeffrey Robinson is the co-author of "Standing Next to History - An Agent's Life in the Secret Service," the autobiography of former United States Secret Service special agent Joseph Petro. His latest book is "BitCon -- The Naked Truth About Bitcoin." Follow him on Twitter.

(CNN) -- It all comes down to this: 11 years later, the front door was unlocked.

When Oscar Gonzalez jumped the White House fence late last month, he should have been just another statistic. A mentally ill man who was doing what a handful of others do every year, get onto the White House lawn and find themselves tackled by guards or brought down by dogs or fired upon by snipers.

But this time it was different.

The President and first family weren't home, the snipers didn't shoot. It's still not clear where the dogs were or why there was no Uniformed Division officer at the North Portico door. But the door was unlocked and the reason why can be traced directly back to the beginning of the disintegration of protocols for what the Secret Service once did better than any other agency in the world: protect the principal.

Toward the end of the 1990s, there was turmoil in senior management, which saw new Secret Service directors come and go. There were also high-level retirements -- especially Presidential Protective Division agents who had lived through March 30, 1981, the assassination attempt on President Reagan. These were men and women who knew what it was to fail.

In the wake of that incident, the Secret Service had upped the ante with new plans and a revised agenda, which had included working in closer proximity to the President, increasing the intensity in the levels of protection and paying closer attention to the minutest details. They had also learned to deal better with the presidential staff, who are always looking to break the President loose from his shackles for the sake of the next great photo opportunity.

It worked for a while.

But shortly after 9/11--11 years ago, in 2003--George W. Bush made the colossal mistake of uprooting the Secret Service from its rightful home in the Department of the Treasury, where it had been since 1865, throwing a proud tradition out the window and dropping it into the hodgepodge mess that was, and still is, the Department of Homeland Security.

It was like yanking a great old oak tree up from the roots and shoving it into the ground somewhere else. The great oak slowly began to wither. What was once a quasi-independent agency was treated like just another bureaucracy that had to defend its turf and fight for every nickel against the rest of this new and increasingly dysfunctional family. Morale suffered and so did efficiency.

You saw it in 2003, when the Bush White House staff cooked up the highly dangerous and totally unnecessary publicity stunt of landing the President on an aircraft carrier in a fixed-wing plane. That scheme ran head-first into everything the Secret Service used to stand for. The President and the staff were doing this their way.

The Secret Service is charged by Congress with protecting the life of the President; it is not his choice whether or how he is protected.

You saw it again in December 2008 at the Bush press conference in Baghdad, when an Iraqi journalist threw his shoe at the President. Bush ducked. The journalist threw his other shoe. And no agents appear anywhere near the President. In fact, the agent who suddenly showed up next to him does not grab the President and pull him away, he watches other men tackle the journalist.

By the time President Obama came along, the lack of proximity and intensity was startling. This goes beyond the phony signer at Nelson Mandela's funeral, agents with hookers at Cartagena or drunk agents at a hotel in Holland.

This is a couple of reality show wannabes getting into the White House for a formal reception, without an invitation. This is the President at the Martin Luther King "I Have A Dream" remembrance in 2013, standing alone and exposed in the middle of the Lincoln Memorial, in front of tens of thousands of people, and there isn't an agent within 30 feet of him.

This is the President working rope lines, with plenty of agents present, but none of them in very tight proximity, holding onto him, the way they did with Reagan. Nor are the agents intensely working the crowd -- "May I see your hands, please... hands... please show me your hands..." the way they did with Reagan.

This is the President speaking from a stage with 100 people behind him, and no agents right there to grab him if something happens, with no clear exit to get him out of there if something happens, because all those people behind him will panic and run for the same exit.

This is a man jumping the White House fence with a knife, and bullets in his car, after having been on the Secret Service's list of people already interviewed as a possible threat to the President. It's a man with a gun riding in an elevator with the President at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This is some crazy taking shots at the White House, and no one reporting it for days.

The Secret Service agents who protect this President are the best and brightest. They make unbelievable personal sacrifices to keep the President safe. And like him, they too have been let down. They've been let down by senior management. And they've been let down by time, because without a tradition of passing stories on to the next generation, memories fade and "the way it used to be" is eventually forgotten.

It's time to return the Secret Service to Treasury, where it traditionally has belonged, because at Treasury, there was real oversight. It's also time to bring into the senior ranks men and women who understand that proximity and intensity and attention to the minutest details truly matters.

These must be men and women who understand and appreciate that those who served before them protecting Ronald Reagan set the gold standard, that the gold standard is an absolute minimum, and anything less -- like an unlocked door at the White House -- can all too quickly look like November 22, 1963.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/02/opinion/robinson-secret-service-what-went-wrong/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

[RA1]

Interesting article, told with passion, especially for how things were. Well, I am not sure any of us can go back. Certainly it is an indictment of US bureaucracies, HSA and perhaps the idea that money and technology can take the place of individual intervention. Even then, individual may care but are relatively helpless without good leadership.

I have not seen the knife carried by Oscar Gonzalez and would like to know if it was more than a small pocket knife. Guns and ammo left in a car harm no one during an intrusion such as he made. I am glad snipers did not shoot him. Yes, he should have been stopped by someone or a dog between the fence and the front door.

"How to make the President safe again" is an attention grabbing headline and, like many, misleading. How can we make the Secret Service more efficient likely would be more accurate. Second line, I have some suggestions.

Best regards,

RA1

[MsGuy]

I am glad snipers did not shoot him.

As am I, RA1.

Last week I watched some irresponsible congresscritter (oxy-moron?) stooging for the cameras during a Secret Service hearing. He repeatedly attacked the service for not instantly gunning down every idiot who jumped the fence. By the way, Ms. Pierson, the witness under examination, looked every bit as hapless as she is portrayed in the media.