Americans’ inability to identify their vice president or speaker of the House is the stuff of hilarious person-on-the-street video, but we pretty much know the federal agency responsible for protecting the president and his family.
Ironically, it was not part of the U.S. Secret Service’s original mission in 1865, when it was created to root out counterfeit currency. Today, its main investigative duty is to safeguard the nation’s financial and payment systems, which is important. But to that person on the street, the agency’s primary job is keeping the president safe and upright.
Which is why it’s so disturbing to see report after report of Secret Service failures focused on the famous building where the president and his family sleep, the White House.
Julia Pierson, Secret Service director since last year, faced bipartisan grilling Tuesday before a House committee, and deservedly so. She took full responsibility and promised “it will never happen again,” which is comforting only until the next incident.
In 2011, a man fired a rifle at the White House from a nearby street, scoring several direct hits near the living quarters and dislodging bits of wood and concrete. The president and his wife were out of town, but their younger daughter and Michelle Obama’s mother were inside.
The problem was that a Secret Service supervisor on duty that night dismissed the incident with a “stand down” order. Agents did not investigate until four days later, when a housekeeper alerted them to fallen concrete and broken glass.
Unsurprisingly, the first lady was irate, as was the president, The Washington Post reports.
In the latest incident, an Iraq war veteran from Copperas Cove jumped the White House fence, charged across the North Lawn and crashed inside through an unlocked door. This defied any number of protocols intended to stop such brazen intrusion, and that wasn’t even the worst of it.
Omar J. Gonzalez then made a dash inside the White House that was worthy of DeMarco Murray, The Post and The New York Times revealed only hours before Pierson faced Congress on Tuesday.
The Secret Service initially said he was unarmed and was tackled just inside the front door. Instead, we learn that Gonzalez, armed with a knife, ducked past one agent, ran by a stairway near the first family’s living quarters, down a hallway and through the 80-foot-long East Room, often used for presidential addresses. Only a counterassault agent’s tackle stopped Gonzalez’s progress at the Green Room, overlooking the South Lawn.
The only saving grace for the Secret Service is that the Obama family, so far, has been spared anything more than a good scare and rising blood pressure. We shouldn’t count on this as a permanent condition, and consequences must follow accountability.
