The reporter who brought down the Secret Service's director

Yahoo News ^ | October 2, 2014 | Liz Goodwin

[upbeat5]

Behind the shocking revelations of incompetence and unprofessionalism that rocked the Secret Service this week is a longtime reporter who has been diligently uncovering the agency's secrets for years.

Carol Leonnig, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist who has worked at The Washington Post for nearly 15 years, has broken almost every single story on the agency, a series of shocking reports that on Wednesday resulted in the abrupt resignation of Secret Service Director Julia Pierson. (Pierson called the resignation “painful.”)

In less than a week, Leonnig uncovered three scandals that pushed the agency’s first female leader out the door. First, she reported that Secret Service agents failed to respond for days when a gunman shot the White House residence seven times with a semi-automatic rifle in 2011, smashing a window while Sasha Obama was home. (At first the agency thought the noise was from a car backfiring; then they believed the bullets were from a gang fight they theorized must have occurred on the White House lawn.)

Leonnig also reported that a knife-wielding man who jumped the White House fence weeks ago made it all the way to the door of the Green Room before an off-duty officer tackled him. The man made it much farther into the building than the agency initially admitted.

Lawmakers pummeled Pierson on Tuesday with Leonnig’s reporting at a House Oversight Committee hearing on the agency’s security failures. After the hearing, Leonnig broke the news that President Obama recently rode an elevator with an armed felon who was acting strange. It’s unclear if the president was immediately informed of the security breach. Pierson announced her resignation the next day.

[longfellow]

Trey Gowdy beat her like a rented mule.

[Delta Dawn]

State? I have to believe that a Vietnam war hero is probably above reproach...

[Rockpile]

Maybe Leonnig worships the Sultan and the idea of any kind of threat to him makes her full of anxiety for his safety.

[SunkenCiv]

> Carol Leonnig, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist who has worked at The Washington Post for nearly 15 years, has broken almost every single story on the agency, a series of shocking reports that on Wednesday resulted in the abrupt resignation of Secret Service Director Julia Pierson.

Another affirmative action success story.

[piasa]

You nailed it... hopefully whichever Secret Service guy or gal who is sleeping with her is gone now, because their job wasn’t to leak this to the press when the President’s right there. But since she is still getting leaks for her book even now in the Trump admin I suspect the same leaker is still there.