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Secret Service agents are like "glorified mall cops," Meghan McCain railed Thursday in a withering blast of the beleaguered law-enforcement agency following a series of security foul-ups. The 29-year-old author and TV personality – the daughter of former GOP presidential candidate Sen. John McCain of Arizona – rattled off the reasons for her utter disdain on Pivot’s "TakePart Live." A video was posted on The Hill. "One of my friends called them glorified mall cops and I don't think that's terribly far off," she said. "I found them cliquey, I hated all of them, I had really bad experiences, and...

A man who jumped the White House fence allegedly knocked over a female officer at the mansion's double doors before he dashed into the ornate East Room. An inquiry continues into how Omar Gonzalez, 42, made it into the White House. Investigators are looking through an elaborate closed-circuit video system showing the entire incident, a Secret Service source told CNN. Authorities said the Iraq war veteran had a knife in his pocket when he ran into the White House, where he was later subdued after a wild chase. The officer he met at the doorway got up, chased him and...

As scandal continues to envelop the Secret Service, InsideSources has learned of a security failure leading up to the 2012 election. Multiple sources inside the Romney presidential campaign confirm that a Secret Service agent provided details of President Obama’s schedule several days prior to the President’s campaign stops becoming public. While sources involved in other presidential campaigns tell InsideSources that Secret Service detail assigned to each campaign will sometimes disclose private and personal information about those they are assigned to protect to opposing campaign staff, this instance in particular is very revealing of failures inside the Secret Service. In the...

A former Secret Service agent told MailOnline that rank-and-file thought Julia Pierson 'was a joke from Day One' Secret Service supervisor said 'she doesn't know anything about security planning in a post-9/11 world' Another said she discussed making the elite corps that guards the president and his family 'more like Disney World' and 'more friendly' She shrunk the White House's countersurveillance force and reduced numbers of uniformed agents who guard the mansion's perimeter 'Cutting down the size of the White House perimeter detail was a morale-killer and I think it came back to bite her,' he said

President Obama this week committed professional suicide. Let me explain. There is a theory in politics that once a leader has fired 50 or more people from his or her administration, he or she is finished. The reason being that by creating so many enemies ‘outside the tent’, the tent itself becomes too deluged with poisonous bile to avoid sinking into a quagmire of back-stabbing ignominy. Obama went a lot further than firing 50 people. He managed to single-handedly alienate 200,000 employees in the American intelligence agencies by going on 60 Minutes and ruthlessly chucking them all under a bus...

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,...

The United States Secret Service (USSS) is in a slump. The Secret Service used to be part of the Treasury Department. That was because, when the Service was established in 1865, "one-third to one-half" of all currency in circulation in the United States was counterfeit. What with this being just three months after the end of the Civil War, and all, the Secret Service's job was to put a stop to that. Presidential protection began as an "informal" part of the Service's duties in 1894 in President Grover Cleveland's second (and, as you remember, non-consecutive) term. The Secret Service...

I see where everyone is getting all wee-weed up about Big Guy missing 60% of his daily intelligence briefings – what gives? It hasn’t been August for over a month now. Anyway, it sounds like much ado about nothing, right? I mean, just because he missed the meeting that discussed the double-agent status of Anwar al-Awlaki before ordering his whacking-by-drone doesn’t mean that Awlaki didn’t deserve to be whacked. (Sorry about the collateral damage butt you know, you have to break a few eggs…)And besides, just because Barry skips 60% of the briefings doesn’t mean that he misses anything important: “You...

The director of the Secret Service, Julia Pierson, was questioned this past Tuesday by members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform regarding lapses in Secret Service Performance. The hearing focused primarily on an incident that took place on September 19. Omar J. Gonzalez, 42, allegedly jumped the White House fence, ran across the White House lawn, ran up a flight of stairs and through the North Portico door. He then allegedly entered the entrance hall, turned left and headed into the East Room, where he was tackled and subdued. A knife was allegedly found in his possession....

(This is going around as an e-mail.) Liberian with Ebola Sneaks into White House Past Drunken Secret Service Agents by Patrick Finnegan In the last two weeks, we had an African with ebola board a commercial airliner and fly right into Dallas, and apparently nobody in Congress thought this was a bad idea. Just to prove the incompetence goes double for the White House, a crazed individual proclaiming that the "atmosphere was collapsing" charged into the White House, which apparently needs a lock on the front door or at least a guard able to stop a lunatic. Well, based on...

Joe Clancy, the man in charge of cleaning up the Secret Service after a series of embarrassing security gaffes, is the ideal person to lead the agency through troubled waters, a former top Obama adviser said Wednesday. The Department of Homeland Security named Clancy, director of corporate security for Comcast Corp., as interim acting director of the Secret Service after Julia Pierson resigned Wednesday. He retired from the agency in July 2011 after having served as special agent in charge of the Presidential Protective Division, a role for which he was well-regarded, David Axelrod, one of Obama's oldest friends and...

Julia Pierson, the director of the United States Secret Service, resigned on Wednesday amid a rush of criticism over recent White House security breaches. "Today Julia Pierson, the Director of the United States Secret Service, offered her resignation, and I accepted it," said Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson. "I salute her 30 years of distinguished service to the Secret Service and the Nation." Joseph Clancy, the former special agent in charge of the presidential protective division of the Secret Service, will take over as interim director, Johnson said. Johnson also announced the formation of an independent panel to investigate...

There could be additional changes at the Secret Service, where director Julia Pierson has resigned. A spokesman says President Barack Obama concluded that new leadership was needed at the agency. The spokesman says more people may be leaving after a review of what happened.

The following is only partly satire; the rest is pure fact. Being able to discern which is which disqualifies the reader from government employment or contracting. As the old saying goes, “desperate times call for desperate measures.” With the glaring klieg lights of harsh congressional scrutiny being thrown onto several grave and alarming security lapses around the President and First Family, a humiliated and confused Obama administration is urgently in need of expert help. So much so, in fact, that they’re now awkwardly reaching out to someone whose skill at detecting suspicious perimeter intrusion at a gated complex (not to...

Secret Service Director Julia Pierson House should be ousted from her job, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday, agreeing with the recommendation of the top Democrat on the oversight committee. Mrs. Pelosi, the highest-ranking woman in American politics, said problems go beyond Ms. Pierson, who was put in charge of the Secret Service after a scandal involving agents who hired prostitutes in Cartagena in 2012. But Mrs. Pelosi said she accepts the analysis of Rep Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the House oversight committee, who said he was displeased with Ms. Pierson’s leadership.

The Secret Service under President Barack Obama has been scarred over and over by security breaches and public embarrassments. They began under Director Mark Sullivan and continued when Obama replaced him in March 2013 with Julia Pierson, who was grilled Tuesday by House lawmakers over the latest lapses. Details of almost all the breaches and missteps were uncovered by The Washington Post. Here are the highlights: November 2009: A Washington couple, Tareq and Michaele Salahi, crash Obama’s first state dinner. The Secret Service later acknowledges that officers never checked whether they were on the guest list. A photo emerges showing...

Yesterday Secret Service Director Julia Pierson fielded questions from furious and skeptical lawmakers after a number of serious failures by the agency to properly protect the President. Pierson started her testimony by saying she "takes full responsibility" for the failures, especially the most recent incident of fence jumper Omar Gonzales making it all the way inside the White House, but failed to answer a number of questions. Republican Congressman Trey Gowdy questioned Pierson on a shooting incident that occurred at the White House in 2011. Pierson failed to provide adequate answers as to why that incident was first classified as simply...

In his first inaugural address, Obama promised that "those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account." Maybe he'll get around to that after his 200th round of golf.

President Barack Obama rode an elevator this month with an armed security contractor who had three criminal convictions, a violation of Secret Service security protocols, according to published reports. The latest embarrassment for the Secret Service comes after agency Director Julia Pierson on Tuesday took full responsibility for a Sept. 19 breach of security when a man carrying a knife got into the White House. …