Free Republic

Secret Service detained a man Thursday afternoon who eyewitnesses tell CNN was trying to fly some sort of remote-controlled aerial device over the White House fence. The park on the north side of the White House has been placed on lockdown while the incident is being investigated.

The Secret Service is adding a second layer of steel spikes to the top of the White House fence to keep would-be intruders at bay, according to a proposal submitted to the National Capitol Planning Commission. The ½-inch long steel “pencil point” spikes will be snapped into place at the top of the fence and protrude outward, according to a diagram included in the proposal submitted for the Secret Service by that National Park Service. The spikes will be added to the fence along the north and south sides of the White House grounds. […] The Secret Service has been...

We learned this week that the Secret Service dawdled for an entire year before fixing a broken security system at the home of former President George H. W. Bush. The Secret Service itself is looking pretty broken these days. A few weeks ago, two drunken agents returning from a party drove right through an active bomb investigation outside the White House. They didn't notice that their colleagues were examining a suspicious package. In 2012, a number of agents were found to have engaged prostitutes in Cartagena, Colombia, during a presidential trip. At least one of the prostitutes had links to...

A California man has been arrested after trying to scale a White House fence, according to the Secret Service. The agency said the incident happened at 10:25 p.m. Sunday. Fifty-four-year-old Jerome R. Hunt of Hayward, California is scheduled to be arraigned in Superior Court in Washington on a charge of unlawful entry. …

Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Administrator Michele Leonhart said she is "offended by the behavior" of DEA agents who engaged in prostitution and sex parties while working on the taxpayers' dime. But Leonhart told the House Oversight Committee on Tuesday there's nothing she can do about it except to write memos stating that "these kinds of behaviors require significant discipline." If you can't fire the agents or even recommend that they be fired, "What the hell do you get to do?!" an exasperated Rep. Trey Gowdy asked her.

Hillary Clinton has arrived at her first campaign stop, completing the 965 mile trip from Chappaqua, New York to Le Claire, Iowa in about two days time. Her choice of transportation? A Secret Service owned and operated van. The van, however, isn't an everyday minivan or even a full-sized van. It's a luxury vehicle outiftted with top amenities. Specifically: It's a limited edition Chevrolet Express van upfitted with a Limited SE packed by Explorer Vans company "It's very luxurious," a salesman who helped deliver this vehicle tells me on the phone. "I'd rank it up there with the best." The...

Dana Hedgpeth April 13 at 11:52 AM Security at the White House was again breached Sunday after a 4-year-old toddler got through a security barrier on the property. The incident happened Sunday afternoon when security agents rushed to the north lawn with their weapons drawn and checked out the area. They discovered that the toddler had managed to climb under a temporary barrier along Pennsylvania Avenue outside the White House gate. The barrier looks similar to a bike rack, officials said, but is meant to keep pedestrians away. It was not immediately clear how the child got through the secured...

A high-ranking Secret Service supervisor was placed on administrative leave Wednesday after a female employee alleged that he assaulted her after-hours at agency headquarters last week. The allegations come weeks after agents were accused of driving a car into a bomb-investigation scene after a night of partying. The latest incident also involved a party attended by agency employees -- the supervisor and the female employee allegedly were involved in a struggle after the party, and the sex crimes unit of the District's police department reportedly is looking into the incident. The Secret Service said the supervisor, identified as 48-year-old Xavier...

The Secret Service has put a senior supervisor on leave and suspended his security clearance after a female employee accused him of assaulting her after-hours at agency headquarters last week, the agency said Wednesday. The D.C. police’s sex-crimes unit and a government inspector general are investigating the female agent’s allegation that Xavier Morales, a manager in the security clearance division, made unwanted sexual advances and grabbed her on the night of March 31 after they returned to the office from a party at a downtown restaurant, according to two law enforcement officials with knowledge of the probe

Book: Young Chelsea Clinton Called Secret Service 'Pigs' And Told One Agent 'That's What My Mother And Father Call You' Stunning tale came from White House domestic help who tended to the Clintons' every need during the 1990s. Book published today is based on more than 100 interviews with ordinary non-political staff who ran America's presidential mansion One former head of the household staff said: They were about the most paranoid people I'd ever seen in my life'. Another staff member said he was fired after he helped former first lady Barbara Bush with her computer because Clintons feared he...

Harry Reid's favored candidate to keep his Senate seat in the Democratic column is in many ways a stark contrast with himself: a Latina prosecutor who has only run one competitive political race in her career. Yet Democrats are abuzz about former Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto, who Reid essentially endorsed Friday. She won both of her campaigns for attorney general—including one in 2010 that she rendered basically uncompetitive—by more than 15 percentage points and has family lineage in state politics. Reid worked during his Senate career to promote change within his state party as its electorate grew more...

Police surveillance video shown publicly for the first time Tuesday shows Secret Service agents in their government vehicle driving through the secured area and nudging a temporary barrier at low speed as it drove toward a checkpoint. The incident occurred as on-duty officers and agents investigated a suspicious package thrown near the White House on March 4 – and an accompanying threat that it contained a bomb. The House Oversight Committee showed the video from the Washington Metropolitan Police Department during a hearing on Capitol Hill. Secret Service Director Joseph Clancy was testifying for the third time about the incident,...

Washington (AFP) - The US Secret Service has requested $8 million to build a replica of the White House for use in training agents to prevent incidents like last year's mansion intrusion, the agency's director said Tuesday. Joseph Clancy said the agency's current rudimentary training facility, in Beltsville, Maryland, is not to scale, and has "no structures, vehicle gates, lighting, or other aides to enhance the training simulations." He told a House of Representatives panel reviewing 2016 funding that his agency's budget "includes $8 million for the design and initial construction of a White House mock-up" in Maryland that will...

The Secret Service would like $8 million to build a replica White House for training purposes following a string of security lapses, including one last year when a fence-jumper made it deep inside the President's residence, the Secret Service Director said Tuesday. Secret Service Director Joseph Clancy told a House Appropriations subcommittee that agents would be able to "train more efficiently" if they had access to a "mock-up" White House. Clancy said he'd like for the replica to be built in Beltsville, Maryland, about 20 miles from the actual White House. Clancy estimates that the design and construction of the...

Two Secret Service agents suspected of being under the influence while striking a White House security barricade drove through an active bomb investigation and directly beside the suspicious package, according to current and former government officials familiar with the incident. These and other new details about the March 4 incident emerged Thursday from interviews and from police records obtained by The Washington Post

Two senior Secret Service agents -- one of whom is a top member of President Obama's protective detail -- reportedly drove a government car into White House security barricades after drinking at a late-night party last week. The Washington Post, citing a current and a former government official familiar with the incident, reported Wednesday afternoon that the officers on duty who witnessed the March 4 incident wanted to arrest the agents and conduct sobriety tests. But the officers were ordered by a supervisor on duty that night to let the agents go home, said the sources, who spoke to the...

"....The former senator from New York said the server had been installed to ensure digital security for her husband, former President Clinton. She said it was still guarded by the Secret Service and had never been hacked. Nonetheless, she said that last fall she approved the destruction of slightly more than half of the emails she wrote or received as America’s top diplomat during President Obama’s first term — because they were “private and personal.” The remainder were forwarded to the State Department. “No one wants their personal emails made public,” Clinton told reporters who packed a hallway outside the...

Updated 6 hours ago Two people were arrested in two separate White House security breaches in less than 24 hours, NBC News reported. Around 6:45 a.m. Monday, a man tried to get in through a gate that was open for construction workers who were leaving from a north side entrance of the White House.

* Alvin 'A.T.' Smith ran day-to-day operations at the Secret Service while it was dragged through scandal after scandal * He resigned this week but landed a job at DHS with an investigative unit inside Immigration and Customs Enforcement * The Obama administration won't say what Smith's new title is or what his duties will be, but his transfer instead of dismissal would have been approved at the highest levels(continued)

The Secret Service said Monday that its second-ranking official was resigning his post, a departure under pressure of one of the last remaining senior managers who had presided over a string of embarrassing security lapses in recent years. The ouster of Deputy Director Alvin “A.T.” Smith, which followed pressure from lawmakers who have called for fresh leadership at the troubled agency, came three days before he was scheduled to testify before a House oversight committee. He was considered one of the few people with a deep understanding of the Secret Service’s highly specialized mission.