Free Republic

Jose Antonio Vargas, a Pulitizer prize winning reporter who has worked for the Washington Post and Huffington Post, has revealed that he is an illegal alien in a coordinated media push with the New York Times and ABC News seeking amnesty for illegal aliens like him.Vargas also revealed that he breached White House security by using a fake ID, including when he covered a state dinner. And that a superior at the Washington Post knew and approved of his actions.Vargas made the revelations in an article he authored published in the upcoming New York Times Sunday Magazine.Vargas writes that at...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's safety was not jeopardized by the actions of Secret Service agents who brought prostitutes back to a Colombia hotel on the eve of his arrival, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano assured a Senate committee Wednesday. "There was no risk to the president," she told a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in the first public questioning of an administration official since the scandal broke as Obama prepared to visit Cartagena for a summit. Napolitano said that a review of Secret Service records showed no similar episodes of misconduct that might have warned of brewing problems at...

Secret Service Director Julia Pierson will face questions about how an armed intruder jumped the White House fence and made it as far as the East Room when she testifies before a House committee on Tuesday. Sources confirmed to Fox News on Monday that 42-year-old Omar Gonzalez overpowered a Secret Service officer in the Sept. 19 incident -- this led to a struggle and "wrestling" inside the executive mansion as he darted through. Gonzalez was eventually tackled by a counter-assault agent in the East Room after he reached the doorway to the Green Room, a parlor overlooking the South Lawn....

The Secret Service’s assistant director urged that unflattering information the agency had in its files about a congressman critical of the service should be made public, according to a government watchdog report released Wednesday. “Some information that he might find embarrassing needs to get out,” Assistant Director Edward Lowery wrote in an e-mail to a fellow director on March 31, commenting on an internal file that was being widely circulated inside the service. “Just to be fair.” Two days later, a news Web site reported that Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, had applied to be...

The Secret Service leaked sensitive personal information to the press about Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz as the Utah Republican was investigating the beleaguered agency, an inspector general's report said Wednesday. The Department of Homeland Security Office of the Inspector General issued a report on Wednesday that accused Secret Service Assistant Director Edward Lowery and other agency officials of plotting to leak information about Chaffetz, including his unsuccessful attempt to join the organization. The leaks were a highly unusual breach of decorum. Lawmakers often battle with agencies, but the fights mostly stay above board and focus on...

An assistant director of the Secret Service urged that unflattering information the agency had in its files about a congressman critical of the service should be made public, according to a government watchdog report released Wednesday. “Some information that he might find embarrassing needs to get out,” Assistant Director Edward Lowery wrote in an e-mail to a fellow director on March 31, commenting on an internal file that was being widely circulated inside the service. “Just to be fair.” Two days later, a news Web site reported that Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, had applied...

Mike Gillette said Clancy called him Monday and said he was “very sorry,” and that the agency “did not handle the situation well.” A spokeswoman for the Secret Service confirmed that Clancy made the call. According to Gillette, Clancy offered to come to one of the group’s events to apologize in person and offered to have some of the children come to one of the agency’s training facilities in Maryland for a tour. ... In a statement e-mailed late Sunday, Brian Leary, a spokesman for the Secret Service, said the closures on Pennsylvania Avenue and Lafayette Square were “put into...

The U.S. Secret Service ordered hundreds of parents and their cancer-stricken children out of Lafayette Square on Saturday night, barricading the park for at least two hours and disrupting the group’s plans for a candlelight vigil to raise awareness of and research funding for childhood cancer, participants said. Some of the parents and children expressed hurt and disappointment that the Secret Service and Park Police, citing security precautions, virtually shut down part of a two-day event called CureFest for Childhood Cancer.

Whacking Donald Trump with a stick is big business in San Francisco. You can do it for $14 to the small Trump, or $20 if you splurge for the large Trump. The stick costs $3 extra, and you really need a proper stick, customers say, to bust Trump to smithereens. Those are the economics — a field said to be Trump’s specialty — in the red-hot business of selling Donald Trump piñatas.

Vice President Joe Biden enjoys swimming without a bathing suit, a new book claims.Biden, who’s flirting with a run for president in 2016, gives Secret Service agents an eyeful both at his Delaware home and at the vice president’s official residence in Washington, D.C., according to “The First Family Detail” by Ronald Kessler.The book relies on named and unnamed sources to describe life guarding prominent politicians including Biden, former President Ronald Reagan, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama. “Agents say that, whether at the vice president’s residence or at his home in Delaware, Biden has a...

Ronald Kessler, writing for The Daily Mail, testifies that Hillary Clinton and her long-time aide Huma Abedin were detested by members of the Secret Service because the two women arrogantly treated the Secret Service agents like dirt. Kessler, the author of The Secrets of the FBI and The First Family Detail: Secret Service Agents Reveal the Hidden Lives of the Presidents, dismisses claims by members of the media that the current FBI investigation of Clinton is restricted to a “security investigation.” He attests that the investigation of Clinton means that she violated criminal laws, as the FBI will not launch an investigation...

Facing accusations that it cannot adequately protect the White House, the U.S. Secret Service plans to hire 1,100 more officers and agents for an agency besieged by embarrassing scandals and security lapses, two law enforcement sources with direct knowledge of the plans said. The addition of 700 uniformed division officers and 400 agents over five years would expand its staff of 6,647 by nearly 17 percent, the biggest hiring increase in more than a decade at the 150-year-old agency whose job it is to protect the president, his family, and senior officials, along with fighting financial crime. The Secret Service...

Secret Service Investigating Alleged Bush Threat— WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Secret Service said on Sunday it had no comment on a report that a trucker had been arrested outside Chattanooga, Tennessee after allegedly threatening President Bush. "The Secret Service is conducting an investigation and due to there being an active, ongoing investigation, I can't make any further comment about it," said a Secret Service official who spoke on condition of anonymity. Cable News Network reported the man told police he had a 3,000-pound bomb "... and the president has problems," in a telephone conversation that led to his apprehension...

Guns are evil. More guns = more crime. Get rid of guns, because bad people do bad things with guns. Now that we’ve established the ground rules, ladies and gentlemen: the President of the United States. “We don’t have all the facts, but we do know that once again, innocent people were killed, in part, because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun.” Whether or not anything he just said is true, it’s clear that his appeal to emotion demands immediate and decisive action. That’s why, for the sake of Americans everywhere,...

How badly the Secret Service was being run You’ve got problems. You’ve got a guy jumping the White House fence, running up the steps and actually making it to the stairway that leads to the residence - with a knife on him. That’s a problem. You’ve got a drunk agent crashing into a White House barricade. You’ve got prostitutes in agents’ hotel rooms . . . yeah, you’ve got problems, Secret Service. So you get a new director. OK. You pretty much had to do that. And then you start hiring a bunch of new agents as quickly as you...

The Secret Service has had a bad couple of years, with prostitution scandals and security gaps that have embarrassed the agency — and in one instance, had an intruder running through the White House. As part of the effort to bolster security around the President, the agency has gone on a hiring spree, bringing in fresh talent to address some of the recent failures. The Washington Post’s Carol Leonnig, who has reported more than a few of those failures, now reports that the rush to man the posts has resulted in agents working in sensitive areas without the proper...

<p>Secret Service agents interrupted a live, televised White House press briefing Tuesday to evacuate journalists after a bomb threat was called in to police. No bomb was found, the Secret Service said.</p> <p>President Barack Obama and other officials remained in the building during the evacuation, which only affected the James S. Brady Briefing Room. White House press secretary Josh Earnest, who was briefing reporters at the time of the evacuation, said later that Obama was never in any danger.</p>

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said Friday that drones will be an issue for federal, state and local security during the 2016 presidential race. Johnson made the comments in response to a question from NBC's Chuck Todd, who asked him whether the Secret Service was "panicked" about the proliferation of drones. Todd said he wondered how it would effect security at outdoor campaign events in 2016. “It is definitely an issue,” Johnson replied on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”He then went into an anecdote about a drone flying over his head at a graduation ceremony. “I was giving a commencement address a...

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...