Posted on 09/23/2014 5:36:11 AM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
President Obama is supporting the Secret Service in the wake of a deeply troubling incident in which a disturbed man jumped the White House fence, sprinted across the North Lawn, and actually entered the White House Friday evening.
The man, 42 year-old Omar Gonzalez, had a folding knife in his pocket and had left 800 rounds of ammunition in his car not far from the White House. Gonzalez had also drawn the attention of authorities at least twice a few weeks ago — once in Virginia, when he was found with a sniper rifle, a sawed-off shotgun, and a map with the White House circled on it, and a second time when he walked near the White House fence with a hatchet in his waistband.
On Friday, Gonzalez was briefly in the White House itself.
Nevertheless, the president had nothing but praise for the agency responsible for his security. "The Secret Service does a great job," Obama said during an Oval Office meeting Monday. "I'm grateful for all the sacrifices they make on my behalf and on my family's behalf."
White House spokesman Josh Earnest added that the president has "complete confidence" in the Secret Service.
Despite all that positive talk, it appears something is very, very wrong with the Secret Service.
After the incident, the organization began to leak proposals for some major security changes around the White House. Some reports suggested the Secret Service would clear the area around the current White House fence and erect another barrier farther out. That would presumably make it impossible for a fence jumper make a long run to the White House door without being caught.
But the key question arising from Friday's incident is not whether the White House perimeter should be expanded, but why Secret Service agents did not act more quickly when Gonzalez jumped the fence and began running toward the mansion. Why was no agent able to catch him outside? Why did agents not release the dogs that are trained to stop intruders? And why did agents not lock the White House door once the perimeter had been breached?
Those were human failures, not design shortcomings. And to some members of Congress, those human failures have been going on for quite a while at the Secret Service.
Calling the breach "totally unacceptable" and expressing amazement that the White House door was open, Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah, a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, hinted there is more trouble than the public knows about. "This is not the first time Secret Service has shown too much vulnerability," Chaffetz tweeted after the incident. "There are other unreported incidents. I will continue to push."
"Been investigating the Secret Service for some time," Chaffetz continued. "Frustrating. Good men and women but HUGE question marks for their leadership." Lawmakers could hold a hearing on the matter soon.
House Intelligence Committee chairman Mike Rogers, a former FBI agent, also believes the Secret Service's problems go deeper than a new fence. In an interview Sunday, Rogers suggested that a guard's attention can wane when he is stationed in one place for long periods of time — a lapse that cannot be tolerated when the president's security is involved.
"It happens frequently in other places where there are static security forces," Rogers told CBS. "And it's just a matter of the Secret Service upping their game to make sure that they can maintain that every detail matters. A door locked, a quick reaction when somebody hits the fence and over the gate. I think they're going to have to reinstate some of these ongoing checks ... self-audits on their security."
Secret Service director Julia Pierson, appointed last year by President Obama to clean up the agency after the 2012 Colombia prostitution scandal, is starting an investigation. Pierson's boss, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, is trying to calm things down while asking for time to look into the incident.
"I encourage all of us to not rush to judgment about the event and not second-guess the judgment of security officers who had only seconds to act, until all the facts are in," Johnson said in a statement Monday.
But members of Congress are right to express deep concern. The Secret Service knew about Omar Gonzalez, who might as well have carried a sign saying "I AM A THREAT TO THE PRESIDENT." And yet he made it through the White House door.
It's not enough for the president and his aides to express confidence. They need to find out what is wrong with the Secret Service and fix it, fast.
What color and political affiliation will they be... that makes a difference.
FWIW from Wikipedia:
She served on the presidential protective details (PPDs) of Presidents George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush.From 2008 to her appointment as director, Pierson served as the chief of staff and the assistant director of the Office of Human Resources and Training for the Secret Service.[3][6]
Pierson was already the agency’s highest-ranking woman before being promoted to director.[7] She is tasked with improving the image of the USSS, following the Summit of the Americas prostitution scandal.[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Pierson
This also came up in my search for her on bing:
New Secret Service chief ‘hacked and personal information published online’ days after appointed
A Social Security number, phone numbers and a credit report are among those claimed to belong to Julia Pierson on site
Secret Service investigating with accuracy of private data unclear
By Daily Mail Reporter
Published: 16:57 EST, 4 April 2013 | Updated: 17:25 EST, 4 April 2013
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2304214/Julia-Pierson-New-Secret-Service-chief-hacked-personal-information-published-online.html
If Obama appointed her, then we know she is incompetent.
He refuses to appoint anyone who is more competent than himself.
Just look at his Cabinet.
I heard about a year or two ago that the SS wanted to have the entire block around the WH become a restricted area. This could be their way to ‘prove’ it needs to be done.
And there’s always a danger of a world leader receiving a ‘head wound’.
Is she political?
She was appointed by der Fuehrer; of course she’s political.
I was going to disagree and say he should go play a round a golf but considering how long committees can be drawn out and with no solution, I am now agreeing.
Something is starting to smell a little funny with this.
We got the exact same stories in 2009 right after Obama took office.
Remember the party crashers?
In 2009 we were told the breaches in security was because the Secret Service were a bunch of racist that would love to see Obama assassinated.
Howard Dean had a slip of the tongue and made the claim the republicans were doing the same as had been done with Clinton and wanted to kill the president. He quickly corrected himself and said kill his policies.
In 1995 before the OKC bombing Clinton took a trip to the Philippines where Terry Nicole’s had been and low and behold there was an assassination plot against Clinton.
In 2009 Hillary took an unannounced trip overseas and low and behold there was an assassination plot against Hillary.
I’ve got a feeling all this isn’t by accident.
Maybe we’re seeing what Bob Beckel was talking about the “October Surprise”.
I had an engagement with the Secret Service back in 2004 that really scared me about their ability to protect the president. Some Freepers may remember that I came here onto FR and posted a question as to what I should do, since I had heard a coworker say in the middle of a group of people that he had “bought a gun for the occasion” of President Bush coming to Daytona Beach for the Daytona 500 race.
Taking the advice of fellow Freepers and my brother, who is a cop, I called the Secret Service office in Orlando and told them exactly what I’d heard, who said it, where and when, etc., and I gave them my contact information. The girl taking the info said that a field agent would contact me. I then came back to FR and posted a follow-up saying that I’d called the Orlando office and reported the incident.
About six weeks went by, and I got a call from the office where the incident had occurred telling me that the Secret Service had been there to talk to me. They left a number, so I called the guy back. He told me that he was sorry it had taken him so long to contact me, but he’d had to subpoena FreeRepublic and my cable company to get my information so that they could follow up on the incident I’d posted about on here.
Six weeks to follow up on something through multiple subpoenas for information that was given to them immediately - do you wonder why I question whether the agency is effective?
What if there were more than one intruder with a bomb? I think the flag of Islam will be flying at the White House before we know it. Some people will be surprised, but the handwriting is on the wall already.
***What about the rooftop snipers? Not even a warning shot.***
My daughter graduated from college several years ago, and Steven Chu was the speaker for her graduation ceremony. I kid you not, there were snipers on the roofs in at least 3 different places that I could see from my vantage point during his speech, and they disappeared as soon as he left the premises.
I still don’t get why the rooftop snipers didn’t take out this Gonzalez fellow. We are in a heap of trouble.
Truthfully, it’s time to start thinking what for many would be unthinkable: it’s time for the POTUS to abandon the White House for all but ceremonial functions. Granted, its use for those functions would continue, but a modern POTUS needs a much more efficiently designed office.
And the same applies to most of the federal government currently headquartered in D.C.
Ironically, this would begin by making the entirety of D.C. into a federal reservation: buying up all private buildings and land in the city, then leasing necessary commercial parts, like the Watergate hotel complex, back to their previous owners.
Then bulldoze the ghetto and rebuild the city from the infrastructure up as a federal reservation, not for private ownership. This would leave huge tracts of land for national monuments and federal buildings used to interface with the political leadership, though the bulk of the agencies would be out of the region.
It would probably be hard to arrange that, with none of the 50 being FBI informants. The Stasi’s got nothing on the US.
Nothing.
Thanks for the info.
That hasn't been my experience--I grew up between two towns in NJ with large Puerto Rican populations, but don't ever recall the name "Omar" as a first name.
I’m with you. If I were to hop the White House fence, I would do so with the assumption that something very, very bad would happen to me almost immediately.
Good point about the Moorish influence on Spanish names.
As I told another poster, having grown up between two towns with large Puerto Rican populations, Omar was not a name I ever heard associated with them..
Have they given him citizenship yet?
Pray America wakes
A fish rots from the head down.
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