Secret Service director to face lawmakers over White House break-in

Washington: The director of the Secret Service will face lawmakers Tuesday for the first public accounting of the details surrounding an embarrassing and worrisome security breach at the White House earlier this month that, according to a congressman, was worse than the agency has publicly acknowledged.

Secret Service Director Julia Pierson will have to explain how a man armed with a small knife managed to climb over a White House fence, sprint across the north lawn and dash deep into the executive mansion before finally being subdued. And she is certain to face tough questions about why members of Congress briefed by the agency apparently weren’t told of the full extent of the breach when she appears before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz said Monday night that whistleblowers told his committee that the intruder ran through the White House, into the East Room and near the doors to the Green Room before being apprehended. They also reported to lawmakers that accused intruder Omar J. Gonzalez, 42, made it past a female guard stationed inside the White House, Chaffetz said.

“I’m worried that over the last several years, security has gotten worse — not better,” Chaffetz said.

In the hours after the September 19 fence-jumper incident, Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan told The Associated Press that Gonzalez had been apprehended just inside the North Portico doors of the White House. The agency also said that night that Gonzalez, an Army veteran, had been unarmed — an assertion that was revealed to be false the next day when officials acknowledged Gonzalez had a knife with him when he was apprehended.

The Secret Service declined to comment on the latest details to trickle out of the investigation on the embarrassing security breach.

It was not clear late Monday what Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson was told about the extent of the incident.

Senate Judiciary Committee staffers who were briefed about the investigation by the administration a week after the incident were never told how far Gonzalez made it into the building, according to a congressional official who wasn’t authorized to discuss the investigation and requested anonymity. The official said the committee later was told that the suspect had, indeed, made it far beyond the front door.

Chaffetz said his committee’s request for a briefing from the Secret Service on the incident was denied, a response he called “disappointing and frustrating.”

Asked whether he would seek an apology from Pierson, Chaffetz said, “We’re going to let things play out (Tuesday).”

Pierson’s predecessor, Mark J. Sullivan, apologized to lawmakers in 2012 after details emerged of a night of debauchery involving 13 Secret Service agents and officers in advance of the president’s arrival at a summit in Colombia. He retired about 10 months later.

Details of exactly how Gonzalez made into the White House were disclosed on the eve of the congressional oversight hearing with the director of the embattled agency assigned to protect the president’s life.

Citing multiple unnamed sources, The Washington Post reported that Gonzalez ran past the guard at the front door, past a staircase leading up to the Obamas’ living quarters and into the East Room, which is about halfway across the first floor of the building. Gonzalez was eventually “tackled” by a counter-assault agent, the Post said.

Getting so far into the building would have required Gonzalez to dash through the main entrance hall, turn a corner, then run through the center hallway half-way across the first floor of the building, which spans 168 feet (51 meters) in total, according to the White House Historical Association.

Since the incident, the White House has treaded carefully. Although White House spokesman Josh Earnest acknowledged the president was “obviously concerned” about the intrusion, he also expressed confidence in the Secret Service as recently as Monday.

It would be untenable for any president, not just Obama, to pointedly criticize the men and women who put themselves at risk to protect his life and family. That inherent conflict of interest means that Congress, not the executive branch, is the most effective oversight authority for the Secret Service, its agents and officers.

“The president and the first lady, like all parents, are concerned about the safety of their children, but the president and first lady also have confidence in the men and women of the Secret Service to do a very important job,” Earnest said.

Had the intruder been heavily armed and the president and his family at home, the security lapse could have had serious consequences. No one was hurt in the incident, but it’s not the first involving the White House itself, raising the question whether the latest breach is part of a pattern of delayed reactions to threats to the executive mansion. The Secret Service says that is not the case.

Yet in another White House incident in 2011, described by the Post over the weekend, the Secret Service did not immediately respond to shots fired at the White House, amid what the agency describes as uncertainty about where the shots originated. Four days later, it was discovered that at least one of the shots broke the glass of a window on the third level of the mansion, the Secret Service said.

At the time of that incident, the president and first lady Michelle Obama were away, but their daughters were in Washington — one home and the other due to return that night.

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