ONCE REVERED
AGENCY NOW EXPOSED AS
BEING IN
DISARRAY
SECRET
SERVICE DIRECTOR PIERSON HAD TO
RESIGN AFTER
EXPRESSIONS OF “LOST CONFIDENCE”
FROM PRESIDENT
AND CONGRESS
TAGS: SECRET
SERVICE SECURITY BREACHES,
DIRECTOR FORCED
TO STEP DOWN,
MORE DETAILS
EMERGE ABOUT SECURITY LAPSES,
WHAT HAS
HAPPENED TO THE SECRET SERVICE?
(Wednesday October 1, 2014
Washington, DC) There are no greater
spectacles in this town than Congressional hearings that follow closely on the
heels of a scandal. Congressmen and Senators
sit like an assembly of morally supreme inquisitors gifted with the wisdom of
the ages toiling on behalf of the public good while pretending to investigate
the scandal du jour while a string of
“witnesses” are called before them to be
scrutinized and excoriated for errors of commission and omission. The august panel is actually composed of some
of the most corrupt, self-serving sleaziest politicos in the country. Yesterday’s villain was U.S. Secret Service
Director Julia Pierson called on to address a recent incident in which a man
scaled a fence and entered the White House.
Director Pierson said that such an intrusion was “unacceptable" and
told the congressional committee that she takes "full responsibility." Good, she should take full responsibility for
such an egregious breach of White House security. But, some of the very same Congress members
who grilled her during the hastily called House Oversight Committee have dirty,
soiled hands in the growing dysfunction of the Secret Service. Congress has repeatedly denied a higher
budget for the Secret Service and have themselves been guilty of impeding the
Service’s capabilities. If there was
even a marginally productive and engaged Congress here actually carrying out
their oversight obligations as our Constitution mandates, perhaps there would
not be such widespread dysfunction ineptitude and unaccountability as there
exists in the massive federal bureaucracy.
Director Pierson was unable to
survive the controversies as more details emerged about serious lapses in the
Presidential security detail. Late
yesterday it was revealed that a private security contractor with a felonious
history was on the same elevator as President Obama while he was visiting the
CDC in Atlanta last week. This private
contractor had a loaded firearm on his person which is a breach of such
proportions that Pierson’s tenure as the Service’s Director was no longer
tenable. Given the fact that President
Obama has received three times as many death threats than any other president
in history made these huge lapses of security at the White House and with the
Presidential Protective Detail all the more alarming. She spoke with the President by phone earlier
today and submitted her resignation to the Director of the Department of
Homeland Security (DHS), Jeh Johnson, under whose sprawling bureaucratic domain
the Secret Service has been part of since the founding of the DHS in 2002.
A PROUD TRADITION TARNISHED
In some law enforcement
circles and the public’s conscience the Secret Service has always been highly
regarded and respected. The men and
women who literally place themselves in harm’s way, willing to take a bullet for
the president, any member of the “first family” or whatever dignitary they are assigned to, have commanded a level
of respect consummate with their assigned and vital mission. It was only after the assassination of
President John F. Kennedy that the “modern” Secret Service was born. That death
of a president, a president like every other they were responsible to protect ushered
in a new approach in their core mission of providing an iron clad protective bubble
for the president of the United States.
In the morbid, shameful wake
of the assassination of JFK, the Secret Service responded by creating a new
breed agency staffed by a new breed of agents.
The Secret Service became the forerunners tactically and operationally
with a renewed mission to never again allow a president to be vulnerable to an assassin’s
bullet or any other lethal threat.
In retrospect we see just how
innocent we were as a society when JFK was shot and killed as he sat in a
convertible limousine on that bright and sunny Texas November afternoon. There was no fault to be laid on the
threshold of the Secret Service; it just wasn’t within anyone’s realm of
thinking that such a tragic event could happen.
What impacted the Secret Service the most was that the sinister ambition
of one man, Lee Harvey Oswald, could bring down a presidency. Yes, to this day conspiracy theorists argue
with the findings and final report of the Warren Commission. We are all entitled to our own opinions but,
in a city such as our nation’s Capital, secrets are hard to keep for a period
of weeks let alone decades. When JFK was
transported to Parkland Hospital and the young trauma surgeons on duty realized
the extent of the damage to President Kennedy’s head and brain they knew he
would not survive even their most valiant efforts. It was within hours after JFK had been
pronounced dead that the “new” Secret Service was born. Those in charge of the agency at the time
made vows and committed themselves to a higher mission objective than they had
been tasked before that dreadful day in Dallas.
And, with all due respect, they have performed admirably until just a
few years ago.
Once a model for what a
professional, federal security agency could do, within the past 5 years there has
been one embarrassing incident after another with several of these incidents
involving members of the Presidential detail and the first wave unit that
scouts out the location the president is next planning to appear. One episode involved a team of advance agents
getting intoxicated and using the services of local prostitutes in South
America. One agent was so intoxicated
that he passed out leaving his credentials and firearm unattended. Several similar episodes have transpired each
more disturbing than the one previous.
SECRET SERVICE: LONG HISTORY OF SPEAKING WITHOUT LISTENING
Aside from the presidential
retreat in the mountains of Maryland, Camp David, the president travels to New
York City more often than any other destination. The Secret Service has a Field Office here,
second in size only to that at the White House and combined Personnel
Protective Detail. In law enforcement it
is never easy to share a jurisdiction with another agency; turf wars are not
uncommon and simply working out a logistics protocol and providing security can
become contentious debates. Fortunately
for NYPD, they have the best working relationship with the Secret Service
outside of the Washington Metro Police and the other uniformed federal and local
agencies that often create divisiveness and animus. When the mission is as important as proving
protection for the president and his family on the move be it to a vacation, a
fundraiser of to deliver his annual address to the United Nations General
Assembly as well as providing assistance to the security personnel accompanying
all the other heads of state and foreign dignitaries, the most capable
professional men and women are usually assigned to those tasks. But, this is
easier said than done and there are few NYPD Officers from the ESU, Intel Bureau
and other Units who have not witnessed the hubris of the Secret Service. No agency no matter how well trained and equipped,
no matter how lofty their mandate knows New York City anywhere near as well as
the MOS of NYPD. It is Our City.
There have been disagreements
(to be polite) of legendary proportions between top operation and command Brass
of NYPD with their Secret Service “counterparts”. It was not uncommon to have a Secret Service
agent be assigned to a delegation protection unit during his or her first in a
lifetime visit to Our City. So
overwhelmed and distracted by all the stimuli in this environment there have
been breaches of security that, if not for the timely intervention of well-seasoned
NYPD Officers, there could have very well been an international crisis to deal
with.
GOING FORWARD
NEWLY APPOINTED ACTING
DIRECTOR OF THE SECRET SERVICE, JOSEPH CLANCY
SEEN OPENING
LIMO DOOR FOR PRESIDENT OBAMA IN 2009
In defense of the Secret
Service, they have been victimized by shrinking budgets, stagnant wages as
compared to other law enforcement agencies where than can be hired, a fairly
large turnover rate either by attrition or choice. Complacency in an organization particularly
one with the once rigorous standards of the Secret Service is a slow
death. It leads to over-looking
important matters they see as smaller, a lack of cohesion and trust among
agents and generally a pervasive infection of low morale. The Congressional
charade played itself out with all the usual suspects preening and
pontificating into the TV cameras while expressing the proper blend of outrage,
righteousness, and self-satisfaction.
Director Pierson’s resignation was inevitable and placing an “acting
director” until a proper candidate is appointed will not do much systemically
to an organization that has drifted so far from their core mission that lives
were in danger.
We are living essentially in
America on a “full time war-footing”.
The world has never before been so riddled with upheaval and widespread
death, with conflicts, disease, and oppression.
We have been engaged with radical extremists by whatever name they chose
to call themselves since al Qaeda attack America on September 11, 2001. Perhaps it is this overlay of a world gone
mad superimposed on the failings of the Secret Service that make all the awful
breaches that much more chilling, reprehensible and frightening. We know that any and every terrorist group or
lone wolf watches our news as a regular matter of fact. They use CNN, BBC, websites and other sources
with which to gather intelligence to be used against us.
One can only imagine the
repercussions if the White House intruder, Omar J. Gonzalez, a 42 year old Iraq
war veteran was not apprehended by the coincidence of an off duty Secret
Service Officer tackled him far into the Green Room. What if Gonzalez had instead and run up the stairs,
which he passed, and entered the First Family’s private residence? On November 11, 2011 another man, Oscar R.
Ortega-Hernandez, shot seven rounds from a high powered rifle while he was in
his parked car at a distance of 700 feet of the White House. Four of those rounds stuck the window panes
of the Family Residence but it was only four days later when a custodial
staffer brought the broken windows to the attention of the Secret Service that
anyone had realized what had happened.
That such incidents have been
able to be perpetrated given the high alert rate our government and military
are allegedly observing only serve to make them that much more outrageous.
The “Acting Director” Joseph
Clancy who had a long career with the Secret Service working for four different
presidents has to immediately investigate these recent breaches and move
systematically to overhaul old protocols and essentially retrain all the agents
assigned to the President and ultimately all the agents in the Service. His task is no small fete and he will not
have much, if any, Washington honeymoon with all the congressional and
Senatorial sharks in the bloody water.
At this time all we can do his with him well.
Copyright The
Brooding Cynyx 2014 © All Rights Reserved
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