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    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    Secret Service Director Resigns

    Secret Service Director Resigns

    By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT and MICHAEL D. SHEAROCT. 1, 2014

    Photo

    Julia Pierson, the director of the Secret Service, answered questions at a House committee hearing regarding security protocols.CreditStephen Crowley/The New York Times

    WASHINGTON — Julia Pierson, the director of the Secret Service, is resigning in the wake of several security breaches.

    The resignation came less than a day after lawmakers from both parties assailed Ms. Pierson’s leadership and said they feared for the lives of the president and others in the protection of the agency.


    On Wednesday morning, Ms. Pierson met with Jeh C. Johnson, the secretary of Homeland Security, the department that oversees the Secret Service. In a statement, Mr. Johnson said that he had accepted Ms. Pierson’s resignation, and that he had appointed Joseph Clancy, a former agent in charge of the Presidential Protective Division, to become the agency’s acting director.


    Mr. Johnson also said that he was directing his deputy at the Department of Homeland Security to oversee an internal review of the Sept. 19 incident in which an intruder jumped over the fence around the White House and penetrated deep inside the mansion.


    RELATED COVERAGE





    And bowing to growing demands for an outside inquiry by Democratic and Republican members of Congress, Mr. Johnson said that he would appoint a “distinguished panel of independent experts” to report recommendations to him by Dec. 15.

    “I will also request that the panel advise me about whether it believes, given the series of recent events, there should be a review of broader issues concerning the Secret Service,” Mr. Johnson said in the statement. “The security of the White House compound should be the panel’s primary and immediate priority.”


    It is unclear whether the creation of that panel will be enough to satisfy critics of Ms. Pierson and the agency, who said over the last 24 hours that they had lost confidence in the agency’s ability to protect the president and his family.


    Ms. Pierson, a 30-year veteran of the Secret Service, was supposed to have been the one to repair the agency’s reputation after scandals that raised questions about a culture that gave rise to incidents involving drinking and prostitution during overseas trips.


    But her tenure has been rocked by more serious allegations that her agents and officers have not been performing their primary job competently. Under intense questioning on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, Ms. Pierson admitted that those charged with securing the White House had failed to follow numerous security protocols, allowing a man armed with a knife to penetrate deep inside the mansion.


    And late Tuesday, the agency acknowledged that just days before the White House breach, an armed man was allowed to ride in an elevator with the president during an event at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.


    Through the last two weeks, Mr. Obama’s aides had repeatedly declared that he retained full confidence in the agency and in Ms. Pierson’s ability to lead it. But the disclosures in the past few days — including revelations that the Secret Service had not been fully forthcoming about the details of the incidents — appear to have been too much.


    On Wednesday, Democratic and Republican lawmakers heaped new criticism on Ms. Pierson, raising new questions about her ability to lead the agency and protect President Obama.


    But White House officials issued strong statements of support for Ms. Pierson, saying the president had no intention of asking her to resign and that he remained fully confident in her leadership and in the ability of the agency to protect him and his family.


    Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that Ms. Pierson was “more than qualified to do her job,” adding that the president “continues to have confidence in the ability of the leadership of the Secret Service to protect him.”


    Representative Elijah E. Cummings, the senior Democrat on the House oversight committee, initially said Wednesday morning that Ms. Pierson should no longer serve as the director of the Secret Service because he did not have confidence in her abilities and did not trust her to protect the president.




    “I’ve come to the conclusion that my confidence and my trust in this director, Ms. Pierson, has eroded,” he said in an interview on “Morning Joe.” “And I do not feel comfortable with her in that position.”

    Later, Mr. Cummings rolled backed his demand, saying in a Twitter post that he has “not decided about Pierson,” but adding that he is “not comfortable about the safety of the President of the United States of America.”


    Mr. Cummings‘s doubts were echoed by Representative Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat in the House, who told reporters that “if Mr. Cummings thinks that she should go, I subscribe to his recommendation.”


    Ms. Pelosi also broke with the White House and joined Republican calls for an independent probe of the Secret Service. She said that the agency’s internal review of its recent security breaches would not be enough to restore confidence.


    Ms. Pelosi and other lawmakers cited the recent intruder who jumped the fence at the White House and made it deep into the mansion before being stopped. She also noted new disclosures Tuesday evening about an incident in which a man with a gun was allowed to ride in an elevator with Mr. Obama when he was at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.


    “The protection of the president has to be precise, it has to be flawless and there has to be accountability when that is not the case,” Ms. Pelosi told reporters. “It is inexcusable that someone would jump over the fence and enter the White House, inexcusable that someone would be on the elevator with the president of the United States, with or without a weapon.”


    On Wednesday, the intruder who jumped the White House fence, Omar J. Gonzalez, pleaded not guilty to charges of unlawfully entering a restricted government building while carrying a weapon, carrying a dangerous weapon in public and unlawfully possessing ammunition.


    Mr. Gonzalez walked into the United States District Court here with his hands behind his back but not cuffed, wearing an orange jumpsuit. He listened intently as his lawyer entered his plea and waived Mr. Gonzalez’s right to a detention hearing. Judge Deborah A. Robinson ruled that Mr. Gonzalez would be detained until another hearing on Oct. 21.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/02/us/julia-pierson-secret-service.html?_r=0
    Last edited by JohnDoe2; 10-01-2014 at 03:51 PM.
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