Downfalls of the Secret Service

The news about Julia Pierson, the director of the U.S. Secret Service — [an organization] created in 1865 to ensure the security of the U.S. president, his family and foreign dignitaries visiting the U.S. — was, in fact, predictable, and it was a consequence of the serious accusations brought against her by her subordinates. This happened after the evening of Sept. 19, when a former fighter in Iraq, 42-year-old Omar Gonzales, unrestrainedly jumped the 2.3-meter-high wall of the White House North Wing armed with a knife, managed to run more than 60 meters across the lawn while being chased by agents and entered the main door on the ground floor — the door having been unlocked and the alarm deactivated. He then passed several rooms until finally being held in the East Room by an agent who was off duty. President Barack Obama had just left the White House; however, his absence doesn’t diminish the gravity of this shocking incident.

Gonzales is the first unauthorized person who managed to break into the executive residence, the main building where the president’s apartments are, considered to be one of the safest places in the world. In fact, just three days before, during a visit to Atlanta’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Barack Obama found himself in the elevator with an armed, private bodyguard who had been convicted for assault no less than three times. This individual caught the attention of the Secret Service when he wouldn’t stop filming the president with his cell phone. It was only after Obama entered the elevator that the Secret Service realized this guy was armed, even though, according to policy, no armed person is allowed near the president apart from his bodyguards.

This is yet another major scandal [taking place] during the Obama administration; one that sparked the outrage of Congress was the incident in November 2011 when, according to The Washington Post, an individual fired seven bullets at the White House from his car, which was parked near the south side of the building without being seen. The marks from his bullets were found four days later, because Secret Service agents initially thought they were just the sounds of a [malfunctioning] car engine. The discovery was made after an employee found pieces of broken glass from the shattered windows of the presidential apartments. Sasha, the president’s youngest daughter, was inside.

Then, in 2012, 12 Secret Service agents who were on a mission in Cartagena, Colombia to prepare for President Obama’s visit brought prostitutes into their hotel rooms and were immediately fired. In March last year, several of their coworkers got drunk in a hotel in Amsterdam. In 2009, a couple deluded the White House security services and participated — uninvited — in an official dinner held by the president in honor of the Indian prime minister. Subsequently, the couple revealed the hoax on Facebook and the media exploited the subject to its maximum, which led to the Secret Service being harshly criticized.

On March 31, 1981, after only 69 days as president, when leaving the Hilton Hotel in Washington, Ronald Reagan was the victim of an attempted murder. John Hinckley Jr., a 26-year-old loony, fired six shots in his direction, one of which badly injured Reagan in the chest, another causing his press officer to become paralyzed and a third killing Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy. Not to mention the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, on Nov. 22, 1963. Therefore, the White House has often been a target and the object of intrusion. In 1974, a helicopter landed on the South Lawn, took off and landed again; in the end, the pilot was detained.

So it’s no surprise that having been cornered not just by the press but by congressmen too, whose criticism was very sharp, Julia Pierson had to admit to this “unacceptable breach” in the security of the White House, acknowledge that “our security plan was not properly executed” and take “full responsibility.” Sixteen people have jumped the White House fence in the last five years, six of them in the last year alone, as Julia Pierson herself admitted at the hearing held by a bipartisan Congress committee, who now has to establish whether basic security protocols were breached and how it happened.

At the same time, it’s safe to say that things like this happen everywhere, including in Eastern Europe before 1989, when the security measures to protect the communist dictators were downright draconian. For example, a very honest man was recalling how, on the afternoon of an ordinary working day in the hallways of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (CC) building in Bucharest where Ceauşescu’s offices were, there was a man holding some flowers and a violin under his arm; he wanted to go in and “tell the big guy” about a problem. Of course, there was a full investigation to see which entrance was used to get into the building and especially to the first floor, where most people had limited access. Back then, there were no security cameras, so the only source of information was the witness’ statement. The same Nicolae Ceauşescu had a similar encounter, when, as usual, he went hunting with several fellow party members that were more or less passionate about this hobby. After the hunt, at a relaxed time during lunch, Ceauşescu was confronted by an older member of the party, who came to report a “terrible abuse.” As everyone stood there dumbfounded by his sudden appearance, the man calmly explained his complaint, but those in charge of the security and protection of Ceauşescu and the other dignitaries were speechless, because they all knew they’d have to answer simple questions like, “How did this man find out about the hunt and this location?” and “How did he manage to get so close to Ceauşescu?”

In the end, no matter the protocols, country or names of those protected by technically supremely equipped “super-secret services,” reality shows an obvious paradox — sometimes, the more sophisticated the security systems used for protecting the world’s leaders, the easier it is for them to be broken by determined and resourceful individuals.