Secret Service Director is an Affirmative Action Queen
From Wikipedia:
Julia Pierson is a native of Orlando, Florida.[6] While she attended high school, she worked at Walt Disney World as a parking lot attendant, watercraft attendant, and in costume in Disney parades.[7]
She was an Explorer in the Boy Scouts of America,
in a post specializing in law enforcement chartered to the Orlando
Police Department. She was the 1978 National Law Enforcement Exploring
Youth Representative, leading the Law Enforcement Exploring division,[8] and was selected as the National Law Enforcement Exploring chair.
She attended the University of Central Florida, graduating in 1981 with a bachelor's degree in criminal justice.[9]
From National Review:
An
internal Secret Service report revealed more than “1,000 security
breaches and vulnerabilities,” according to a House investigator who
said that a “politically correct” culture is endangering President
Obama.
“There
are new details that will come out that — you really have to question
if security is their number one objective,” Representative Jason Chaffetz
(R., Utah), who sits on the House Oversight and Government Reform
Committee that is holding a Tuesday hearing on the Secret Service,
tells National Review Online. “They want to be politically correct.”
Chaffetz
backs that up by reference to the Secret Service’s statement on the
most recent security breach, when a man jumped the White House fence and
entered the building before being stopped.
“Although
last night the officers showed tremendous restraint and discipline in
dealing with this subject, the location of Gonzalez’s arrest is not
acceptable,” the Secret Service press release said. (That statement was issued before whistleblowers revealed that the fence-jumper made it all the way to the East Room of the White House, on the second floor.)
“When is that the goal and objective of the Secret Service? ‘Restraint?’ Because he had no apparent weapons?” Chaffetz
points out. “In this day and age of ISIS and suicide bombers, we don’t
know what he has underneath of his clothing. He could have a dirty bomb
or improvised explosive device. You just don’t know. It’s totally unfair
for an agent to have to make a split second decision on whether or not
to use lethal force. If you can’t get a dog or a person in between the
person rushing the White House and the White House itself, you may have
to use a more lethal weapon.”
Chaffetz
emphasizes that “there are a lot of very good men and women” at the
Secret Service, but he said that the leadership of the Secret Service
has been politicized since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
“When
9/11 happened and they reconfigure the Secret Service — took it out of
Treasury; put it in Homeland Security — and made the director a
Senate-confirmed position, it seems to me it became much more of a
political appointee as opposed to a director who is a career servant
person,” the congressman says.
The result has been a major breakdown in the morale and effectiveness of the people tasked with protecting the First Family.
“I
want to hear out the director, I want to give her a chance to try to
explain herself, but I’m going into the hearing with the strong
impression that there is a total failure in leadership and questionable
protocol,” Chaffetz says.
That
concern springs in part from an internal report that surveyed 6,500
Secret Service agents, asking if they had observed any vulnerabilities
or security breaches.
FROM NBC
On the heels of the Washington Post’s revelation that the armed man who
scaled the White House fence earlier this month not only entered the
executive mansion but bolted past a guard and into the East Room, the Secret Service has come under fire once again.
According to White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, President Obama
was “obviously concerned” about the September 19 perimeter breach – and
in a rare moment of accord, the Republican-controlled House share his
concern.
Today, members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee
will grill Secret Service Director Julia Pierson about the agency’s
repeated lapses. Here's seven questions lawmakers are likely to ask:
1. Why the lack of transparency?
Yesterday’s revelations don’t exactly square with the agency’s original
explanation, which seemed to imply that the 42-year-old fence jumper,
Omar Gonzalez, had been apprehended just inside the entrance.
The day after the incident, the Secret Service released a statement
saying simply, “Gonzalez failed to comply with responding Secret Service
Uniformed Division Officers’ verbal commands, and was physically
apprehended after entering the White House North Portico doors.”
2. Didn’t Gonzalez’s erratic history raise a red flag?
Secret Service investigators interviewed Gonzalez, an Iraq vet, at least
twice before he stormed into the White House on September 19.
Two months before the incident, authorities in Virginia discovered a
sawed-off shotgun and a map marking the White House stashed in
Gonzalez’s car. They confiscated the weapons but concluded he wasn’t a
threat to the president. And about a month later, officers spotted
Gonzales wandering along the south fence with a hatchet in his
waistband. They determined they didn’t have enough evidence to hold him.
Gonzalez’s motives aren’t clear: Though he had armed himself with 3 ½
inch knife, he claims his only intent was to warn the president that the
“atmosphere was collapsing.” Still, the fact that a man repeatedly
flagged by Secret Service managed to make it so far into what was once
considered most secure residence in the nation is troubling.
3. Why didn’t agents fire?
The Secret Service Uniformed Division supposedly maintains “five rings”
of protection to create a secure perimeter around the executive mansion.
But it was a counterassault agent patrolling the interior – an agent
who was never supposed to come face-to-face with a would-be fence jumper
– who eventually subdued Gonzalez.
The first apparent failure came at the North Gate, where a plainclothes
surveillance team posted outside the gate failed to notice Gonzalez
clambering over the eight-foot fence.
Then, in quick succession, a guard booth officer, SWAT team, and K-9 unit all failed to respond.
According to the Associated Press,
agents decided to hold their fire when they (incorrectly) assessed that
Gonzalez wasn’t carrying weapons, nor was he wearing clothing that
could easily conceal explosives.
They allowed Gonzales to dart into the White House, which had been vacated by the first family just minutes before.
4. Why didn’t they release the dogs?
The K-9 unit, a team of Belgian Malinois dogs trained to attack intruders, was also not deployed.
Sources say officers were afraid the dogs would attack the officers pursuing Gonzalez instead of the intruder himself.
5. Why wasn’t the door secured?
Gonzales didn’t have to force the front door or pick the lock. It wasn't locked.
Secret Service agents
generally wait for notice of an intruder to lock the front door – but
the officer guarding the entrance on September 19 wasn’t aware of a
fence jumper until he was almost upon her.
Gonzales dashed past her and ran past the entrance to the first family’s
private quarters and into the ceremonial East Room on the first floor.
6. Why is the Secret Service taking direction from hospitality staff?
According to the Washington Post’s Carol Leonnig, someone had apparently
muted a “crash box” alarm designed to alert officers of intruders – at
the behest of the usher’s office.
Apparently, the alarm frequently went off without provocation,
disturbing the staff. Even so, some lawmakers are chiding the agency for
disabling the crash box “to appease superficial concerns of White House
ushers.”
7. How did the President actually react?
In public, President Obama appeared calm, saying that the Secret Service
“does a great job." But previous security breaches have reportedly left
the president and first lady fuming.
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