Secret Service in disarray, fueling questions over Obama's safety
Source: Reuters
When Secret Service officer Timothy McCarthy took a bullet to protect Ronald Reagan in a 1981 assassination attempt and agent Jerry Parr shoved the president into a limousine, their quick reflexes projected a Hollywood-style image of invincibility around the agency.
Fast-forward to today: the 149-year-old Secret Service is struggling to emerge from a succession of scandals that have tarnished that iconic reputation, forced the abrupt resignation of its director and raised questions about its ability to fulfill its most critical duty: protecting President Barack Obama and his family.
Sources inside and outside the administration say many problems such as low morale, a leadership crisis and a culture of covering up mistakes can be traced back 11 years to when the Secret Service was pulled out of the Treasury Department and absorbed into the sprawling new Department of Homeland Security, where it had to compete for turf and money.
Even as the agency's workload has mushroomed, its manpower levels stagnated and its funding increases have failed to keep pace with growth in overall federal spending in the past decade, a Reuters examination of Secret Service budget data shows.
Read more: http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/10/03/usa-whitehouse-security-idINKCN0HS21A20141003
The Secret Service needs to be placed back into the Treasury Department.
sharp_stick
(14,400 posts)should be split up, conglomerating all of those groups into one behemoth has proven to be a colossal fuckup from day one.
KeepItReal
(7,769 posts)The Secret Service and Coast Guard(?!?!), especially, have no business being in DHS
George II
(67,782 posts)awoke_in_2003
(34,582 posts)the job of the SS is presidential security, not "Homeland" (god, I loathe that word)
Hekate
(90,565 posts)underthematrix
(5,811 posts)to fix the problem. i also trust Joe Clancy (Interim SS Dir) who used to head the President's Protectice Service detail. we used to see him with the President all the time. He's great. I also liked the First Lady's old body man, fine very tall white dude. I haven't seen him since PBO's re-election. I hope he comes back.
I think they need to do a very comprehensive detailed investigation of all incidents that have occurred from 2009 until present.
KeepItReal
(7,769 posts)Secret Service Director Julia Pierson told the Congressional Oversight committee Tuesday that the agency was hundreds of employees short of its optimal level due to the automatic budget cuts known as sequestration.
Across the organization, the Secret Service is down 550 personnel, Pierson said, later adding, I do see the difficulty in trying to operate a critical federal agency in times of fiscal constraint.
Rep. Mark Meadows likewise grilled Pierson, saying that the agencys own budget request called for reducing the number of agency staff by hundreds.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/09/30/secret-service-give-us-more-money.html
The Secret Service's budget needs to be exempted to the austerity/sequester budget crap.
freshwest
(53,661 posts)Major Hogwash
(17,656 posts)This is the salient point to make!!
It was the entire Republican party slashing agencies' budgets!!
Cha
(296,881 posts)NBachers
(17,083 posts)whereisjustice
(2,941 posts)to protect the Fatherland. Along with TSA and our new citizen surveillance center in Utah we just keep piling shit on top of shit, hoping to cover up the smell.
mopinko
(70,023 posts)tinfoil not needed, imho, to see this, and put 2 and 2 together.
we know the agency sure hell isnt doing what it is tasked to do.
and we know that the bushies ALWAYS got a pass by saying, oops. somebody made a boo boo.
time to stop accepting stupidity and incompetence as cover stories.
BumRushDaShow
(128,527 posts)That department needs to be dismantled and the agencies put back to where they were.
Cooley Hurd
(26,877 posts)...a fellow who took his job seriously:
President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, during a motorcade through the city, en route to a luncheon at the Dallas Trade Mart. The President and Mrs. Kennedy were riding in an open limousine containing three rows of seats. The Kennedys were in the rear seat of the car, the Governor of Texas, John Connally and his wife, Nellie Connally, were in the middle row, and Secret Service agent William Greer was driving and the president's bodyguard, Roy Kellerman, was also in the front seat.
Clint Hill jumping on the presidential limousine, as captured on the Zapruder film.
Hill was riding in the car immediately behind the presidential limousine. As soon as the shooting began, Hill jumped out and began running to overtake the moving car in front of him. He climbed from the rear bumper, crawling over the trunk to the back seat where the President and First Lady were located.
Hill grabbed a small handrail on the left rear of the trunk, normally used by bodyguards to stabilize themselves while standing on small platforms on the rear bumper. According to the Warren Commission's findings, there were no bodyguards stationed on the bumper that day because
The notion that the President's instructions in Tampa jeopardized his security in Dallas has since been denied by Hill and other agents. Regardless of Kennedy's statement, photos taken of the motorcade along earlier segments of the route show Hill riding on the step at the back of the car.
As an alternate explanation, fellow agent Gerald Blaine cites the location of the shooting:
"We were going into a freeway, and that's where you take the speeds up to 60 and 70 miles an hour. So we would not have had any agents there anyway".
Hill grabbed the handrail less than two seconds after the fatal shot to the President. The driver then accelerated, causing the car to slip away from Hill, who was in the midst of trying to leap onto it. He succeeded in regaining his footing and jumped onto the back of the quickly accelerating vehicle.
As he got on, Mrs. Kennedy, apparently in shock, was crawling onto the flat rear trunk of the moving limousine. Hill later told the Warren Commission that he thought Mrs. Kennedy was reaching for a piece of the President's skull which had been blown off. He crawled to her and guided the First Lady back into her seat. Once back in the car, Hill placed his body above the President and Mrs. Kennedy. Meanwhile, in the folding jump seats directly in front of them, Mrs. Connally had pulled her wounded husband, Governor John Connally, to a prone position on her lap.
Agent Kellerman, in the front seat of the car, gave orders over the car's two-way radio to the lead vehicle in the procession "to the nearest hospital, quick!" Hill was shouting as loudly as he could "To the hospital, to the hospital!" En route to the hospital, Hill flashed a "thumbs-down" signal and shook his head from side to side at the agents in the follow-up car, signaling the graveness of the President's condition.
The limousine then rapidly exited Dealey Plaza and sped to Parkland Memorial Hospital, only minutes away, followed by other vehicles in the motorcade. As the car moved at high speed to the hospital, Hill maintained his position shielding the couple with his body, and was looking down at the President. Agent Hill later testified:
"Mrs. Kennedy was completely covered with blood. There was so much blood you could not tell if there had been any other wound or not, except for the one large gaping wound in the right rear portion of the head".
Although the Secret Service was shocked at its failure to protect the life of President Kennedy, virtually everyone agreed that Clint Hill's rapid and brave actions had been without blemish. He was honored at a ceremony in Washington just days after the funeral of John F. Kennedy. Mrs. Kennedy, despite being in deep mourning, made an appearance at the event to thank him in person.
After the assassination
Hill remained assigned to Mrs. Kennedy and the children until after the 1964 presidential election. He then was assigned to President Lyndon B. Johnson at the White House. In 1967, when Johnson was still in office, Hill became the Special Agent in Charge (SAIC) of Presidential protection. When Richard Nixon came into office, Hill moved over to SAIC of protection of Vice President Spiro Agnew. Finally, Hill was assigned to headquarters as the Assistant Director of the Secret Service for all protection. He retired in 1975.
In a 1975 interview with Mike Wallace, Hill tearfully surmised that if he had reached the vehicle a second earlier, he would have been able to take the third shot to his own body, and felt a great deal of regret for not having been able to reach there in time.
In a BBC Today interview, broadcast in December 2010, Hill recalled the assassination and his first visit to Dallas in 1990 since the events of 1963, during which he surveyed the scene of the shooting. Asked whether he thought that the President's life might have been saved if things had been done differently, Hill replied that "He had all the advantages that day. We had none. And it was a very easy job to accomplish because of the way everything was laid out."
In April 2012, the book Mrs. Kennedy and Me was published, in which Hill looks back at his career and describes his working relationship with Jacqueline Kennedy.
As of 2012, Hill was reported to have lived in Alexandria, Virginia, for "many years".
merrily
(45,251 posts)I might buy some of these excuses. But no job they have is more important than protecting the POTUS.
Also, understaffing has nothing to do with how many checkpoints the guy who ran into the White House the other day passed while being ignored by a fully staffed White House detail. Or dismissing bullets as auto backfire. Or with supposedly not being able to release dogs for fear they'd attack agents. (They can't train them to menace without attacking until a second command?)
Nothing to do with keeping secrets from the POTUS. Or with the prostitutes, etc.
IOW, I'm not buying it.
Cha
(296,881 posts)lacking in man/woman power but in the decisions of those who were responsible for them.
One of the bad decisions..
"This week, as the president accepted agency head Julia Pierson's resignation, White House officials suggested the breaking point was not that a man had jumped a fence and entered the White House last month, but that Pierson had withheld from Obama another breach: an armed security contractor had managed to ride in an elevator with the president"
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-obama-secret-service-20141004-story.html#page=1
And, the drunken display of the elite Secret Services Counter Assault Team in The Netherlands..
Secret Service agents sent home from Netherlands were warned to avoid trouble
Three Secret Service agents responsible for protecting President Obama in Amsterdam this week were sent home and put on administrative leave Sunday after going out for a night of drinking, according to three people familiar with the incident. One of the agents was found drunk and passed out in a hotel hallway, the people said.
The hotel staff alerted the U.S. Embassy in the Netherlands after finding the unconscious agent Sunday morning, a day before Obama arrived in the country, according to two of the people. The embassy then alerted Secret Service managers on the presidential trip, which included the agencys director, Julia Pierson.
More..
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/secret-service-agents-on-obama-detail-sent-home-from-netherlands-after-night-of-drinking/2014/03/26/86d1a8a6-b4e6-11e3-8020-b2d790b3c9e1_story.html
Unreal. Especially in light of what was to come.. How hard is it to not get drunk and do your job? Especially this life and death kind of job?
heaven05
(18,124 posts)any excuse is better than none.
JohnnyRingo
(18,619 posts)I haven't heard too many consider the problem until late, but from what I understand, many experienced agents leave to pursue higher paying jobs befitting their exclusive training (which we paid for).
Isn't the Secret Service important enough to pay top dollar for top talent and loyalty? That an agent would leave to work for a corporate entity is another fault in capitalism. I wouldn't be surprised if we discover that GOP spending cuts is purposely weakening the protection given to the First Family so CEOs can employ tax cuts that afford them the best government trained security on the planet.
TomCADem
(17,382 posts)Talk about a bone headed analysis.
freshwest
(53,661 posts)Major Hogwash
(17,656 posts)Just like they cut the budget for protection of our foreign embassies!
It's another case of Benghazi!!!
The Republicans are the ones who are weak on defense issues!!!!!!!!!!
Shemp Howard
(889 posts)Think about it for a moment. The Secret Service let a man they didn't know - a man armed with a gun - in the same elevator with the President. In the same elevator! That almost defies belief!
Do you really think that if the Secret Service somehow had more money, that wouldn't have happened?
This is primarily not a funding problem. To go down that road is to ignore the immediate problem, and that might well have tragic consequences.
The immediate problem is one of competency, and I don't mean just at the Director level. I also mean at the level of the field supervisors, and of the agents themselves.
No unknown person should be permitted to be that close to the President! I don't care how tired or overworked the agents are.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/armed-former-convict-was-on-elevator-with-obama-in-atlanta/2014/09/30/76d7da24-48e3-11e4-891d-713f052086a0_story.html
Major Hogwash
(17,656 posts)I'll take her sworn testimony before a Congressional committee over an anonymous person's opinion on the internet any day!!
I said, "Good day, sir!"
Shemp Howard
(889 posts)...to keep an unknown man out of the same elevator as the President?
The answer is one.
I do not doubt for a second that the Secret Service is stretched thin because of budget cuts. But please do not let that blind you to the gross incompetency exhibited by the President's protective detail.
Turborama
(22,109 posts)It's clear there are both macro AND micro problems with the SS that need solving.
Aerows
(39,961 posts)for that response. You are absolutely right there are both big problems and small problems.
ladjf
(17,320 posts)grasswire
(50,130 posts)I have assumed that the lapses were meant as warnings to Obama; warnings that he could be allowed to be harmed at their will.
Very disturbing.
Cha
(296,881 posts)Homeland Security ✔ @DHSgov
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Today Secretary Johnson welcomed Joseph Clancy back to the @SecretService as Acting Director http://go.usa.gov/w3Z5
11:41 AM - 6 Oct 2014 45 Retweets 30 favorites
http://theobamadiary.com/2014/10/06/this-is-why-voting-matters/