OPINION:
Having written two books on the Secret Service and having broken the story of agents hiring prostitutes in Cartagena, I can say that the root of the Secret Service’s problems goes back more than a decade when I started writing about the agency and its rotten, “we make do with less” culture.
That malignant culture leads to cover-ups, lack of resources and agents, laxness, corner-cutting, retaliation for pointing out deficiencies, and brazen lying by one USSS director after another.
This culture led to then-Secret Service Director Julia Pierson issuing statements saying that on Sept. 19, 2014, Omar J. Gonzalez, who jumped the White House fence, had been quickly detained at the door of the White House and that a search had determined that he was unarmed.
In fact, Ms. Pierson knew that Mr. Gonzalez was armed with a knife and managed to penetrate the White House from one end to the other.
When asked by her successor as director, Joseph Clancy, at a House Judiciary Committee hearing whether anyone would be held accountable for making false statements to the press about Mr. Gonzalez’s intrusion when the Secret Service knew immediately that Mr. Gonzalez had penetrated the White House and was armed with a knife, Mr. Clancy never batted an eye when he insisted that the Secret Service did not intentionally issue the false information that Mr. Gonzales was stopped at the White House door and was unarmed.
Yet when asked how he knew the lies were not intentional, Mr. Clancy admitted he had no idea how or why the false statements were made.
The agency’s most recent director, Kimberly Cheatle, followed in that tradition. When asked at a hearing of the House Oversight and Accountability why agents were not positioned on the sloping roof where former President Donald Trump’s would-be assassin was able to shoot him, Ms. Cheatle issued the outrageous falsehood that the roof’s slope made it too dangerous. Meanwhile, Secret Service counter-snipers were stationed on nearby roofs with a greater slope.
At the same time that the agency’s leaders encourage a corrupt atmosphere, the Secret Service scrimps on the most basic technology, and agents who call attention to that deficiency and try to counter the agency’s “we make do with less” culture are not promoted.
This myopic cultural mindset that condones corner-cutting and laxness dates back to at least 2005 when the agency was folded into the Department of Homeland Security. The mindless attitude grew stronger over the years as inbred leaders ran the agency and competed for funds with 21 other national security agencies within DHS.
The Secret Service’s budget of $3.3 billion is equal to the cost of one Stealth bomber, and more than half of that goes to investigating financial crimes and counterfeiting. In addition to the president and vice president and their families, the Secret Service protects former presidents, presidential candidates, a dozen White House staff members, visiting foreign heads of state, and nominating conventions and inaugurations, which are known as national security events.
As the Secret Service takes on even more duties, the agency’s sleep-deprived agents often work almost around the clock. Given that an assassination nullifies democracy, doubling the agency’s budget on an emergency basis would be money well spent. The U.S. stations more than 100,000 troops in Europe alone. Yet we can’t afford more than the Secret Service’s 3,200 agents to protect our democracy.
After a string of previous Secret Service failures and the revelation that agents hired prostitutes in Cartagena when President Obama was to visit, an all-star panel appointed by DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson released a devastating report in 2014 that concluded that the Secret Service is “starved for leadership that rewards innovation and excellence and demands accountability.”
As I wrote in “The First Family Detail,” the panel members interviewed 50 current or former Secret Service agents and officials. They were amazed that, with a few exceptions from upper Secret Service management, current Secret Service officials candidly condemned current agency practices as unsafe.
The panel interviewed me and adopted the conclusion in my Secret Service books that only a strong new director from outside the agency, removed from organizational traditions and personal relationships, would be able to do the “honest top-to-bottom reassessment this will require” to change the agency’s culture.
As we saw when agents sprang into action to shield Mr. Trump as shots rang out, Secret Service agents are brave and dedicated. They will take a bullet for protection.
However, as we saw with Director Cheatle’s claim that the sloping roof was too dangerous to position agents on, Secret Service directors are skilled at making fanciful excuses for the agency’s failings.
Only a complete overhaul of the agency’s culture and top management by a director from outside the agency removed from its cultural mindset will transform its “we make do with less” attitude and uproot the Secret Service bureaucrats who foster it and resist change. It should not take another tragedy to turn the Secret Service back into the elite agency its brave agents and America deserve.
• Ronald Kessler, a former Washington Post and Wall Street Journal investigative reporter, is the New York Times bestselling author of “In the President’s Secret Service: Behind the Scenes with Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents They Protect” and “The First Family Detail: Secret Service Agents Reveal the Hidden Lines of the Presidents.”
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