We could have a good laugh when the head of President Obama’s personal security had to resign after failures and failed cover-ups – but is the UK any better? asked Mark Rowe in the November print issue of Professional Security.
In March 2013 President Obama and Vice-President Joe Biden stood beside Julia Pierson as she was sworn in at the Oval Office as the first woman director of the US Secret Service agency. Despite the name, it’s not secret – quite the opposite; it’s very public as it secures the president and entourage whether bodily or by closing roads ahead of the president (to the inconvenience and annoyance of Washington residents). So it was embarrassing for Obama, besides America generally, when the president accepted Pierson’s resignation on October 1. Only days earlier, Obama – or at least through his press secretary Josh Earnest – was expressing his confidence in the service, and its leader. This was during a review and after more fences went up around the White House, after a war veteran jumped the perimeter.
As Darrell Issa put it, as chairman of Oversight and Government Reform Full Committee in the US House of Representatives, on September 19, Omar Gonzalez jumped the North Fence, ran across about 70 yards of White House lawn, up the steps of the North Portico and into the front door. “He was armed with a three-inch serrated knife. He entered through an unlocked door, passed the staircase to the Presidential residence, and into the East Room of the White House. Secret Service officers only subdued him after he was inside the White House. An intruder walked in the front door of the White House. That is amazing – and unacceptable.” At first the service made out that they had done well by showing restraint; Issa described it as a ‘security failure’ as the White House is supposed to be one of the most secure sites on earth. Where were the dogs? Why was the door not locked?!
It then turned out that in September Obama on a visit to Atlanta found himself in a lift with a security guard who was carrying a gun – against protocol – and who had to be told not to take pictures with his phone of the president. It also turned out that guard hadn’t been screened and had a criminal record. What made it worse was that Obama found out through the media. In other scandals, in 2011 someone fired a semi-automatic rifle (in Darrell Issa’s words, ‘sprayed bullets’) and broke a White House window. Again, the Obamas – Mrs Michelle Obama in this case – didn’t find out from the Secret Service. And just to add sex – in 2012 agents ahead of Obama’s visit to Colombia used prostitutes – and drink; agents got drunk in the Netherlands in March.
Leaving aside whether Obama’s rivals are making hay at his expense – Issa is a Republican – what has caused the service’s ‘history of misbehaviour and security failures’ as Issa put it? He offered several reasons: procedures, insufficient training, personnel shortages, or low morale. As Issa put it, Americans face real danger as they serve abroad. The US embassy in Libya was attacked and the ambassador killed on the 11th anniversary of 9-11; the resulting official review was featured in the February 2013 issue of Professional Security. And putting the official view, Josh Earnest made the point that thousands tour the White House daily; hundreds work there. Hence what Earnest called ‘competing interests’ besides the protection of the building and America’s ‘first family’. Of 44 presidents, four have been shot dead and many others shot at. Britain by comparison has one assassinated prime minister and no monarchs (though one beheaded by his own people). Oddly, responding to this American embarrassment, some in the UK made light of Britain’s long and inglorious record of security breaches: the intruder Michael Fagan in the Queen’s bedroom at Buckingham Palace in 1982; in 2004 a man in a Batman costume put up a Fathers 4 Justice banner on the balcony of the palace, to make a protest about parental rights – F4J has also protested inside parliament and art galleries; and Aaron Barschak a self-titled ‘comedy terrorist’, made it into Prince William’s 21st birthday party at Windsor Castle, dressed as Osama bin Laden, and (as Barschak has recalled) kissed the prince on both cheeks. The mainstream media from time to time have also chosen to make headlines out of claims of finding lapses in security: for instance in 2005 The Sun drove a van with a fake bomb into Windsor Castle. As Professional Security reported at the time from the official report into the breach, Barschak triggered alarms and was on CCTV, but was ignored.
