A bi-partisan congressional committee has been studying the continued security breaches and systemic problems at the Secret Service. The committee believes the agency is disfunctional and in crisis and that something needs to be done about it immediately.
A bi-partisan committee in the United States Congress will release a report on Thursday that finds the once proud United States Secret Service to be what they term, “an agency in crisis.” The committee has studied the effectiveness of the agency as well as the behavior of it agents covering the past 2 years or so and no one is all that impressed.
The details of the report are shocking, according to The Washington Post. Some of the security lapses that have never been made public include a man who pretended to be a member of Congress and just strolled unchecked backstage while President Obama was making a speech at an awards dinner. In another incident, the president was making another speech and a woman just walked past the Secret Service agents and got backstage and in extremely close proximity to the president.
Only a month or so after that situation, two people just walked by the Secret Service agents at the White House and just began wandering around the grounds. There were many of these stories that had never been disclosed before that were brought up to the committee. The committee has found that it has become an endemic nightmare within the agency and proof is readily at hand with countless security lapses being presented.
The report includes details of a shooting at the White House in 2011 as well as a situation where a man with a long and public criminal record was actually able to get into an elevator with President Obama. The agency, they conclude, is understaffed and the new director who promised reform has not been successful with regard to his boast.
The committee concluded that “the agency’s recent public failures are not a series of isolated events, but the product of an insular culture that has historically been resistant to change…”
The committee also cited that the agency has been under budgeted and is horribly mismanaged. In addition, morale is almost non-existent and the hiring process is inept at best. The situation could get even worse, the committee declared, if the Secret Service can’t adequately protect those party candidates who are running for president this year and next.
