After a series of security breaches, Secret Service director Julia Pierson resigned yesterday. Bryce Covert doesn’t fault Pierson:
This is the first year since 2010 that the agency isn’t operating with a budget below what it requested. And since that year, personnel levels have seen a severe decline. In her testimony before Congress, Pierson said that the agency’s current 550 employees is below “optimal level.”
The understaffing, for which Pierson was not responsible, could have played a significant role in the breach that led to her losing her position. Former secret service agents told the Washington Post that the incident may have been related to the severe staffing shortage in the division responsible for securing the White House. It’s gotten so bad that the agency has had to fly agents in from around the country, who are less familiar with the grounds and response plans.
Ron Fournier mostly blames the state of the Secret Service on the decision “fold it into the fledgling monstrosity that would come to be known as the Homeland Security Department”:
Secret Service personnel, particularly those in uniform, are often paid less today than law-enforcement officials in other agencies. More than the money, the agency’s declining reputation in the law-enforcement community—a trend that goes back to 2003—has hurt morale and recruitment. Also diminished are efforts to develop the agency’s “brand,” the little-known marketing efforts that supported books and movies and other pop-culture references to the Secret Service, which in turn made the presidential detail an iconic, aspirational profession.
People used to worry that the Secret Service had too much independence, that its agents and leaders were bureaucratic cowboys who answered to almost nobody. There was something to those concerns, but at least presidential security wasn’t a laughing matter.
Ed Morrissey agrees:
Fournier called the reorganization in 2003 a “Bush-era mistake,” which made some conservatives bristle, but that’s accurate. George W. Bush could have, and should have, resisted the creation of DHS entirely. Many conservatives, myself among them, opposed the creation of even more bureaucratic overhead in this consolidation as well as the later consolidation of intelligence agencies into the [Director of National Intelligence].
Ambinder recommends some reforms. Among them:
Employees of the Secret Service should never, ever face repercussions for bringing to the attention of their superiors any observation, fact or suggestion that challenges received wisdom about how we protect people. It seems inconceivable that anyone would be afraid to speak their minds, especially about security problems affecting the president or his family. But recent events, including the decision of some employees to speak directly to Congress and to the press, are plain proof that this stigma exists within the Secret Service. Every manager must be held responsible for ensuring that every direct report feels empowered to speak out.
Jelani Cobb examines the big picture:
The Secret Service that was antsy about the prospect of a newly inaugurated Obama walking along Pennsylvania Avenue in January, 2009, is, as Voxreported, handling three times the number of death threats that attended other Presidencies. It is doing so on a severely limited budget. Speaking before a House inquiry into the security lapses, Pierson remarked that the budget sequester has left the Service nearly five hundred and fifty people short of their optimum number of personnel. This at a time when the factions we need to be most concerned with are driven not only by the President’s identity but by American foreign policy and the dictates of the interminable war on terror. What signal does Secret Service ineptitude send to foreign adversaries?
And Cillizza considers why stories about the secret service resonate:
[T]he creeping question in most Americans’ minds that is raised by all of this: If people with, at best, uncertain intentions can get that close to the president of the United States, what does that mean for my safety and the safety of my family? It’s a conversation — or at least a strain of thinking — that has been active in the American consciousness since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. That’s when the idea of all the horrible things we saw happening in far off places weren’t so far off after all hit home. It fostered a sense of vulnerability that we had previously not known for decades — if ever.
(Photo: Secret Service Director Julia Pierson. By Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.)
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