THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: Secret Service manager put on leave during probe of alleged assault.
Search Results
NO WONDER THE SECRET SERVICE AND DEA DRIVE THOSE HUGE SUV’S: CA Dem Congresswoman Claims Climate Change Will Turn Women Into Prostitutes.
GOVERNMENT AS CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE: Secret Service erased tapes of latest White House incident. A fish rots from the head.
THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: Drunk Secret Service agents disrupted bomb investigation at White House.
For all the attention the Obama Administration has paid to the Ferguson Police Department, they don’t seem to be doing a very good job with the law enforcement agencies that are actually their responsibility.
JIM TREACHER: Secret Service Agents Party Too Hard, Crash Car Into White House Barricade. “Yep. That’s how it works. Five years ago, the DC Metro PD covered for the State Dept. by issuing me an utterly fraudulent jaywalking ticket. A week ago, they covered for these Secret Service guys by letting them go home and sober up. When federal employees run amok and break the law, they can always count on the DC cops to help them out.”
THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: Secret Service being investigated for drunk-driving incident, report says. “One of the officers involved in the alleged incident is a high-ranking member of President Obama’s security detail, according to the Post. . . . Officers allegedly witnessed the incident last Wednesday and wanted to arrest the agents involved. But they were told by a superior to let them go.”
YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER FENCE: Review: Secret Service needs outside leader, more agents.
The report makes a number of other recommendations, chiefly ensuring that the safety of the president and others remains the agency’s sole priority. It calls for the department to do more to hold officers accountable and improve training.
The report also lauds the value of the fence surrounding the White House as a way to deter “frivolous threats” and help delay would-be intruders.
The officials don’t provide specific recommendations for a new fence, but say that the fencing must be taller, free of horizontal bars that make climbing easier, and curved at the top to thwart potential climbers.
Good thing we had a panel of experts to determine that.
BECAUSE THEY’RE PROTECTORS OF THE POWERFUL, THE CAPITOL POLICE AND SECRET SERVICE GOT LESS BLOWBACK FOR THIS SHOOTING OF AN UNARMED BLACK WOMAN: How Miriam Carey’s U-turn at a White House checkpoint led to her death.
ANOTHER POST-ELECTION DISCLOSURE: Secret Service discloses 40 barrier-jumping incidents. “There were more than twice as many incidents involving White House complex fence- and barrier-jumping over the last five years than the U.S. Secret Service previously publicly disclosed, although the vast majority of them involved breaches of lower barriers than the main fence.”
MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT: Secret Service Agents Pay a Visit to Anti-Obama Artist Sabo — and the Entire Exchange Is Seemingly Captured on Video. Sabo, however, seems un-cowed:
“I realize we have a f***head in the White House and the Constitution no longer means s**t, but as far as I’m concerned we still have the First Amendment, correct?” he said, sitting behind a desk featuring Obama’s face painted on toilet seat covers.
Yes, we do. And some people are pretty unhappy about that.
THE HILL: Report: Secret Service prostitution investigator resigns after own incident.
The investigator who led the internal inquiry into the 2012 Secret Service prostitution scandal resigned in August after he was implicated in his own incident involving a prostitute, according to a report from the New York Times.
Local law enforcement in Florida reportedly saw David Nieland, the investigator, going in and out of a building they were surveilling as part of a prostitution investigation. The prostitute later identified Nieland as a client.
Nieland said that the allegations were untrue in a statement to the Times. As of Tuesday, he had not been charged in connection with the incident.
Nieland is said to have resigned after he refused to answer questions from the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general’s office. DHS is the supervising agency of the Secret Service.
Nieland was the lead investigator examining charges that several Secret Service agents used prostitutes while in Cartagena, Colombia in advance of a trip to the country by President Obama.
Nieland has said that he was asked to keep information out of his final report to protect the child of a Democratic donor, who was volunteering with the White House advance team on the trip. Some were suspicious that the volunteer had brought a prostitute back to his room.
He says that he was later suspended without pay for two weeks as retaliation. His supervisors have said it was because he circulated around his office images of a female intern’s feet.
So is he being smeared because he leaked? Was he chosen to investigate because he was smearable? Or is everybody at DHS seeing hookers? None of these possibilities look good.
MORE SECRET SERVICE PROBLEMS: Nashville Police Chief Drops Major Allegation About Secret Service in Letter to House Oversight Committee.
The resident refused to let officers enter his home or follow orders to come outside . He was heard shouting at officers, “show me your warrant.”
In a letter to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Anderson claimed that a Secret Service agent asked a police sergeant to “wave a piece of paper” in order to “dupe” the suspect into thinking officers had a warrant.
Officers with the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department did not comply with the request, according to the police chief. Police officers ultimately determined that Secret Service agents had no legal basis to enter the resident’s home and the suspect didn’t actually threaten anyone. Fortunately, the situation was resolved without incident and law enforcement left.
In a past letter to then-Secret Service Director Julia Pierson and Assistant Director A.T. Smith, Anderson explained that the incident could have “escalated into a serious and/or embarrassing situation for both of our agencies” if MNPD officers complied with the Secret Service “directive.”
The police chief says he later received a “condescending and dismissive” call from Smith.
I’ve been writing about Secret Service management problems since 2002, but somehow nothing gets done. I suppose that’s why they’re condescending and dismissive — because they can be.
WELL, I’VE BEEN NOTING SECRET SERVICE MANAGEMENT PROBLEMS SINCE 2002: Exclusive: German tourists breached White House security in 2008.
RUNNING A TRUST DEFICIT: My USA Today column for today is on the Secret Service and the CDC.
LONG ON POLITICS, SHORT ON TRUST: My USA Today column is about the Secret Service and the CDC.
AMERICANS SHORT ON REASONS TO TRUST: “There’s a connection between the Secret Service’s Colombian hooker scandal and Americans’ increased worry about Ebola. Both have to do with trust,” as I write in my latest USA Today column.
NEW YORK OBSERVER: Sex, Lies, and . . . White House Counsel; Ruemmler Blunders Into Secret Service Mess: White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler lands on the short list for AG but USSS disaster might undo her ambitions. “A dozen Secret Service Agents and military personnel were fired over ‘Hookergate.’ But a young member of the advance team from the White House itself, Mr. Jonathan Dach, was protected by Ms. Ruemmler’s “investigation.” Just so happens that his father, Leslie Dach, was a significant donor to Mr. Obama’s re-election campaign, and a key figure in Michelle Obama’s ‘Let’s Move’ wellness campaign.”
YOU DON’T ASK QUESTIONS WHEN YOU DON’T WANT TO HEAR THE ANSWERS: Secret Service never questioned agent about prostitution scandal. “Secret Service investigators never formally questioned a senior agent whom co-workers say was implicated in a Colombian prostitution scandal that ensnared a dozen other agents.”
BIGGEST CASUALTY OF JULIA PIERSON’S RESIGNATION FROM THE SECRET SERVICE? Hillary — or, rather, Hillary’s narrative.
Remember, after the last wave of Secret Service scandals — involving drinking and prostitution — Pierson was chosen to head the Secret Service because, basically, she was a woman. There were a lot of men making men-type screwups, and a nice, frumpy woman would bring them into line and fix things.
Well, that’s basically the narrative Hillary’s people have been preparing for 2016. Oops.
Related: “It’s as if they thought having a female director would fix — image-fix — their women-related problems. There’s more to the Secret Service than just making it seem as if someone is stopping them from whoring. Did she even succeed at that? Or were we just supposed to feel better about it?”
Plus, from the comments:
1. The bad old SS was a male oriented, competent, hard drinking male club (think Clint Eastwood in “Line of Fire”) that covered up the parties and off duty issues
2. The bad new SS is a PC oriented incompetent club that covers up on duty incompetence
The SS at the CDC violated a number of rules and she directly ordered a cover-up.
I can guess which one a Hillary Administration would look like.
RICHARD FERNANDEZ: The House Of The Usher.
The Secret Service ‘failed’ president Obama just as the intelligence agencies ‘failed’ to warn him about ISIS. The data explosion has the downside of flooding us with alarms. On any given day a thousand indicators cross a certain threshold. Then they cry “wolf” but not all of them are true, urgent cries for help. Still one of them — Murphy guarantees it — eventually may well be.
The way bureaucracies deal with this problem is to put a man in loop to check if the wolf is there. The amount of information that the US military processes is staggering. The news watching public could be forgiven for thinking that the administration’s drone warfare requires nothing more than a hi-tech model airplane, a satellite and a bunch of teenagers operating a glorified game console. In reality it requires 268 people to operate each drone.
Read the whole thing.
CAN ANYBODY PLAY THIS GAME? Secret Service didn’t file paperwork on Atlanta incident. “Agents became alarmed during Obama’s trip to Atlanta after discovering that a private security contractor working for the CDC with a criminal record had a gun within arms-length of the president, but superiors told them not to file ‘any paperwork’ or initiate an investigation, according to two sources familiar with the case. . . . The elevator case is another embarrassing blow to Secret Service leaders and exposes a breakdown in security protocols. One source called it a prime example of a pervasive ‘culture of cover-up’ at the agency.”
JUST A REMINDER, I WAS CALLING FOR ACTION ON SECRET SERVICE MANAGEMENT PROBLEMS BACK IN 2002: White House Intruder Got Farther Than First Reported, Official Says. “A man who jumped the White House fence this month made it far deeper into the president’s home than previously disclosed, overpowering a female Secret Service agent inside the North Portico entrance and running through the East Room before he was tackled, according to a congressional official familiar with the details of the incident. The man, Omar J. Gonzalez, was finally stopped as he tried to enter the Green Room, the official said. Earlier, Secret Service officials had said Mr. Gonzalez, 42, had only made it steps inside the North Portico after running through the front door.”
STUMBLING SEEMS TO BE ALL THEY DO LATELY: WaPo: Secret Service stumbled after gunman hit White House residence in 2011. “It took the Secret Service five days to realize that shots had hit the White House residence, a discovery that came about only because a housekeeper noticed broken glass and a chunk of cement on the floor.”
BYRON YORK: Something Is Terribly Wrong With The Secret Service.
Here at InstaPundit, I’ve been noting management problems with the Secret Service for over a decade. But the problems seem to be getting worse, not better.