Review: Secret Service needs outside leader, more agents

An independent review of the Secret Service is recommending an overhaul of training and hiring programs and a new director from outside the agency after a series of embarrassing security breaches.

“The Secret Service itself must commit to change,” Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said Thursday in a statement, after receiving the panel’s recommendations.

{mosads}“But the Secret Service cannot, by itself, make many of the fundamental changes recommended by the panel,” he continued. “They also require engaged, sustained oversight by me and other leaders of this Department, to enforce change and ensure that the Secret Service has and utilizes what it needs to get the job done.”

Johnson convened the panel that included former White House and Justice Department officials to make recommendations to overhaul the Secret Service after a man leapt over the perimeter fence and ran into the White House with a knife.

The breach topped a slew of other incidents that became public, damaging the Secret Service’s reputation and leading to the resignation of Director Julia Pierson.  

Johnson released a summary of the panel’s findings Thursday. The report calls for addressing persistent structural and cultural problems within the Service.

Former Secret Service agent Joseph Clancy replaced Pierson as acting director until a new leader is appointed. But the report asks that a new director must come from outside the organization.

“Only a director from outside the service, removed from organizational traditions and personal relationships, will be able to do the honest top-to-bottom reassessment this will require,” the report says. “The new leader will need to help the Secret Service learn to improve itself by listening to the outside.”

It also calls for more agents, asserting that those protecting the White House “work an unsustainable number of hours.” The report urges the Service to more effectively predict its needs and boost hiring instead of pushing current officers to work overtime.

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.

Reps. Jason Chaffetz (R – Utah) and Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), who will be the two top members of the House Oversight Committee in the next Congress, said in a joint statement that they will open a bipartisan investigation in January “that will allow lawmakers to further examine some of the matters highlighted in this report.”


“A serious and robust investigation must include cooperation on both sides of aisle in order to root out systemic problems and implement proper reforms,” the pair said in an emailed statement.