Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) on Sunday said the Secret Service needs quicker information analysis and sharing to better protect the first family.
{mosads}“There’s no greater responsibility besides the commander in chief and his family,” she said Sunday on “CNN Newsroom.” “I think that every incident that infringes upon that safety and security should be known by the director in less than 24 hours.”
Jackson Lee proposed that the Secret Service use social media to speed its reaction time to threats.
“This is a technological society where you can tweet at the director,” she said. “You can email, text or give him an old-fashioned phone call with that information. Let’s just change procedures.”
Jackson Lee’s remarks follow the latest incident to raise questions about the agency.
Details emerged last week about an alleged drunken-driving accident earlier this month. Two officers reportedly drove a government vehicle into a White House barricade on March 4 and might have disrupted a bomb investigation. The officers had attended a colleague’s retirement party eight blocks away.
A police explosives unit later determined the suspicious package was a book.
Such confusion over the details, Jackson Lee added, hinders Secret Service Director Joseph Clancy’s job protecting President Obama and his family.
“The bad news is that it took Director Clancy four or five days to get this information as well as the White House,” Jackson Lee said. “That is absolutely unacceptable. As members of Congress we find it disturbing.”
Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) on Sunday said the agency should fire more senior officials over the drunken-driving fiasco.
“I am extremely upset about it, and it’s extremely frustrating to see an agency that’s supposed to be the No. 1 elite protective agency in the world, protecting the most important person in the world, the most powerful person in the world, to operate like this,” he said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”