How to make the President safe again

[mfcorey1]

Last edited Sun Oct 5, 2014, 01:20 PM - Edit history (1)

(CNN) -- It all comes down to this: 11 years later, the front door was unlocked.

When Oscar Gonzalez jumped the White House fence late last month, he should have been just another statistic. A mentally ill man who was doing what a handful of others do every year, get onto the White House lawn and find themselves tackled by guards or brought down by dogs or fired upon by snipers.

But this time it was different.
Jeffrey Robinson
Jeffrey Robinson

The President and first family weren't home, the snipers didn't shoot. It's still not clear where the dogs were or why there was no Uniformed Division officer at the North Portico door. But the door was unlocked and the reason why can be traced directly back to the beginning of the disintegration of protocols for what the Secret Service once did better than any other agency in the world: protect the principal.

Toward the end of the 1990s, there was turmoil in senior management, which saw new Secret Service directors come and go. There were also high-level retirements -- especially Presidential Protective Division agents who had lived through March 30, 1981, the assassination attempt on President Reagan. These were men and women who knew what it was to fail.

In the wake of that incident, the Secret Service had upped the ante with new plans and a revised agenda, which had included working in closer proximity to the President, increasing the intensity in the levels of protection and paying closer attention to the minutest details. They had also learned to deal better with the presidential staff, who are always looking to break the President loose from his shackles for the sake of the next great photo opportunity.

It worked for a while.

But shortly after 9/11--11 years ago, in 2003--George W. Bush made the colossal mistake of uprooting the Secret Service from its rightful home in the Department of the Treasury, where it had been since 1865, throwing a proud tradition out the window and dropping it into the hodgepodge mess that was, and still is, the Department of Homeland Security.

It was like yanking a great old oak tree up from the roots and shoving it into the ground somewhere else. The great oak slowly began to wither. What was once a quasi-independent agency was treated like just another bureaucracy that had to defend its turf and fight for every nickel against the rest of this new and increasingly dysfunctional family. Morale suffered and so did efficiency.

You saw it in 2003, when the Bush White House staff cooked up the highly dangerous and totally unnecessary publicity stunt of landing the President on an aircraft carrier in a fixed-wing plane. That scheme ran head-first into everything the Secret Service used to stand for. The President and the staff were doing this their way.
Joe Clancy, new Secret Service director Joe Clancy, new Secret Service director

The Secret Service is charged by Congress with protecting the life of the President; it is not his choice whether or how he is protected.

You saw it again in December 2008 at the Bush press conference in Baghdad, when an Iraqi journalist threw his shoe at the President. Bush ducked. The journalist threw his other shoe. And no agents appear anywhere near the President. In fact, the agent who suddenly showed up next to him does not grab the President and pull him away, he watches other men tackle the journalist.

By the time President Obama came along, the lack of proximity and intensity was startling. This goes beyond the phony signer at Nelson Mandela's funeral, agents with hookers at Cartagena or drunk agents at a hotel in Holland.
A deeper problem in the Secret Service?
Solution to the W.H. security debacle?
Report: Secret Service botched W.H. shooting

This is a couple of reality show wannabes getting into the White House for a formal reception, without an invitation. This is the President at the Martin Luther King "I Have A Dream" remembrance in 2013, standing alone and exposed in the middle of the Lincoln Memorial, in front of tens of thousands of people, and there isn't an agent within 30 feet of him.

This is the President working rope lines, with plenty of agents present, but none of them in very tight proximity, holding onto him, the way they did with Reagan. Nor are the agents intensely working the crowd -- "May I see your hands, please... hands... please show me your hands..." the way they did with Reagan.

This is the President speaking from a stage with 100 people behind him, and no agents right there to grab him if something happens, with no clear exit to get him out of there if something happens, because all those people behind him will panic and run for the same exit.

This is a man jumping the White House fence with a knife, and bullets in his car, after having been on the Secret Service's list of people already interviewed as a possible threat to the President. It's a man with a gun riding in an elevator with the President at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This is some crazy taking shots at the White House, and no one reporting it for days.

Secret Service director resigns

The Secret Service agents who protect this President are the best and brightest. They make unbelievable personal sacrifices to keep the President safe. And like him, they too have been let down. They've been let down by senior management. And they've been let down by time, because without a tradition of passing stories on to the next generation, memories fade and "the way it used to be" is eventually forgotten.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/02/opinion/robinson-secret-service-what-went-wrong/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

[Major Hogwash]

1. No doubt about it, the situation is appalling.

I remember when Clinton was running for re-election and how he struggled to shake hands with people in the crowds that lined the ropes at some of his campaign stops that year.
Clinton couldn't get more than 5 feet away from a Secret Service agent when he ran for re-election.

But, then there's Obama, up on a stage, giving a political speech, without a single one of those guys wearing sunglasses anywhere near him.

[PeteSelman]

2. People used to be able to walk in and talk to the President.

It's a sad place that we have come to.

[MineralMan]

3. When was that, do you think?

When were people able to just walk in and talk to the President?

[mopinko]

4. long ago, i guess. but that is a true statement.

up until lincoln's time, people expected to walk in, and be allowed to talk to the president.
when that changed, and how, i dont know.

[MineralMan]

6. After Lincoln's assassination, the job of protecting Presidents

got a lot more serious. Every President has enemies who wish him dead. However, up to the turn of the 19th to 20th centuries, invitations to the White House were fairly common for people in the higher levels of society. With an introduction, if you traveled to DC, and invitation to visit the White House and meet the President was not all that difficult to obtain. The assassination of President McKinley, however, pretty much put an end to that in 1901.

Presidents are targets. Nutcases and political enemies, along with foreign powers, all want Presidents dead. So, the open door at the White House was closed, and the President is protected by armed special agents at all times. Most often, it is enough. Sometimes, though, it is not. We all remember a couple of Presidents who were shot by assassins.

So, when someone says it's not like it used to be with the White House and Presidents, they're talking about times that existed long before they were born, quite frankly, not from their own memory. Nobody alive today lived during those times.

[mopinko]

5. ftr, agents still make you show your hands on the rope line, tho

that is for the pres, and not for the first lady.
have had the honor and privilege several times.

[MineralMan]

7. No President will ever be completely safe.

That's an impossible task. There are enemies of every President - people who want the President dead. Many of us remember the assassination of President Kennedy. Many of us remember Candidate Kennedy being assassinated. More of us remember Reagan being shot. That's in our lifetimes.

Security is stronger now than it was, but it will never be and can never be impenetrable. There will always be intruders at the White House who attempt to gain access. The concern about snipers and people in crowds will always exist. Every President will face the risk of assassination and no 100% protection is possible.