October 1, 2014
Mariah Timms
News Writer
Wash DC News
Failures of Secret Service protocol in recent months continue to come to light both from whistleblowers and the hearings before the House Oversight Committee Tuesday. In addition to last month’s incident in which a man jumped the White House fence and reached the East Room inside the residence, reports are coming out of a time when an armed man who had not been properly screened was allowed in an elevator with the president at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta. The hearings grilled Director Pierson on the incident in November of 2011 when officers responding to gunshots were told to stand down, and bullets that struck the White House were not discovered until days later. Pierson was not at that time director of the Secret Service, but was an executive staff member; she became director in March 2013. The incident of Sept. 19 is still being discussed, as more information comes to light, including the fact that the agent who finally stopped the intruder, Omar Gonzalez, was off duty at the time.
