The head of the U.S. Secret Service is in for a likely grilling from lawmakers today when she appears before a House committee to answer questions about the Sept. 19 security breach at the White House in which a man with a knife jumped a fence and made it inside the executive mansion before agents intercepted him.
Secret Service Director Julia Pierson will appear opposite members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform just as new information has come to light about the incident: The Washington Post reports that after jumping the fence, Omar Gonzalez made it past the front doors, overpowered a guard and then ran across the East Room before being tackled at the doorway to the Green Room.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Monday that the president and first family, who were not in the executive mansion at the time of the breach, are "obviously concerned" but have confidence in the Secret Service.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, a member of the House oversight committee, on Monday told The Associated Press that he's "worried" that "over the last several years, security has gotten worse, not better."
NPR's Giles Snyder says while the fence jumper incident is likely to dominate the hearing, Pierson, who took over as Secret Service chief last year, is also expected to be questioned about a 2011 incident in which shots were fired at the White House.
The Post says of that incident:
"A bullet smashed a window on the second floor, just steps from the first family's formal living room. Another lodged in a window frame, and more pinged off the roof, sending bits of wood and concrete to the ground. At least seven bullets struck the upstairs residence of the White House, flying some 700 yards across the South Lawn."President Obama and his wife were out of town on that evening of Nov. 11, 2011, but their younger daughter, Sasha, and Michelle Obama's mother, Marian Robinson, were inside, while older daughter Malia was expected back any moment from an outing with friends."
The New York Times says a 2009 breach in which a couple crashed a state dinner, the drinking and prostitution scandals on overseas trips in 2012 and 2013, "and 16 separate cases of people scaling the White House fence in the last five years" would probably be subjects of the committee's inquiry as well.
The Times reports:
"According to a law enforcement official briefed on the current investigation, uniformed Secret Service officers at the White House failed to follow several of the agency's protocols. Although the protocols call for an officer to be standing outside the North Portico door, there was no officer there as Mr. Gonzalez made his way up the steps. The officer who was stationed inside the door failed to lock it after an alarm was sounded that someone had jumped over the fence, the official said."
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