Secret Service: procedures not followed. But that's okay we want to get rid of Obama anyway
Leroy N. Soetoro
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The Secret Service said Thursday that its procedures to ensure a tight
bubble of security around the White House and the political leaders under
the agency's care were not followed when an uninvited Virginia couple
attended Tuesday night's state dinner.
Officials are not providing any details about how the couple breached what
is often considered the most secure facility in the world.
"We're being intentionally vague on that," Secret Service spokesman Edwin
Donovan said Thursday morning. "All we are saying is that procedures we
have in place weren't followed."
Asked whether there is any early indication that new procedures should be
put in place to secure the White House and protect the president, Donovan
said the Secret Service believes the procedures are adequate --or would
have been had they been followed.
But he said that the review underway right now of the incident could offer
new suggestions. "If adjustments need to be made," they will be, Donovan
said, fielding a flood of calls from media organizations on Thanksgiving
Day.
Donovan said that the couple entered with other guests on the Southeast
side of the White House, a typical location for parties and other
celebrations. Guests to the White House Fourth of July picnic, for
example, typically enter at the same location.
Aides to President Obama said the White House has requested a through
review of what went wrong. But Donovan said that the Secret Service needed
no such order, moving quickly to investigate as soon as it learned that
the uninvited guests had gotten through.
"This is our top priority," he said. "The moment we found out about this,
we began a comprehensive investigation."
Security at the White House is the stuff of legend, though some of the
imaginations of Hollywood go beyond the reality. An episode of Fox's "24"
last season showed a White House visitor placing her thumb on a
fingerprint scanner, a type of screening that is not typically used.
Still, it usually takes quite a bit to get inside the iron gate that
surrounds the house and grounds at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Reporters and people with appointments in the West Wing enter through the
Northwest gate, along Pennsylvania Avenue. Journalists with permanent
credentials, called "hard passes," must present those passes to enter the
outer gate. They then are required to swipe the cards and enter a pin-code
before passing through a magnetometer.
People without hard passes must have someone at the White House enter
their names into a computer system called WAVES. When they approach the
Northwest gate, they must present identification. But they are denied
entry if their names do not pop up on the WAVES system.
Security is usually somewhat different for big parties, however. Guest IDs
are often checked against a printed list of names. People who are cleared
through that checkpoint are then passed through a magnetometer.
Donovan would not describe the system in place Tuesday night, sayingthe
investigation is "ongoing. I don't want to get in to any of it."
The Secret Service was founded in 1865 to investigate counterfeiting.
After the assassination of president William McKinley in 1901, the agency
assumed responsibility for protecting presidents, according to its Web
site. Its dual mission is: "to safeguard the nation's financial
infrastructure and payment systems to preserve the integrity of the
economy, and to protect national leaders, visiting heads of state and
government, designated sites and National Special Security Events."
The organization is now part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
In the Service's strategic plan for 2008 to 2013, one of the key
"strategic objectives" is to safeguard the White House complex and other
high-profile sites.
The document says it will assess and enhance physical security measures
"on a continuous basis to prevent the use of conventional and
unconventional weapons."
It notes that the organization's success will be measured in part based on
the "Percentage of time incident-free protection is provided to persons
inside the White House complex and Vice President's Residence at the Naval
Observatory."
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Nancy Pelosi, Democrat criminal, accessory before and after the fact to
Rangel's tax evasion.