Obama's queers force a woman out of her job. Secret Service Director Pierson Resigns.

[Bill Steele]

WASHINGTON�The head of the Secret Service resigned under
pressure Wednesday after a series of embarrassing stumbles that
outraged lawmakers, caught the White House by surprise and
called into question the security of the president.

Julia Pierson's resignation marks the end of a swift fall for a
Secret Service chief who assumed the job just 18 months ago and
was hoping to restore prestige and discipline to an agency
grappling with a slew of disconcerting scandals. Instead,
another hit: An armed intruder last month scaled a White House
fence and darted deep into the executive mansion.

The next director will face the same deep-seated problems that
felled Ms. Pierson, including low morale among officers and
claims by some of a cowboy culture. The agency also has a
divided mission that some say has shifted resources from basic
protection to cybercrime and financial-fraud investigations.

The resignation presages the likely shake-up of an agency that
has long operated with a large degree of independence. Homeland
Security Secretary Jeh Johnson on Wednesday took an internal
investigation into the Sept. 19 White House intrusion from the
Secret Service and handed it to his deputy, Alejandro Mayorkas.

Mr. Johnson also said a panel of independent experts would look
at the breach "and related issues concerning the Secret
Service," and he made it a point to say the panel would evaluate
potential directors from outside of the Secret Service. The
appointment of an outsider would mark a radical departure from
the way the agency has been led for decades. Ms. Pierson, 55
years old, had been at the Secret Service for 30 years when she
took over last year.

For now, the Obama administration is putting control of the
agency in the hands of Joseph Clancy, who knows President Barack
Obama well from his time heading the Secret Service unit that
protects the first family.

Mr. Clancy has been the chief of security at Comcast Corp. since
retiring from the Secret Service unit in 2011. He was considered
for the top job in 2013 when its previous director retired, but
he took his name out of the running, according to a person
familiar with the matter.

Ms. Pierson had come under increasing pressure from both
Republican and Democratic lawmakers to resign amid a series of
security flubs revealed in the days following the White House
intrusion and after her three-hour-plus grilling on Capitol Hill
Tuesday failed to convince lawmakers of the Secret Service's
ability to protect the president.

The final straw for the White House was the disclosure Tuesday
afternoon by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R., Utah) that an armed guard
with a criminal record rode on an elevator with Mr. Obama during
a visit to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last
month, in violation of Secret Service protocol.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the White House learned
of the CDC incident on Tuesday, "just minutes before it was
publicly reported," and added that it was part of what convinced
Mr. Obama to accept Ms. Pierson's resignation.

"Over the last several days, we've seen recent and accumulating
reports raising questions about the performance of the agency,
and the president concluded that new leadership of that agency
was required," Mr. Earnest said at his daily White House
briefing.

Mr. Chaffetz, who chairs a House subcommittee that oversees the
Secret Service, called for Ms. Pierson's resignation Tuesday
night, and by Wednesday morning, Democrats including Rep. Elijah
Cummings of Maryland and Sen. Charles Schumer of New York were
also urging her removal. Mr. Chaffetz praised her resignation in
a statement and said the administration should pick a new leader
"from outside the Secret Service for a fresh start."

Ms. Pierson told a congressional committee Tuesday that on the
evening of Sept. 19, an intruder ran through part of the White
House, briefly setting foot in the East Room, where Mr. Obama
often hosts events and which is located off a stairway that
leads to the first family's residence. Omar J. Gonzalez, who had
a small knife in his pocket, was able to enter the White House
after scaling the fence, darting across the lawn, knocking back
an officer and entering the executive mansion through two
unlocked doors before being apprehended outside the Green Room,
Ms. Pierson said.

Initially, the agency had indicated the intruder had been
captured just inside the North Portico doors, when Mr. Gonzalez
had, in fact, gotten much farther inside the White House. First
lady Michelle Obama was outraged when she learned about how far
the intruder had penetrated, according to a person familiar with
the matter. The first family wasn't home at the time.

On Wednesday, Mr. Gonzalez pleaded not guilty to three criminal
charges, including unlawfully entering a restricted building or
grounds while carrying a deadly or dangerous weapon. The charges
carry a statutory maximum of 16 years in prison. Mr. Gonzalez
waived his right to a detention hearing, agreeing to stay in
federal custody pending a trial.

Ms. Pierson, who offered her resignation to Mr. Johnson on
Wednesday, was the subject of unrelenting criticism from
lawmakers Tuesday�something that likely contributed to her
departure. "It was a very physically and emotionally difficult
time," said former Secret Service Director Ralph Basham, who
appeared with Ms. Pierson before the congressional committee. "I
believe she felt that the focus was starting to turn toward her
versus getting on with the investigation of what happened on the
19th and at the CDC."

The questioning came before the revelation, earlier reported by
the Washington Examiner, of Mr. Obama's elevator ride with the
armed private security guard. Mr. Chaffetz said in an interview
that the Secret Service became suspicious of the man when he
disobeyed demands to stop filming Mr. Obama with his phone.

The Secret Service, with 6,700 employees and a $1.6 billion
annual budget, was founded in 1865 as a unit of the Treasury
Department aimed at fighting counterfeiting. It wasn't until
1902, after the assassination of President William McKinley,
that Congress gave it the responsibility for full-time
protection of the president, and that mission later grew to
include other dignitaries and their families. It was one of
several agencies that became part of the Department of Homeland
Security in 2003.

Ms. Pierson had been examining changes to the agency's hiring
and firing practices since an embarrassing 2012 incident that
involved 12 employees soliciting prostitutes in Cartagena,
Colombia, preparing for a meeting Mr. Obama was to attend,
before a presidential visit to the region. Ms. Pierson had
discussed with lawmakers legislative changes that would have
made it easier to fire special agents and hire executives, they
haven't been formally proposed. She was also looking at
increasing the level of qualifications required to become a
Secret Service agent. Currently, agents don't need a college
degree as long as they have law-enforcement experience. Federal
Bureau of Investigation agents are required to have a bachelor's
degree.

"I don't care whether they have Julia Pierson or someone else,"
said Rep. John Mica (R., Fla.), who sits on the House Oversight
Committee and spoke with Ms. Pierson about the potential changes
in May. "You have to have the ability to employ the best staff,
retain the best staff and then hire and fire and require
accountability."

�Carol E. Lee, Colleen McCain Nelson and Felicia Schwartz
contributed to this article.

Write to Andrew Grossman at andrew....@wsj.com

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