It is a basic tenet of biblical leadership, if you desire to lead you must run your own household well. The president of the United States has not been able to choose leadership for his own house and we wonder if he can lead the country and the world.
Julia Pierson, the director of the Secret Service, is resigning in the wake of several security breaches, according to administration officials.
The resignation came less than a day after lawmakers from both parties assailed Ms. Pierson’s leadership and said they feared for the lives of the president and others in the protection of the agency.
The dysfunctional Secret Service has been unable to prevent forced entry to the White House or even screen an armed convict from riding an elevator with the so called leader of the free world.
Ms. Pierson was supposed to have been the one to repair the agency’s reputation after scandals that raised questions about a culture that gave rise to incidents involving drinking and prostitution during overseas trips.
However, she was unable to even structure the agency to perform it’s primary role, protector of the president and his family. Through the last two weeks, Mr. Obama’s aides had repeatedly declared that he retained full confidence in the agency and in Ms. Pierson’s ability to lead it.
Like many of the scandals that have plagued the Obama administration, there is an unwillingness to admit failure and to take definitive action. Corruption is pervasive in the federal government causing a culture of self preservation that allows lies and half truths.
The Secret Service lied about how far Omar J. Gonzalez’s home invasion allowed him into the White House and Ms Pierson lied to congress about other incidents including that an armed convict rode an elevator with the president.
You know its bad when Nancy Pelosi is critical. “The protection of the president has to be precise, it has to be flawless and there has to be accountability when that is not the case,” Ms. Pelosi told reporters. “It is inexcusable that someone would jump over the fence and enter the White House, inexcusable that someone would be on the elevator with the president of the United States, with or without a weapon.”
On Wednesday, the intruder who jumped the White House fence, Omar J. Gonzalez, pleaded not guilty to charges of unlawfully entering a restricted government building while carrying a weapon, carrying a dangerous weapon in public and unlawfully possessing ammunition.
On Wednesday morning, Ms. Pierson met with Jeh C. Johnson, the secretary of Homeland Security, the department that oversees the Secret Service. In a statement, Mr. Johnson said that he had accepted Ms. Pierson’s resignation, and that he had appointed Joseph Clancy, a former agent in charge of the Presidential Protective Division, to become the agency’s acting director.
Mr. Johnson also said that he was directing his deputy at the Department of Homeland Security to oversee an internal review of the Sept. 19 incident in which an intruder jumped over the fence around the White House and penetrated deep inside the mansion.
And bowing to growing demands for an outside inquiry by Democratic and Republican members of Congress, Mr. Johnson said that he would appoint a “distinguished panel of independent experts” to report recommendations to him by Dec. 15.
“I will also request that the panel advise me about whether it believes, given the series of recent events, there should be a review of broader issues concerning the Secret Service,” Mr. Johnson said in the statement. “The security of the White House compound should be the panel’s primary and immediate priority.”
