On the night of September 19, 2014, an Iraq war veteran, Omar Gonzales, jumped the White House fence, ran more than 70 yards across the north lawn, and sprinted just past the north portico White House doors.
Only then was he apprehended by Secret Service agents.
Gonzalez’ short-lived trespass onto White House grounds was one of 143 security breaches–or attempted breaches–at facilities protected by the United States Secret Service (USSS) during during the last 10 years.
Then, less than 24 hours after Gonzalez’s arrest, a second man was apprehended after he drove up to a White House gate and refused to leave. This triggered a search of his vehicle by bomb technicians in full gear. Other agents shut down nearby streets. No bombs were found.
Asked for Obama’s reaction, White House spokesman Frank Benenati gave this boilerplate reply: “The president has full confidence in the Secret Service and is grateful to the men and women who day in and day out protect himself, his family and the White House.”
Yet not all is well in Presidential security.
A newly-released report by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee found the Secret Service to be “in crisis.”
The White House
“Morale is down, attrition is up, misconduct continues and security breaches persist,” Rep. Jason Chaffetz, (R-Utah) publicly stated.
“Strong leadership from the top is required to fix the systematic mismanagement within the agency, and to restore it to its former prestige.”
But the blunt truth is that many of the problems now plaguing the USSS were on full display as early as 2009.
That was when well-known investigative reporter Ronald Kessler published his then-latest book, In the President’s Secret Service.
Kessler had previously pubilshed books outlining the inner workings of the White House, the CIA and the FBI.
Kessler praised the courage and integrity of Secret Service agents as a whole. But he warned that the agency was risking the safety of many of its protectees, including President Obama.
He was particularly critical of SS management for such practices as:
- Shutting off weapon-scanning magnetometers at rallies for Presidential candidates–and even for Presidents George W. Bush and Obama.
- During a speech Bush gave at Tbilisi, Georgia in 2005, an assailant threw a live hand grenade–which failed to explode–at him.
- Despite 9/11, Secret Service agents are still being trained to expect an attempt by a lone gunman—rather than a professional squad of terrorist assassins.
- The Service’s Counter Assault Teams (CATs) have generally been cut back from five or six agents to two, rendering them useless if a real attack occurred.
- Salaries paid to USSS agents have not kept pace with reality. Veteran USSS men and women are now being offered up to four times their salary for moving to the private sector, and many are leaving the agency for that reason.
Secret Service agents protecting President Barack Obama
- While Congress has greatly expanded the duties of this agency, Secret Service management has not asked for equivalent increases in funding and agents.
- Many agents are leaving out of frustration that it takes “juice” or connections with top management to advance one’s career.
- USSS agents are being trained with weapons that are outdated (such as the MP5, developed in the 1960s) compared to those used by other law enforcement agencies and the potential assassins they face (such as the M4–with greater range and armor-piercing capabilities).
- The Service refuses to ask for help from other agencies to meet its manpower needs. Thus, a visiting head of state at the U.N. General Assembly will usually be assigned only three agents as protection.
- The agency tells agents to grade themselves on their physical training test forms.
- Agents are supposed to be evaluated on their marksmanship skills every three months. But some agents have gone more than a year without being tested.
- Some agents are so overweight they can’t meet the rigorous demands of the job. As a result, they pose a danger to the people they’re supposed to be guarding.
- The Secret Service inflates its own arrest statistics by claiming credit for arrests made by local police.
- Congressional members who visit the agency’s Rowley Training Center in Laurel, Maryland, are treated to rehearsed scenarios of how the agency would deal with attacks. If agents were allowed to perform these exercises without rehearsals, Congressional members would see they make mistakes like anyone else.
Kessler closes his book with the warning: “Without….changes, an assassination of Barack Obama or a future president is likely.
“If that happens, a new Warren Commission will be appointed to study the tragedy. It will find that the Secret Service was shockingly derelict in its duty to the American people and to its own elite corps of brave and dedicated agents.”
And the effects will be not only momentary but long-term. As Kessler writes:
“By definition, an assassination threatens democracy.
“If Abraham Lincoln had not been assassinated, Andrew Johnson, his successor, would not have been able to undermine Lincoln’s efforts to reunite the nation and give more rights to blacks during the Reconstruction period.
“If John F. Kennedy had not been assassinated, Lyndon Johnson likely never would have become President. If Robert F. Kennedy had not been killed and had won the presidency, Richard Nixon might never have been elected.”
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CENSORSHIP: THE AMERICAN WAY
In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on May 14, 2015 at 3:29 pmMidway through Stanley Kubrick’s 1987 Vietnam epic, Full Metal Jacket, there’s an editorial meeting of The Sea Tiger, the official Marine newspaper.
The correspondents are discussing how best to portray America’s faltering efforts to win a war that most of the “grunts” have come to see as unwinnable.
Lieutenant Lockhart, who’s presiding, wants his reporters to make some changes in the way they report the war.
LOCKHART: Chili, if we move Vietnamese, they are “evacuees.” If they come to us to be evacuated, they are “refugees.”
CHILI: I’ll make a note of it, sir.
LOCKHART (reading): “A young North Vietnamese Army regular, who realized his side could not win the war, deserted from his unit after reading Open Arms program pamphlets.”
That’s good, Dave. But why say “North Vietnamese Army regular”? Is there an irregular? How about “North Vietnamese Army soldier”?
DAVE: I’ll fix it up, sir.
LOCKHART: “Search and destroy.” Uh, we have a new directive on this. In the future, in place of “search and destroy,” substitute the phrase “sweep and clear.” Got it?
Lt. Lockhart (right) briefs his Marine reporters
JOKER: Got it. Very catchy.
LOCKHART: And, Joker–where’s the weenie?
JOKER: Sir?
LOCKHART The Kill, Joker. The kill. I mean, all that fire, the grunts must’ve hit something.
JOKER: Didn’t see ’em.
LOCKHART Joker, I’ve told you, we run two basic stories here. Grunts who give half their pay to buy gooks toothbrushes and deodorants–Winning of Hearts and Minds–okay?
And combat action that results in a kill–Winning the War. Now you must have seen blood trails … drag marks?
JOKER: It was raining, sir.
LOCKHART: Well, that’s why God passed the law of probability. Now rewrite it and give it a happy ending–say, uh, one kill. Make it a sapper or an officer. Which?
JOKER: Whichever you say.
LOCKHART Grunts like reading about dead officers.
JOKER Okay, an officer. How about a general?
LOCKHART Joker, maybe you’d like our guys to read the paper and feel bad. I mean, in case you didn’t know it, this is not a particularly popular war. Now, it is our job to report the news that these why-are-we-here civilian newsmen ignore.
* * * * *
Kubrick’s film is set in the South Vietnam of 1968.
This was a war where military newspapers like Stars and Stripes offered a gung-ho, all-systems-go version of constant American progress against a tough enemy.
And where civilian reporters like David Halberstam and Walter Cronkite saw the war for what it was and labeled it a brutal, wasteful and ultimately doomed effort.
Now, 47 years after the events depicted in Full Metal Jacket, the Obama administration wants to censor the American news media as the military censored its own.
The President wants the media to stop using footage from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) during newscasts.
“We are urging broadcasters to avoid using the familiar B-roll that we’ve all seen before, file footage of ISIL convoys operating in broad daylight, moving in large formations with guns out, looking to wreak havoc,” Emily Horne, a spokeswoman for the State Department, told Politico.
Stop using ISIL footage, Obama administration asks networks – Michael Crowley and Hadas Gold – POLITICO
The “B-roll” is stock footage that appears onscreen while reporters/commentators talk. It’s the stuff that keeps an audience watching the newscast, even if they ignore what’s being said.
“It’s inaccurate–that’s no longer how ISIL moves,” she added.
Since August, 2014, the United States and its allies have dropped thousands of bombs on ISIL–especially on its convoys–in Iraq and Syria.
As a result, claim U.S. officials, ISIL can no longer mass its forces in daylight–or move in large convoys. Such large concentrations can be easily spotted–and attacked–from the air.
ISIL convoy
So how would the Pentagon like ISIL to be portrayed in file footage?
“One Toyota speeding down the road by itself at night with its headlights off,” said Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steve Warren.
Warren added that some of the B-roll the networks are using comes from propaganda videos made by ISIL.
Senior State Department and Pentagon officials have begun contacting television network reporters to suggest news sources switch to using more U.S.-friendly videos, such as Iraqi army soldiers being trained, or footage from coalition airstrikes.
When contacted by Politico for comment, ABC, CNN, Fox and NBC refused to comment.
Covering how Americans behave in war has proven a challenge for American news media since the Vietnam conflict.
In 1966, New York Times reporter Harrison E. Salisbury was allowed to enter North Vietnam to cover the war from their perspective.
His reports of heavy American bombing raids and their resulting civilian casualties and infrastructure damage provoked national controversy.
Officials of the Johnson administration charged Salisbury with “aiding and abetting the enemy” by reporting North Vietnamese claims of loss.
Salisbury–and the Times–replied that of course they were reporting what North Vietnamese officials were saying. That was why he was there–to get the other side’s point-of-view.
So long as freedom of the press exists in reality as well as theory, there will always be tension between those who want to report the news–and those who want to censor it.
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