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CNN NEWSROOM

Hearing on Secret Service Security Failures

Aired September 30, 2014 - 10:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


DEL. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, (D), DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA: Worse, do such failures show that some in the Secret Service are in denial of danger, perhaps posing the greatest risk to the White House?

Particularly troubling, in light of such unanswered questions, would be the rush to quick fixes such as repression of open access to the area around the White House without a thorough investigation. The White House and Lafayette Park, just like the congress, are first (inaudible) areas (ph), and the public must be allowed to express their grievances as they always have been.

In light of the seriousness of breaches -- recent breaches, the investigation at the first incident (ph) by the Department of Homeland Security should go well beyond the details of these events. They are merely the most recent raw data before a top-to-bottom investigation of Secret Service operations at the White House. This is not a mere question of personnel.

Changing people at the top or in between will not solve the issue I think we are examining (ph). We must learn whether today's Secret Service as structured, for example, could stop five or six fence jumpers jumping at the same time, intent on harm to the White House and the president, not just a demented war vet, who even alone might have succeeded.

At -- no -- no scenario should be off the table for the needed (ph) 21st century study of Secret Service operations in the age of terrorism. Director Pierson has shown accomplishment in her 18 months as director. The heroism of the Secret Service is beyond debate. The White House intruder was brought down, after all, by an agent. But the White House and the president have been thrust into a new era of danger. The Secret Service should welcome an outside investigation to ensure that the necessary resources and expert backup and structure for the 21st century is necessary for it to do its job.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

REP. DARRELL ISSA, (R), CALIFORNIA: I thank the gentlelady.

Members may have seven days to submit opening statements for the record.

I now ask unanimous consent that are colleague, the gentlelady from Texas, Ms. Jackson Lee, be allowed to participate in today's hearing. Without objection, so ordered. Additionally, I ask unanimous consent that our colleague, the gentleman from Missouri, Mr. Long, be allowed to participate in today's hearing. Without objection, so ordered.

We now welcome our panel of witnesses.

The Honorable Julia Pierson is the director of the United States Secret Service.

The Honorable Ralph Basham is the former director of the United States Secret Service, and currently a partner at Command Consulting Group.

The Honorable Todd Keil is the former assistant secretary for Infrastructure Protection in the United States Department of Homeland Security, and is currently a senior adviser to TorchStone Page.

Pursuant to the committee's rules, I'd ask that you please all rise and raise your right hand to take the oath.

Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony you are about to give be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

Please be seated.

Let the record reflect that all witnesses answered in the affirmative.

In order to allow sufficient time for discussion and questions, please limit your testimony to five minutes. Your entire opening statement will be made a permanent part of the record.

And with that, Director Pierson is recognized.

JULIA PIERSON, SECRET SERVICE DIRECTOR: Good morning, Chairman Issa, Ranking Member Cummings, distinguished members of the committee. I'm here today to address the concern that we all share, following the incident of September 19th at the White House.

It's clear that our security plan was not properly executed. This is unacceptable, and I take full responsibility and I will make sure that it does not happen again.

As director, my primary concern is ensuring the operational readiness of my workforce. I have been aggressive in addressing our human capital challenges, ensuring professionalism and developing leaders. Through active engagement with the agency's supervisors and employees, I have made it clear my expectations for professionalism and personal accountability.

Much of what we do to protect the president and the White House involves information that is highly sensitive or classified, so I'll be limited in what I can say in a public hearing.

On September 19th, a man scaled the north fence of the White House, crossed the lawn, while ignoring verbal commands from uniform division officers, entered through the front door and was subsequently arrested on the state floor.

Immediately that night, I ordered enhancements around the complex, and in consultation with the secretary, initiated a comprehensive review of the incident and protective measures to ensure it will not happen again. The review began with a physical assessment of the site and personnel interviews. All decisions made that evening are being evaluated, including those on tactics and use of force in light of the totality of the circumstances confronting those officers.

I am committed to the following, a complete and thorough investigations of the facts of this incident, a complete and thorough review of all policies, procedures, protocols in place that govern the security of the White House complex and a response to this incident. And based on the results of that review, a coordinated, informed effort to make any and all adjustments to training and personnel actions that are necessary to properly ensure the safety and security of the president and the first family and the White House.

The White House emergency action plans are multifaceted and tailored to each threat. The Secret Service has apprehended 16 individuals who have jumped the fence over the last five years, including six this year alone. In fact, on September 11, 2014, a week prior to the events that are the subject of today's hearing, officers apprehended an individual seconds after he scaled the fence and ran onto the grounds.

In addition to fence-jumpers, over the last five years, hundreds of individuals have approached the White House perimeter, verbalizing threats to our protectees or acting in a suspicious manner. Officers and agents routinely leverage their experience and training to make decisions to either arrest or transfer these individuals to appropriate facilities for mental health evaluations.

Protecting the White House complex is a challenge in any threat environment. In addition to being a national icon, the complex consists of public spaces, executive offices, where our nation's highest leaders congregate and the private residence of the president and first family. Ensuring the safety of all who live and work in the White House, while preserving access to the millions of visitors each year, requires a unique balance.

In this environment we are never satisfied by the status quo and we're constantly reviewing our security protocols. With the help of Congress, we have enhanced our protective countermeasures and security features at the White House.

In the past five years the Secret Service has upgraded perimeter cameras, officer booths, vehicle gates, and command and control systems along with enhancements to highly classified programs that have made the president and the complex more secure. We have generated many of these new security enhancements in direct response to intelligence information on known and emerging terrorist tactics. I thank the Congress for their support in this time of constrained resources. Beyond technology, approximately 75 percent of our annual budget is dedicated to payroll costs which support our most valuable asset, our people. The agency relies heavily on experience, training and judgment of our men and women to make critical split-second decisions.

With respect to the many questions that have been raised and the opinions proffered in the wake of the September 19th incident, I do not want to get ahead of the investigation that is under way. The Secret Service has had its share of challenges in recent years, and some during my tenure. I intend to lead the Secret Service through these challenges and restore our agency's reputation to the level of excellence that the American public expects.

As director, I'm proud of the Secret Service's workforce who serve each day with honor and distinction. Last week our employees successfully implemented security operations in conjunction with the 69th United Nations General Assembly in New York City, where they protected the president and more than 140 world leaders.

Over the last 12 months, they have completed over 5,600 successful protective missions. It is my responsibility to ensure that these men and women have the resources and training that they need to succeed. As director, I have worked with the Department of Homeland Security, Secretary Johnson, the administration and Congress, to include members of this committee, to develop a comprehensive forward- leaning strategy to further enhance the Secret Service's workforce and operational capabilities.

We remain dedicated and committed to protecting the president, the first family and the sanctity of the White House. I thank the committee today for the opportunity to appear and I look forward to your questions.

ISSA: Thank you.

Mr. Basham?

W. RALPH BASHAM, FORMER SECRET SERVICE DIRECTOR: Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Cummings...

ISSA: Could you turn the mic on and pull it a little closer, please? Try that.

BASHAM: Mr. Chairman -- thank you -- Ranking Member Cummings, distinguished members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to share my perspective today on the recent events at the White House and more broadly, on the state of the agency I care a great deal about, the United States Secret Service.

Let me say at the outset that I look forward to discussing how the recent incidents -- incident highlights some of the challenges the Secret Service has long faced at the White House complex and balancing desired levels of security, along with the functional needs of those who work and live and work in that complex, the practical realities of the thriving city it resides in -- within and the historic symbolism and imagery of the people's house.

The incident exposes certain steps the Secret Service got right and those they got wrong, and will identify corrective measures and additional resources that can be considered.

However, it also poses some difficult questions for all of us on issues, like the use of lethal force and our tolerance for additional fortifications around the White House complex.

Those questions do not have easy answers, and the long-term potential consequences must be thought through.

Let us also be mindful - -

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: I'm going to jump away from this hearing now to analyze what the director of the Secret Service said before Congress. Ronald Kessler is a long time investigative reporter and author of nearly two dozen books including "In the President's Secret Service", Daniel Bongino is a former Secret Service agent and has written his own inside account "Life Inside the Bubble", and Joey Jackson is an HLN legal analyst and criminal defense attorney.

Ronald, I want to start with you because frankly, I didn't find Julia Pierson's statement all that inspiring, did you?

RONALD KESSLER, AUTHOR: No, it had nothing to do whatsoever with the problems. And the problems go back to a management culture which punishes agents who point out problems or who question White House staff. For example, when they want you to turn off the alarms they will just roll over and promotes agents who go along and promote this myth that the Secret Service is invulnerable and infallible and is worthy of our confidence.

And beyond that, the real problem is President Obama because it's his life that's at risk and the life of his family and over and over again he defends the Secret Service. He has not taken the one step that's necessary to reform this agency and that is bringing in an outside director who will change the management culture, shake up the agency. That's what you do with any organization when it's failing whether it's a private company or otherwise.

COSTELLO: Well Daniel -- Daniel, could you address that because I would assume the President grows close to the Secret Service agents that protect his family. They follow them everywhere. They're with them 24 hours a day. Is that a reason why the President doesn't come out and at least criticize the Secret Service for allowing this fence jumper to get inside the White House?

DANIEL BONGINO, FORMER SECRET SERVICE AGENT: I can't speak to why the President hasn't done that. My take on it is he's around them everyday and, you know, hundreds if not thousands of trips between him and his family are pulled off successfully with no incident at all. I mean I coordinated a trip by President Obama to an active war zone in Afghanistan without so much as a splinter. You know, not to pat myself on the back, it wasn't me alone, it was an entire team. So I think he's looking at it in the totality. But, you know, Ron said a lot there and there's a lot of misstatement. I think an outside director may be what we need right now. This management culture -- and it's a very small, insulated group up there in the Secret Service Puzzle Palace on the eighth floor headquarters.

I think they're really destroying the morale of the rank and file out there who feel like they have no backup at all if anything happens and if they have to make an executive decision.

COSTELLO: Ok. It's really disturbing. I was struck by the congressman from Utah's opening statement, Jason Chaffetz. He actually had tears in his eyes and he was beginning to cry. I mean, these congressmen feel very passionately about this issue and you've got to believe most of them believe Julia Pierson should go.

So Joey Jackson, I'll pose this question to you. Do you think she's consulted with attorneys? Did those attorneys tell her how much she should say or not say? How does that work?

JOEY JACKSON, HLN LEGAL ANALYST: You know, Carol, interestingly enough, if you examine her statement, certainly she had to consult with attorneys because this is an attorney's dream. A, you acknowledge responsibility and in acknowledging responsibility say "I fully accept what occurred." But then you pivot to B. Look at all the other things that we've done in Secret Service which are admirable. Look at all the other things that we've stopped. And C, Carol, we'll continue to investigate.

So there was certainly no admission as to wrongdoing, no indications of any, you know, prior significant lapses and just a commitment from her that she'll get it right. And that's certainly done so that she could avoid any misstatements or missteps before this committee. Carol, the real inquiries are going to come when she's cross-examined by the chairman and other committee members.

COSTELLO: That's shortly upcoming. I'm going to go to break but before we go to break, I want you listen to Congressman Jason Chaffetz's opening statement. It was quite moving.

I'll be right back.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JASON CHAFFETZ (R), UTAH: In the fence jumping incident, the Secret Service was very quick to put out a statement that honored the officers and agents for their quote, "tremendous restraint". Tremendous restraint is not what we're looking for. Tremendous restraint is not the goal and the objective. It sends a very mixed message.

The message should be "overwhelming force". If one person can hop that wall -- hope that fence and run unimpeded all the way into an open door at the White House, don't praise them for tremendous restraint. (END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PIERSON: It's clear that our security plan was not properly executed. This is unacceptable and I take full responsibility and I will make sure that it does not happen again.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: All right, this is the house oversight committee. It's holding a hearing on the security breach at the White House where that man jumped the fence and got all the way to the East Room before being tackled by a Secret Service member. The director of the Secret Service, Julia Pierson, just testified.

Other experts are testifying now. When the question-and-answer session starts, we're going to bring you back to this committee live. But let's talk about this for just a second because so many good points were brought up.

Let's bring in our experts: Ronald Kessler, he's a long time investigative reporter and author of nearly two dozen books including "In the President's Secret Service"; Daniel Bongino is a former Secret Service agent and has written his own inside account, "Life Inside the Bubble"; and Joey Jackson is an HLN legal analyst and criminal defense attorney. Welcome back to all of you.

So a couple of interesting things -- one thing I want to show our viewers is this fence jumper was armed with a knife and I want to show people what this knife looked like. It was pretty violent. It was a serrated edge, a serrated knife. And also brought up in this hearing -- there were five rings of security broken at the White House that allowed this man to get inside the White House.

So this fence jumper, this Omar Gonzalez was able to evade plain- clothed surveillance teams outside the fence. He was able to evade officers in the guard booth on the north lawn. He was able to evade attack dogs. He was able to evade a swat team. He was able to evade a guard at the front door. He actually tackled her. And he made it all the way to the East Room before another Secret Service agent finally tackled this man.

Daniel, I'm going to come back to you and just say how can there be any excuses for any of this?

BONGINO: There aren't any. There's no putting lipstick on this. There are no excuses. And I was looking at your diagram there. There's a few rings they missed that aren't on there. There's a lot of seen and unseen security that they don't know about. I'm not going to disclose them obviously on the air here but there are other things that were missed as well.

That's why this is so infuriating to a lot of active and retired agents because they can't understand how this guy got so lucky. Carol, you have to understand, hundreds of people have jumped that fence. Not one of them have made it more than ten yards. How they all failed at the same time is perplexing. I have my guess on it, but there's no --

COSTELLO: Come on, what's your guess? What's your guess?

BONGINO: Well, without divulging any security details, you have to put this in context of what was happening. Ten minutes earlier the President had left. Now, I assume at some point you've probably been at the White House for one of those south grounds departures with Marine One. There's always a bit of chaos there. It's like herding cats, getting all the people back inside. We're used to it but there is a bit of chaos that's unavoidable after that.

You combine that with the fact that there was a United Nations General Assembly preparations session going on up in New York and I think a lot of those factors had something to do with it. The chaos of the departure combined with the fact that they were probably short manpower and had some junior people working long shifts probably had a lot to do with it. Not an excuse, just context for what happened.

JACKSON: Look, Carol, briefly you would think that there would be protocols for that. I mean the White House is constantly busy. There are a number of events that are occurring frequently. So just because there are a variety of things that are stressing the resources of Secret Service certainly doesn't provide justification or an excuse no matter what's going on in the universe. And so certainly that raises troubling concerns.

KESSLER: This goes back to the cultural problem, the cultural problem includes an arrogance. The Secret Service has the attitude we make do with less, we can take care of any problem and so they ignore a lot of very obvious problems. For example, they will let people into events without magnetometer screening.

In my more recent book "The First Family Detail", I reveal that on a regular basis they let people in without magnetometer screening into events by the President or the Vice President. It's like letting passengers into an airplane without magnetometer screening. That alone is a scandal which tells you that the Secret Service is really courting disaster.

COSTELLO: And Daniel, the -- I don't know, can Julia Pierson actually survive this?

BONGINO: No. I don't think so. And I think her support for what I'm hearing from my contacts, and they are numerous within the Secret Service, there's almost no support left besides an insulated group of upper tier management.

Ron just said something important on it. We have to look at this all in context or you're going to misdiagnose the disease and treat the wrong disorder. Ron is right but the Secret Service doesn't have a Secret Service culture problem, it has a White House staff problem. The White House staff pressure -- and this is bipartisan, it's not exclusive to the Obama presidency, trust me -- has always pushed the Secret Service to quote, "do more with less". They're told that all the time.

Well, at some point, Carol, you can't do more with less. Less is less. You either fix the continuing resolution problem and budget the Secret Service a year out like they're supposed to so they can plan these things or you can expect continued failures. There's absolutely no doubt in any mind. This is a systemic problem.

JACKSON: But that blamed this is issue on resources and I don't know that any amount of money that was there would have prevented this --

COSTELLO: They had five layers of security.

JACKSON: Exactly. What money would we talk about that could have dealt with this issue. The guy went through the lawn, would a million more dollars have fixed that? The dogs didn't catch him. Would getting more dogs --

KESSLER: It's not resources.

As Dan says, they're working tremendous overtime hours. There's tremendous turnover because of the poor morale so you have agents who are basically half asleep.

JACKSON: But most people in the United States are working overtime and doing other things. It doesn't excuse --

COSTELLO: I have to take a break. I'm sorry guys but we'll be back with much more in the NEWSROOM right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Ronald, Daniel, Joey are going to stick around to the next hour. That does it for me.

I want to bring you back into the House Oversight Committee where Julia Pierson, the Secret Service director, is now taking questions from the oversight committee.

"@THIS HOUR WITH BERMAN AND MICHAELA" starts now.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN HOST: Good morning to you. I'm Michaela Pereira.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN HOST: And I'm John Berman.

"Worthy of trust and confidence" -- that is the motto of the United States Secret Service but both of those watch words now really shaken and tested at this hour after the security lapse earlier this month at the White House which turned out to be much more serious and frankly much different than we first thought and were first told.