Core of National Security
Critical
decisions after 9/11 led to slow, steady decline in quality for Secret Service
The south side of the White House is shown near where a bullet struck a window in the residential quarters Nov. 11, 2011. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
The Secret Service
began struggling to carry out its most basic duties after Congress and the
George W. Bush administration expanded the elite law enforcement agency’s
mission in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
According to
government documents and interviews with dozens of current and former
officials, the recent string of security lapses at the White House resulted
from a combination of tight budgets, bureaucratic battles and rapidly growing
demands on the agency that have persisted through the Bush and Obama
administrations in the 13 years since the attacks. At the same time, the Secret
Service was hit by a wave of early retirements that eliminated a generation of
experienced staff members and left the agency in a weakened state just as its
duties were growing.
The agency assumed new
responsibilities monitoring crowds at an increasing number of major sporting
events and other large gatherings seen as potential targets for terrorists. A
new anti-terrorism law gave the agency a leading role in tracking cyberthreats
against U.S. financial systems. And Bush expanded the circle of people granted
round-the-clock protection to include the president’s and vice president’s
extended family and some White House aides — an expansion that has been largely
maintained under President Obama.
Where the Secret
Service had been a gem of the Treasury Department for more than a century, its
post-9/11 transfer to the sprawling new Department of Homeland Security
suddenly forced it to compete for money and attention with bigger and higher-profile
agencies focused on immigration and airport security.
The changes set in
motion during that critical period after 2001 led to a slow, steady slide in
quality, leaving an agency that, according to a DHS report released on Dec. 18,
is “stretched to and, in many cases, beyond its limits.”
“We are not the Super
Bowl team we once were,” Dan Emmett, a former Secret Service supervisor, said
in a recent interview with The Washington Post.
When the attacks came
in 2001, the Secret Service was seen as a model organization, revered for its
aura of invincibility. Its stoic agents with their earpieces and dark
sunglasses were immortalized in Hollywood movies, while the agency boasted a
zero-error rate after the lessons learned from the assassination of President
John F. Kennedy in 1963 and the shooting of President Ronald Reagan in 1981. In
addition to its well-known duties protecting the country’s leaders, the agency
was also carrying out a longtime dual mission of combating counterfeiters.
The day before the
attacks, Secret Service details were safeguarding 18 people, including the
president, the vice president and their immediate families, as well as former
presidents and their spouses. Presidents have the power to expand the number of
people under Secret Service protection, as President Bill Clinton temporarily
did in the late 1990s amid growing concerns about al-Qaeda.
Immediately after the
attacks, temporary details were mobilized for Bush’s extended family, including
his grown siblings. Later, with the country at war in Afghanistan, the agency
provided details for Vice President Dick Cheney’s grandchildren in addition to
those for his adult daughters, Liz and Mary.
With that, the
standard was set. By late 2003, Secret Service details were assigned to 29
people. Currently, the agency protects 27 people, including Vice President
Biden’s five grandchildren, ranging from middle-school to college age, and
senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett.
The details create an
added strain, as the service must field a team of anywhere from two to six
agents to protect a person, usually with two to three rotating shifts per day.
The job of protecting
the president was also growing more difficult in the post-9/11 world. The
agency had to prepare for a rapidly expanding list of potential attacks to ward
off — including improvised explosives, shrapnel truck bombs, and biological and
chemical assaults.
But resources remained
largely flat, forcing agents to work longer hours
and spend extended stretches on the road. For years, hard work helped keep the
agency’s turmoil from showing.
Inside DHS, the
6,200-member Secret Service was dwarfed by the new Transportation Security
Administration and the rapidly growing U.S. Customs and Border Protection, each
with more than 50,000 employees.
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