WASHINGTON
The recently appointed head of the U.S. agency in charge of the president’s safety said Tuesday that he is working to change the department’s culture after a series of security mishaps.
Secret Service Director Joseph Clancy told lawmakers during congressional testimony that it took five days for him to find out about a March 4 incident in which two senior officers drove into a construction barrel after a late-night party at which they were allegedly drinking.
“Any time you have a senior level on the president's detail who is alleged to have even come through a secure area, as he did that evening, I should have been informed,” he said. “I'm very frustrated that we didn't know about this.”
Clancy said that the agents were driving slowly when they “nudged this barrel out of the way” as they made their way to a security checkpoint.
Lawmakers grilled the Secret Service chief about the incident, criticizing the agent’s reassignments rather than outright firings.
Asked by ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, Rep. Nita Lowey, why the agents were not automatically dismissed, Clancy said he doesn’t “have the ability to fire people at will.”
Both of the agents were reassigned to desk jobs pending an investigation into the incident by the Department of Homeland Security's Office of the Inspector General.
“It's going to take some time for the culture to be changed,” Clancy said. He didn’t directly address whether the agents were inebriated when they drove into the construction barrel, but said “there's an element within our agency that does cope with the stresses.”
“Unfortunately, we have an element, and I would argue that it's a smaller element, but we do have an element that is causing this agency great distress,” he said.
The incident was the latest in a series of security mishaps for the service.
In September, an intruder scaled the White House’s perimeter fence and made his way onto the White House grounds before being detained inside the executive mansion’s East Room. The man was allegedly armed with a knife when he was arrested.
Former Director Julia Pierson resigned from her post amid the uproar in October. Clancy was appointed by President Barack Obama to fill the position in February.
Clancy asked lawmakers to approve $8 million in funding for a to-size replica of the White House that would be built nearly 20 miles (32 kilometers) from the executive mansion at the Secret Service’s training facility in Beltsville, Maryland.
The Secret Service currently uses a parking lot for White House security training, but it lacks the features of the White House grounds, Clancy said.
“We think it's important to have a true replica of what the White House is so we can do a better job of this integrated training between our uniform division officers, our agents and our tactical teams,” he said.
