Secret Service Missed Man with Gun in Elevator with Obama
Photo Credit: REUTERS / Jason ReedBy Susan Crabtree.
A man with a gun that the Secret Service did not know about rode in an elevator with President Obama during his visit to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta on Sept. 16.
The previously undisclosed breach, confirmed by two sources familiar with the case, raises new questions about the agency’s ability to protect the president.
The incident, which took place three days before an intruder jumped a fence and sprinted inside the White House, involved a failure in Secret Service advance work to prevent an armed man from coming into close proximity with Obama while he was visiting the CDC to receive a briefing about the Ebola threat.
The threat to the president appeared minimal, but the incident alarmed agents on site and exposes a breakdown in several important Secret Service security protocols, the sources say.
The information comes the same day Secret Service Director Julia Pierson appeared before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and lawmakers publicly upbraided her for three hours about the Sept. 19 White House security breach, among other problems at the agency.
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WATCH: Secret Service Can’t Answer Key Trey Gowdy Questions on 2011 White House Shooting
By Pete Kasperowicz.
Secret Service Director Julia Pierson on Tuesday indicated her agency had little or no reason to decide that the shots fired at the White House in 2011 was just the noise of a car backfiring, and failed to answer why agents didn’t do a thorough examine of the White House grounds after the shooting.
Pierson was pressed on the 2011 shooting by Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) at a House Oversight hearing, which also dealt with this month’s incident in which a fence-jumper was able to enter the White House and enter several rooms before being taken out.
On the 2011 shooting, Gowdy noted that several Secret Service agents said they smelled gunpowder and drew their weapons in response to what they thought was a shooting. But after a brief examination, the Secret Service decided, in coordination with the U.S. Park Service, that the noise of the shots were just a car backfiring.
Gowdy started by asking why agents didn’t run through a full examination of the White House, even if some believed it might have been a car backfiring.
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