United States Secret Service an Agency in Crisis

The United States Secret Service (USSS) is tasked with a zero-failure mission: to protectthe President and other protectees at all costs. For most of its existence, USSS has strived tocomplete that mission while simultaneously garnering the respect and admiration of theAmerican people. Secret Service agents and officers earned a reputation as stoic and imperviousguardians of our government's most important leaders. The American public's respect for theagency diminished following the April 2012 prostitution scandal in Cartagena, Colombia, whichattracted significant media attention and exposed systemic problems within the agency.Since then, several incidents have made it abundantly clear that USSS is in crisis. Theagency's weaknesses have been exposed by a series of security failures at the White House, during presidential visits, and at the residences of other officials, including Vice President Bidenand former presidents of the United States. The Committee's investigation found that problemsthat undermine USSS's protective mission predate and postdate the misconduct in Cartagena.The Committee also found that at times agency leaders have provided incomplete and inaccurateinformation to Congress.This report examines four incidents in detail: a November 11, 2011, incident where anindividual fired several shots at the White House from a semiautomatic rifle; the April 2012misconduct in Cartagena, Colombia; a September 16, 2014, incident at the Centers for DiseaseControl and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, where an armed contract security guard with aviolent arrest history rode in an elevator with President Obama and later breached the President'ssecurity formation; and a March 4, 2015, incident where two intoxicated senior USSS officials-including a top official on the President's protective detail-interfered with a crime sceneinvolving a bomb threat just outside the White House grounds