By Brett Daniel Shehadey
Special Contributor for In Homeland Security
Friday night, a man scaled the fence at the White House, sprinted through the North Yard and made his way inside an unlocked door at the North Portico before he was tackled to the ground by the guard stationed there. Officers yelled out commands to stop but were unable to catch him. Neither President Obama nor the First Lady were on the grounds but evacuation procedures were still set in motion by the incident.
The intruder was later identified as 42-year-old Texas veteran Omar J. Gonzalez. At first, Gonzalez was reported by the media by authorities as an unarmed intruder and then another department stated that he had a four-inch knife which is supported by court documents, according to Fox News. Gonzales was arrested for unlawful entry among other possible charges including possession of a deadly weapon.
Gonzalez tested negative for drugs. As for motive, he said he was, “concerned that the atmosphere was collapsing” and that he “needed to get the word out” by contacting the President. Was this an act of environmental activism ahead of the Climate Change March?
U.S. Representative Peter King, of the House Homeland Security Committee said, “Someone could actually get into the White House without being stopped.” This is significant when you consider that while there were no was no backpack or explosives on Gonzalez, there easily could have been. This could have been a terrorist attempt instead of what appears to be an activist statement.
The average sprint time is said to be 20 to 25 seconds from the fence line to the presidential residence. Law enforcement officials reviewing the Secret Service response are questioning why they failed to release the White House’s guard dogs. In addition to dogs roving the grounds, there are armed sentry patrols and snipers to prevent fence jumpers from getting too far into the grounds.
Technology could also play more of a role. Some radical suggestions of comments to the news article appear ridiculous or radical (e.g. using drones). But some immediate solutions should appear obvious to most: Why is the fence not electric or how is it even scalable? A good review will obviously start with the points of entry.
“Unfortunately, they are failing to do their job,” said Jason Chaffetz, Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security. “These are good men and women, but the Secret Service leadership has a lot of questions to answer.”
A prostitution scandal in 2012 and other oversights have tarnished the image of the Secret Service. There were other cases of sexual misconduct buy agents on the President’s detail and the dereliction of duty last March of drunkenness by three members of the counter-assault team in Netherlands. President Obama appointed the first female director of the Secret Service last year to change the agency culture. After the Gonzalez breach, the president affirmed his faith in the Secret Service.
Representative Mike Rogers, Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee took it a little easier on the Secret Service, referring to the latest failure at the White House, saying, “It’s just a matter of the Secret Service upping their game to make sure that they can maintain — that every detail matters — a door locked, a quick reaction when somebody hits the fence and over the gate. I think they are going to need to reinstate some of these ongoing checks about what activities they participate in. They are not doing their audits, their checks, their test runs to make sure that people are up to the right standard.”
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