President Barack Obama “concluded new leadership of that agency was required,” said White House spokesman Josh Earnest.
High-ranking lawmakers from both parties had urged Pierson to step down after her poorly received testimony Tuesday before Congress — and the revelation of yet another security problem: agents had failed to prevent an armed guard who was not authorized to be around Obama from riding an elevator with the president when he visited the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta Sept. 16.
That report, which emerged late Tuesday, appeared to be the last straw for the administration.
“Today Julia Pierson, the director of the United States Secret Service, offered her resignation, and I accepted it,” Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said in a statement. He announced that Joseph Clancy, retired head of the agency’s Presidential Protective Division, would come out of retirement to lead the Secret Service temporarily.
Taking further steps to restore trust in the beleaguered agency, Johnson also outlined an independent inquiry into the agency’s operations.
That trust was shaken by a series of failures in the agency’s critical job of protecting the president, including a breach Sept. 19, when a knife-carrying man climbed over the White House fence and made it deep into the executive mansion before being stopped.
Republicans said Pierson’s resignation and the inquiry ordered by Johnson would not end their investigation.
“Problems at the Secret Service pre-date Ms. Pierson’s tenure as director, and her resignation certainly does not resolve them,” said Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House oversight committee.
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said he backed a call for an independent “blue-ribbon commission” to conduct a comprehensive review of the agency, saying “the more we discover, the clearer it becomes that the Secret Service is beset by a culture of complacency and incompetence.” And Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, who chairs the House Committee on Homeland Security, said he plans legislation to set up an independent panel.
In an interview with Bloomberg News after her resignation was announced, Pierson said the media “expected” her to resign.
“I think it’s in the best interest of the Secret Service and the American public if I step down,” she said. “Congress has lost confidence in my ability to run the agency. The media has made it clear that this is what they expected.”
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, a leader of the congressional inquiry, said Pierson’s resignation “had to happen, but there are some systemic challenges that must be addressed.”
Some revelations came from whistleblowers who contacted Chaffetz, and he suggested more damaging stories may emerge. “Unfortunately there are more out there and we’ll see how that goes,” he said.
While the other incident were serious, they posed no direct threat to Obama or his family. The Atlanta elevator slip-up was the first known Secret Service failure to unfold in the presence of the president.
Earnest said the White House learned about the episode only about when lawmakers and the public did in reports by the Washington Examiner and The Washington Post. That was despite Pierson’s statement to the committee that she briefs the president “100 percent of the time” about threats to his personal security and those at the White House.
The man accused of running into the White House on Sept. 19, Omar J. Gonzalez, pleaded not guilty Wednesday in a brief appearance in federal court. He is accused of unlawfully entering a restricted building while carrying a deadly weapon.
• Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki, who resigned last May, taking the blame for what he decried as a “lack of integrity” in the sprawling health care system for the nation’s military veterans.
• Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of health and human services when the “Obamacare” online insurance marketplace failed spectacularly in its launch.
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