--- title: White House Security Breach: The Secret Service Thinks We Are Fools description: Its excuses after this weekend's breach are ridiculous and revealing of a troubled culture. The agency needs a new, outside director. canonical: https://time.com/3421801/secret-service-white-house-security-breach/ author: Ronald Kessler article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-09-23T15:22:37.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T05:07:41.783Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Ronald Kessler: The Secret Service Thinks We Are Fools og:description: Its excuses after this weekend's breach are ridiculous and revealing of a troubled culture. The agency needs a new, outside director to clean house. og:url: https://time.com/3421801/secret-service-white-house-security-breach/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta600b0ebeb2f3578/6986a49ed0b6f2af32306399/42-22902134.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 5616 og:image:height: 3159 og:image:alt: USA - Politics - President Obama Campaigns for New Jersey Governor Corzine og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Ronald Kessler: The Secret Service Thinks We Are Fools twitter:description: Its excuses after this weekend's breach are ridiculous and revealing of a troubled culture. The agency needs a new, outside director to clean house. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta600b0ebeb2f3578/6986a49ed0b6f2af32306399/42-22902134.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The Secret Service Thinks We Are Fools > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Inside TIME: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Inside TIME is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. A closer look at TIME's latest cover and our most compelling stories. Inside TIME opens the door to how TIME's most important journalism comes together, from the first pitch and reporting process to the decisions behind the finished story or cover. 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Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. by [Ronald Kessler](https://time.com/author/ronald-kessler/) ## Ronald Kessler Sep 23, 2014 3:22 PM UTC  A Secret Service agent watches the crowd as President Barrack Obama speaks in Holmdel, N.J. on July 16, 2009. A Secret Service agent watches the crowd as President Barrack Obama speaks in Holmdel, N.J. on July 16, 2009.Brooks Kraft—Corbis by [Ronald Kessler](https://time.com/author/ronald-kessler/) ## Ronald Kessler Sep 23, 2014 3:22 PM UTC If you want to know what is wrong with the Secret Service, take a look at the statement the agency issued after a deranged intruder managed to enter the White House for the first time since the Secret Service closed off public access to the mansion during World War II. According to the Secret Service, the Uniformed Division officers who did nothing to apprehend 42-year-old Omar J. Gonzalez after he hopped over the White House fence “showed tremendous restraint.” The agency is so arrogant that it thinks it can make such an obviously ridiculous statement and the public will buy it because we are fools. But the Secret Service is not fooling the FBI. Senior FBI officials are horrified by the Secret Service’s handling of the matter and are laughing at its effort to cover up its own failure by brazenly praising the officers’ “restraint.” The FBI’s reaction is well founded. In protecting the White House, the Secret Service Uniformed Division officers and the Uniformed Division’s Emergency Response Team, armed with P90 submachine guns, are supposed to be the first line of defense. But they were either asleep or just not paying attention when Gonzales sprinted across the lawn. They thus failed to unleash the agency’s Belgian Malinois dogs, which are cross-trained to sniff out explosives and to attack an intruder and take him or her down. Having failed to unleash the dogs in time, the officers should have taken out the intruder with a bullet. When it comes to protecting the president, officers and agents must make split-second decisions to avoid an assassination. Courts have given the Secret Service much wider latitude than other law enforcement agencies in use of deadly force. In Gonzalez’ case, no one knew if he was concealing a bomb or weapons of mass destruction. If it turned out he had them, it would have been too late to kill him once he was in the White House. While President Obama had just left the White House, he might have decided to return. Gonzalez’s act of racing into the White House by definition meant that he was a threat to the president. The Secret Service was derelict in its duty to protect the president by failing to eliminate that threat. While all of this may seem obvious, apparently it is not to Obama, who has defended the Secret Service and its leaders even as it let Michaele and Tareq Salahi and a third intruder, Carlos Allen, into a White House state dinner even though they were not on the guest list. The president continued to defend the agency even as 11 agents had to be sent home from Colombia for hiring prostitutes when Obama was about to visit (a story which I broke). Yet these scandals are the tip of the iceberg. As reported in my book _The First Family Detail_, while agents are brave and dedicated, Secret Service management perpetuates a culture that condones laxness and cutting corners. Under pressure from White House political staffs or presidential campaign staffs, Secret Service management tells agents to let people into events without magnetometer or metal detector screening. Assassins concealing grenades or other weapons could theoretically enter an event and easily assassinate the president or a presidential candidate. When it comes to firearms requalification and physical fitness, the Secret Service either doesn’t allow agents time to fulfill the requirements or asks agents to fill out their own test scores. All this has led to poor morale and a high turnover rate. Tired agents and officers are forced to work long overtime hours, contributing to the sort of inattention that took place when Gonzalez scaled the White House fence. The Secret Service has refused to update its sensors around the White House with the latest technologically advanced devices for detecting intrusions and weapons of mass destruction. Its arrogance extended to leaving the doors to the White House unlocked on the presumption that its personnel could handle any threat. No congressional hearings or internal reviews are going to fix the agency. Only an outside director with a fresh perspective—comparable to Robert S. Mueller III when he took over as FBI director—would be capable of reforming Secret Service management, shaking up the agency, and changing the culture that fosters corner cutting and punishes agents who question it. But given Obama’s lack of judgment, that is not going to happen. An assassination nullifies American democracy. But Obama will continue to insist that he has confidence in the Secret Service despite the risk to his own life and the lives of his family members, who would be prime targets of an attack by ISIS terrorists on the vulnerable White House. “We don’t have enough people or the equipment to do protection the way they advertise they do,” a veteran current agent (who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to fear of losing his job) says. “And how we have not had an incident up to this point is truly amazing—a miracle.” _Ronald Kessler, a former_ Washington Post _and_ Wall Street Journal _investigative reporter, is the author of_ The First Family Detail: Secret Service Agents Reveal the Hidden Lives of the Presidents_._ ### PHOTOS: Go Behind the Scenes with the Secret Service  Secret Service agents stand guard around President Bush's Limousine on the tarmac as he arrives in Kansas City, Mo., Jan. 25, 2007. Brooks Kraft—Corbis  Secret Service agents surround U.S. President Barack Obama at a campaign event in Las Vegas on Nov. 1, 2012. Brooks Kraft—Corbis  A Secret Service agent watches the crowd as President Barrack Obama speaks in Holmdel, N.J. on July 16, 2009. Brooks Kraft—Corbis  U.S. President George W. Bush attends a campaign rally in the town square of Troy, Ohio, on Aug. 28, 2004. Brooks Kraft—Corbis  Secret Service agents watch as President George W. Bush lands in Philadelphia on March 15, 2004. Brooks Kraft—Corbis  Secret Service agents watch as U.S. President George W. Bush arrives in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on Nov. 3, 2006. Brooks Kraft—Corbis  A Presidential limousine is loaded onto a C5 military transport plane bound for eastern Europe, where President Bush is headed next week. A "secure package" of motorcade vehicles, including the limousines and a fleet of Secret Service SUVs is transported to the site of every presidential visit, Maryland, March 28, 2008. Brooks Kraft—Corbis  A Secret Service agent stands guard in front of President George W Bush's vehicle, while he tours rebuilding efforts in a neighborhood affected by Hurricane Katrina, in Long Beach, Miss. on March 1, 2007. Brooks Kraft—Corbis  A Secret Service agent with the Counter Assault and Tactical Division holds a loaded weapon in front of the North Portico of the White House in Washington, Oct. 28, 2009. Brooks Kraft—Corbis  Members of the Counter Asault Division of the US Secret Service keep an eye on the crowd as President Barack Obama departs the Annual Legislative Conference of the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Washington on March 10, 2009. Brooks Kraft—Corbis  A uniformed secret service agent waits for the arrival of President Bush and Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on the North Portico of the White House in Washington on Oct. 13, 2008. Brooks Kraft—Corbis  Secret Service agents stand near the Presidential Limousine at the conclusion of a campaign rally attended by President Bush in an airport hanger in Sugar Land, Texas on Oct. 30, 2006. Brooks Kraft—Corbis ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3421801/secret-service-white-house-security-breach/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3421801/secret-service-white-house-security-breach/"},"headline":"The Secret Service Thinks We Are Fools","datePublished":"2014-09-23T15:22:37.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T05:07:41.783Z","description":"Its excuses after this weekend's breach are ridiculous and revealing of a troubled culture. 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