Republican Jason Chaffetz and Democrat Elijah Cummings, the
ranking members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government
Reform, said in a statement that the request followed a
recommendation last week by a review panel charged with looking into
problems with the U.S. Secret Service.
The panel said in a summary of its report released on Thursday the
fence "needs to be changed as soon as possible to provide better
protection."
Johnson appointed a four-member independent panel in October after a
Sept. 19 intrusion by an Iraq war veteran who scaled the White House
fence, sprinted across the lawn and got deep inside the mansion
before an off-duty agent stopped him.
The congressmen noted that acting Secret Service Director Joseph
Clancy had previously testified that the agency was already “looking
for ways and options” to improve the fence.
The panel recommended that the fence be at least 4 or 5 feet (120 or
150 cm) higher and curved outward at the top to give agents more
time to assess the risk of a jumper.
It also said the Secret Service, which is charged with guarding the
U.S. president and other senior government officials, needs an
outsider to overhaul the insular agency, beef up staffing and
improve training.
The last Secret Service director, Julia Pierson, was a 30-year
veteran who was tasked with cleaning up the agency's culture after a
2012 presidential trip to Colombia in which up to a dozen agents
were found to have hired prostitutes.
[to top of second column] |
Pierson resigned under fierce criticism on Oct. 1, less than two
weeks after the Sept. 19 White House intrusion. That fence-jumper
breach came a day after the disclosure that an armed private
security contractor rode on an elevator with President Barack Obama
in Atlanta in a breach of protocol earlier in September.
The security lapses, along with a 2011 incident in which seven
gunshots were fired at the White House, had raised concerns across
Washington that Obama was not as well protected as he should be in
an age of global tumult.
(Reporting by Eric Walsh; Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu,
Roberta Rampton and David Lawder; Editing by Eric Beech)
[© 2014 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2014 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
|