For everyone that is determined to make the security of the First Family and the White House the responsibility of a Social Secretary, this is for you. An internal Secret Service training document reveals 91 security breaches from 1980 to 2003. According to CNN.com…
“Secret Service spokesman Edwin Donovan confirmed the existence of the internal report, which was first disclosed in the Washington Post on Monday. Donovan would not provide CNN a copy of the report, but said it is a historical document that is used to help train agents in preventing and responding to breaches of security.
According to Donovan, approximately half of the security breaches involved people who jumped the White House fence and were immediately apprehended by Secret Service agents.
Only a limited number incidents, he said, involved direct contact with the president:
– Last month, Tareq and Michaele Salahi were allowed into the White House for a state dinner in honor of the Indian prime minister despite not being on the official guest list. They were photographed greeting President Obama in the reception line.
– Perpetual gate crasher Richard Weaver managed to get by Secret Service checks four times: a 1991 prayer breakfast attended by President George H.W. Bush; the 1997 inaugural luncheon for President Bill Clinton; the 2001 inaugural of George W. Bush; and a 2003 prayer breakfast with Bush.
– And in 1994, Stephan Winick was able to sneak into a group accompanying actor Harrison Ford for a meeting with President Clinton in Los Angeles, California.
Donovan said that in all cases, the intruders encountered other levels of screening and security before meeting the presidents.
“Agents are always there by the president. We don’t trust just magnetometers,” he said.
In the past 30 years, Donovan said, there have been vast improvements in security around the White House complex and elsewhere, including the extensive use of cameras and other tactical elements.”
On the chicanery and foolishness front, Barbara Walters reveals her own White House heist. Enjoy the additional banter that follows and have a happy Tuesday.
14 Comments, Comment or Ping
pepper
I thought this blog was about Michelle.
Dec 8th, 2009
pepper
I thought this blog was about Michelle. Desiree again taking the spotlight.
Dec 8th, 2009
Aminah Hanan
@PEPPER Yes this is about the First Lady and Ms Rogers is her Social Secretary and this is a follow up to my previous post. You all really believe this whole she’s trying to steal the spotlight thing. I just think that is ridiculous and impossible.
Dec 8th, 2009
admin
@pepper Because an attack on Desiree is an attack on Michelle Obama. You don’t really think they give a rip about Desiree. Maybe April Ryan and Robin Givhan have axes to grind, but they are doing the work for those who want to imply that Michelle Obama can’t throw a big dinner.
Dec 8th, 2009
rikyrah
thank you, ADMIN.
of course the attack on Desiree is an attack on MICHELLE OBAMA. they can’t attack the First Lady directly, so they attack her through Desiree.
this was left in the comments over at JJP, and I thought it was definitely an accurate observation by zizi2:
Rogers is the new link that the entitled class thinks it can hit to put a chink in the Obama armor. Afterall she unabashedly declared in a Wall Street Journal interview in April ( http://magazine.wsj.com/features/the-big-interv... ) that”
‘We have the best brand on Earth: the Obama brand,’… ‘Our possibilities are endless’
To the villagers not only was that presumptuous of the new President and his team, but it was unsettling the WAY that brand was defined. Had Rogers and her events simply fed the egos of the village denizens, she would have become their new BFF. But no, instead this brand was about making the White House “the People’s House.” It was about making the White House accessible to American citizens who would otherwise not be welcomed into this special residence of the nation’s Presidents. That she has been behind the effort to maximize the First Lady’s persona as as down-to-earth woman, who will welcome America’s diverse public into her strong and warm arms, has irked the beltway aristocracy who are now mostly on the fringes of THIS White House looking in. Rather it is DC’s minority and low-income school children who traipse to the White House for mentoring sessions, or to garden. It is the neighboring high school girls who get to be served a taste of the state Dinner menu on the afternoon of the event on tables set up exactly as the dignitaries who came in later experienced. And the First Lady led these girls through a fascinating history presentation of the White House state Dinners. These girls like all the other children who have been to the White House got treated like royalty. The village denizens CANNOT countenance that trespassing on their turf. That is what Robin Ghivan and April Ryan’s carping is all about. Desiree and the Chicago team have had the temerity to upend the exclusive attention that these token DC black journalists enjoyed (crabs in a basket mentality).
That Ms. Rogers is being cast as an attention craver is laughable since she is probably the most OVERQUALIFIED Social Secretary any White House administration has ever had. She does not need the $130,000 salary and she did not NEED this job, and nothing about her lifestyle choices is NEW. She has been a high-profile executive, a millionaire, who has run successful businesses both public and private. Her social networks were already vast before she ever set foot in the White House. If anything her role has been more of a value-addition to the administration than anything. But her ties with the First Family goes way back. She raised lots of money for the Obama campaign and gave inordinate amount of time to go campaign with Michelle Obama in barber shops and beauty salons during the early days of the Democratic primaries when African Americans were not yet sold on candidate Barack Obama. That is what a true friend does: stick with you when cameras are not looking and when the odds against you are so high, nobody in their right mind would stick with you. But Desiree was there. How do I know this? I have no connection to them but I avidly followed the Obama campaign right from the Feb 2007 announcement and read up everything on all the players in the campaign.
So the Washington punditocracy and village stenographer “outrage” at the “high profile” of Desiree Rogers is pure venomous BS. It is a new version of Glenn Beck’s earlier strategy to “purge” the Obama Administration after having tasted the blood of Van Jones. He was gunning for Valerie Jarrett next when Anita Dunn took the fight straight to Fox. The wingnuts already had their sights on ALL the African Americans in this administration. They are simply executing their plan of putting the “uppity knee-grows” back in their ghetto place. Plus, many of the Sally Quinn DC aristocracy were smarting at not having secured the coveted State Diner invitations (Sally Quinn actually snidely commented on Larry King the night of the State Dinner, that this was the first time there had been so many African Americans at such a White House event. What she did not add but was implied was that this was the first time the African Americans present were power brokers and not simply White House staff and service persons!!). This is their payback, a hit job, being snuck in on the back of the Secret Service error. NO wonder Robert Gibbs told April Ryan to essentially STFU!!
Dec 8th, 2009
Kelly
That there were 91 breaches before Desiree doesn’t mean that the last one didn’t happen because she eliminated the gate/list checker. I don’t think any of the previous ones happened at a state dinner. She should still take responsibility for her actions.
Dec 8th, 2009
Kelly
April Ryan and Robyn Givhan are journalists doing their jobs. They have every right to question Rogers and the way she has tried to redefine the job of Social Secretary (not for the better).
Dec 8th, 2009
GL
The secret service provide security i don’t see how it’s their sole responsibility when it came to the state dinner for the Indian prime minister. So when they had the state dinner, did the secret service have a list of the people who were supposed to be there while they were also checking to see if anyone had anything dangerous?
I’m not trying to put anything on Desiree but from all that i know she should take some blame and i can’t believe that the secret service is willing to take ALL of the blame that has me kinda suspicious. Something isn’t right about this and it has nothing to do with Desiree.
Dec 8th, 2009
jg82567
I think that the secret service is willing to take ALL of the blame because according to Director Sullivan’s testimony on the issue, the ss and the social office met before the dinner to coordinate procedures for the evening and everyone agreed to what the protocol would be, then the ss did not follow protocol. THAT is not Desiree’s fault and the ss knows it if no one else in the DC beltway insider gang does.
And beyond that, other security agencies around the world know it. How does it look to have the United States Secret Service, supposedly one of the most highly trained and respected security agencies in the world, saying they couldn’t properly man an entry point because the social secretary wasn’t standing over their shoulder?
If someone got into the Kremlin and the KGB said it was some staffer’s fault, those agents would be in a gulag somewhere, or worse, by sundown.
Dec 8th, 2009
Dee
Thanks for posting, Rikyrah…I’m also with zizi2 and the comments she made, over at JJP.
Dec 8th, 2009
leznoire1973
Leave Desirée alone! She does a good job!
Dec 8th, 2009
GL
Thanks for explaning jg82567.
Dec 9th, 2009
Jenny Browne
So what there have been 19 breaches of security? This is the most at-risk president we have had in the history of this nation – threats everywhere. Ms Rogers failed to monitor her own list because she was partying with the dignitaries. Very, very unprofessional. She is a distraction from the good things FLOTUS is doing including serving a menu with produce from her WH garden that night. This was completely obscured by Ms Rogers’ antics.
Ms Rogers should be toast.
Can we toast to the new Ambassador to the Bahamas? Where she can party all night?
Dec 9th, 2009
zizi2
Hi Rikyrah,
I just happened to come on here to find you had so kindly reposted my comment on JJP. I still stand by my assessment even moreso now than ever before, with the revelations emerging about SS lapses. While I could not countenance George W. Bush, I always wondered how it was that the Iraqi journalist could launch the shoe missile strike against our former Pres. not once but twice. I would have thought that the moment the guy turned to hurl the second shoe, the SS would have put a bullet through the guy’s hand or worse head. we only know it was a shoe from hindsight, but at the time of action, i don’t know how the SS could have taken any chances.
But hey, it’s much easier to blame Desiree Rogers. That is what the security of the most powerful man in the world boils down to-whether a Social Office staffer is standing at the entrance with clip-board in hand. And the staffer is supposed to recognize all invitees faces? I have to believe our security apparatus has a more sophisticated method of verifying the identity of guests. I hope all the fancy security gadgetry were not simply a myth to be found in spy movies. How did we do during the Cold War against the Soviet security apparatus? What if the Salahis had showed up with cosmetically fixed faces of other people (heck by the look of things we don’t know if that is not the case). And this is Desiree’s fault? Kelly is that what you reduce the POTUS’s security needs to?
Dec 9th, 2009