Obama taps 'insider' to run embattled secret service

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/18/joseph-clancy-secret-service-new-director

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Barack Obama named Joseph Clancy as the new head of the secret service on Wednesday, promoting the interim director of the agency to a permanent role in charge of the embattled security detail.

Clancy, 59, took over as acting head of the agency in October when his predecessor, Julia Pierson, resigned after agents allowed several embarrassing breaches, including failing to stop a man with a knife from climbing the White House fence, sprinting across the lawn and then running 80ft into the president’s home.

A 27-year veteran of the agency, Clancy is not the outsider that a report from the Department of Homeland Security strongly recommended the hire. White House press secretary Josh Earnest framed Clancy’s appointment as “in some ways the best of both worlds”.

Although the report concluded that “only a director from outside the secret service, removed from organizational conditions and personal relationships, will be able to do [an] honest top to bottom reassessment”, Earnest said that Clancy had proven himself “able to conduct a candid, clear-eyed assessment” and used his “credibility built up inside the agency” to enact reforms.

Obama did consider other candidates, Earnest said, including outsiders who could have been the first director in the agency’s history without past experience in the service. Well acquainted with the president due to three years leading his security detail, the president chose Clancy in October to quickly restore calm and order to an agency that had been repeatedly excoriated by Congress.

But Clancy has so far weathered congressional criticism, despite having spent only three of the past 30 years away from the agency while working as Comcast security chief in Philadelphia.

Representative John Chaffetz, the Republican chair of the House committee on oversight and government reform, released a statement lambasting Obama’s decision, if not Clancy himself.

“The good men and women of the secret service are screaming for a fresh start,” Chaffetz wrote. “The secret service would be best served by a transformative and dynamic leader from outside the agency,” he concluded, describing such a leader as “someone with a fresh perspective, free from allegiances and without ties to what has consistently been described as a ‘good old boys network’.”

The secret service director is not subject to confirmation by Congress.

Despite the attacks on the administration, Chaffetz said he appreciated Clancy’s early actions and looked forward to working more with the newly promoted director. Democrat Elijah Cummings, also on the committee, praised Clancy for being “extremely responsive to Congress”.

Chaffetz has emerged as one of many congressional critics of the secret service, many of whom have seized on a detail from the December report: 1,300 uniformed officers received only about 25 minutes of training in 2013.

Since beginning as interim director, Clancy has ordered additional training for agents who work the White House grounds and actively lobbied for more funding for overworked agents, who the report found were often stretched “beyond [their] limits”. He also fired several senior agency officials; the report found the agency was “starved for leadership” at all levels, “from agents to officers to supervisors”.

Clancy’s attention to equipment and technology reflects growing concerns about cyberwar and drone technology, illustrated by an accidental “quad-copter” crash on White House grounds in January. The secret service has not yet increased the size of the perimeter fence around the White House, however, as the report also recommended it do “as soon as possible”.

The service’s duties are not limited to protecting the president. Responsible for guarding foreign dignitaries, agents will be charged with protecting Pope Francis during his 2015 trip to the US, with security at the UN general assembly in New York, and with looking after the 2016 presidential nominees.