The Inner Politics of the Secret Service and Julia Pierson's Last Days
Marc Ambinder
Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
After her cringe-inducing testimony before Congress yesterday, Julia Pierson, the 23rd director of the United States Secret Service, holed up in her 8th floor office at Secret Service headquarters in downtown Washington, trying to salvage her job. She consulted friends, allies, and mentors. She had seen the reviews, and wondered if there was anything else she could do. One person with whom she spoke last night said simply, "She knew."
It was time to go.
This morning, she notified members of her senior staff, as well as major detail leaders, and then Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, that she would resign. Then she called the White House and tendered her resignation.
Johnson had a contingency plan. Two days ago, with the blessing of the White House, he had asked Joe Clancy, the Special Agent in Charge of the Presidential Protection Division from 2008 to 2011, if he would consider stepping in as interim director. Clancy said he would.
Throughout the weeks of scrutiny the agency has faced since a White House intruder inexplicably made it over a fence and deep into the presidential mansion, the President himself has insisted he's had full confidence in the Secret Service. Of course, he could never say otherwise, even if he wanted to: it would undermine his relationship with his personal security detail, on whom he relies to protect his life and the lives of his wife and daughters.It could also suggest that he could be aware of a security vulnerability that an assassin could exploit. But the president's public pronouncements of his faith in the agency would not be enough to protect Pierson's job.
Though Obama likes and respects Pierson, presidential associates I spoke with yesterday gave me the strong impression that the President's confidence in the Secret Service director had begun to fray well before the fencing jumping incident on September 19, or the disclosure yesterday that an uncleared armed security guard had ridden in an elevator with the President during a trip to Atlanta in September. He did not get the sense that she had the support of the Secret Service's rank and file. Obama has often been reluctant to discipline subordinates simply for the sake of appearing to act decisive, preferring to let people come to their own conclusions about whether they should continue on the job.
And now, once again the administration confronts what has become an oddly bedeviling chore: getting the Secret Service out of the news. The black eyes began in 2009, when party crashers managed to get inside Obama's first state dinner, a minor but embarrassing lapse. In 2011, a housekeeper for the Obamas discovered bullets on a White House balcony four days after they had been fired; in March of 2012, agents at work in Cartagena, Colombia ahead of a presidential visit were sent home after drunkenly soliciting prostitutes.
A new director, in 2013, was supposed to end the era of slip-ups and get the agency on proper footing. Pierson was, in fact, not Obama's first choice for the job. A senior White House official told me that a few weeks before he introduced her in the Oval Office in March of 2013, Obama had settled on another candidate, David O'Connor, a recently retired assistant director of investigations seen as widely popular among the rank and file, someone who had spent time outside the agency, too. He had the bearing of a Secret Service agent. No bullshit about him. But when O'Connor's name leaked to Reuters, one of his rival candidates—not Pierson—instigated an internal campaign to undermine O'Connor's reputation.He had rubbed black agents the wrong way. He was abrupt and imperious.
These allegations quickly reached Valerie Jarrett, the president's adviser who was quietly handling the search for a new director. Jarrett found the rumors poisonous. She did not know whether any of it was true, but she found it distasteful that candidates for the prestigious position were jockeying like state senate candidates. O'Connor did not want to put his family through any controversy, a friend of his told me, and quietly turned down the job.
So Pierson, whose initial interview with the President had gone well enough, was brought in again for a final interview. She was qualified as an agent and a manager. She had served as chief of staff, had been with the agency for 29 years. And she was a woman. According to a White House official, when they talked about the job, Obama asked Pierson to be fully transparent with him. He understood how complex the presidential protection enterprise was, and his trust in her would have to be built on a foundation of honesty: If there are threats, tell me about them. If you make mistakes, let me know first.
Pierson's predecessor, Mark Sullivan had been the director for seven years—his last two being tumultuous and morale sapping. But at the same time, the agency performed heroically, proving itself up to the task of protecting the country's first black president at a time of international insecurity and domestic political dysfunction. Sullivan survived in the job as long as he did because he publicly took responsibility for the botches on his watch and because he did something uncommon for agency heads: he fired the people who made mistakes. This made him as much of a change agent as the Secret Service ever had. It clearly needed more.
Before he retired, Sullivan decided to write a personal letter to the man or woman who would succeed him. He told me later what his main message was. "You've got to be willing to evaluate everything from top to bottom here, the way we're running right now, and be open to change."
Though Pierson boasted of talking personally to more than 1,500 employees, the string of embarrassments continued under her watch: in the past year, the Secret Service dealt with reports of agents drunkenly crashing cars in South Florida, passing out in hallways in Europe, and getting into alcohol-fueled public disputes at Washington hotels. Because of the Secret Service's unique mission, every lapse feels like a near-catastrophe because, in theory, every security lapse could lead to a world-altering catastrophe in the blink of an eye. After the saga of Omar Gonzales—after a 42-year old man with a limp took 25 confused seconds to crash through an open White House door with a knife—the urgent task of ending the blunders at the Secret Service falls to someone new.
Marc Ambinder is a GQContributing Editor
Marc Ambinder
Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
After her cringe-inducing testimony before Congress yesterday, Julia Pierson, the 23rd director of the United States Secret Service, holed up in her 8th floor office at Secret Service headquarters in downtown Washington, trying to salvage her job. She consulted friends, allies, and mentors. She had seen the reviews, and wondered if there was anything else she could do. One person with whom she spoke last night said simply, "She knew."
It was time to go.
This morning, she notified members of her senior staff, as well as major detail leaders, and then Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, that she would resign. Then she called the White House and tendered her resignation.
Johnson had a contingency plan. Two days ago, with the blessing of the White House, he had asked Joe Clancy, the Special Agent in Charge of the Presidential Protection Division from 2008 to 2011, if he would consider stepping in as interim director. Clancy said he would.
Throughout the weeks of scrutiny the agency has faced since a White House intruder inexplicably made it over a fence and deep into the presidential mansion, the President himself has insisted he's had full confidence in the Secret Service. Of course, he could never say otherwise, even if he wanted to: it would undermine his relationship with his personal security detail, on whom he relies to protect his life and the lives of his wife and daughters.It could also suggest that he could be aware of a security vulnerability that an assassin could exploit. But the president's public pronouncements of his faith in the agency would not be enough to protect Pierson's job.
Though Obama likes and respects Pierson, presidential associates I spoke with yesterday gave me the strong impression that the President's confidence in the Secret Service director had begun to fray well before the fencing jumping incident on September 19, or the disclosure yesterday that an uncleared armed security guard had ridden in an elevator with the President during a trip to Atlanta in September. He did not get the sense that she had the support of the Secret Service's rank and file. Obama has often been reluctant to discipline subordinates simply for the sake of appearing to act decisive, preferring to let people come to their own conclusions about whether they should continue on the job.
And now, once again the administration confronts what has become an oddly bedeviling chore: getting the Secret Service out of the news. The black eyes began in 2009, when party crashers managed to get inside Obama's first state dinner, a minor but embarrassing lapse. In 2011, a housekeeper for the Obamas discovered bullets on a White House balcony four days after they had been fired; in March of 2012, agents at work in Cartagena, Colombia ahead of a presidential visit were sent home after drunkenly soliciting prostitutes.
A new director, in 2013, was supposed to end the era of slip-ups and get the agency on proper footing. Pierson was, in fact, not Obama's first choice for the job. A senior White House official told me that a few weeks before he introduced her in the Oval Office in March of 2013, Obama had settled on another candidate, David O'Connor, a recently retired assistant director of investigations seen as widely popular among the rank and file, someone who had spent time outside the agency, too. He had the bearing of a Secret Service agent. No bullshit about him. But when O'Connor's name leaked to Reuters, one of his rival candidates—not Pierson—instigated an internal campaign to undermine O'Connor's reputation.He had rubbed black agents the wrong way. He was abrupt and imperious.
These allegations quickly reached Valerie Jarrett, the president's adviser who was quietly handling the search for a new director. Jarrett found the rumors poisonous. She did not know whether any of it was true, but she found it distasteful that candidates for the prestigious position were jockeying like state senate candidates. O'Connor did not want to put his family through any controversy, a friend of his told me, and quietly turned down the job.
So Pierson, whose initial interview with the President had gone well enough, was brought in again for a final interview. She was qualified as an agent and a manager. She had served as chief of staff, had been with the agency for 29 years. And she was a woman. According to a White House official, when they talked about the job, Obama asked Pierson to be fully transparent with him. He understood how complex the presidential protection enterprise was, and his trust in her would have to be built on a foundation of honesty: If there are threats, tell me about them. If you make mistakes, let me know first.
Pierson's predecessor, Mark Sullivan had been the director for seven years—his last two being tumultuous and morale sapping. But at the same time, the agency performed heroically, proving itself up to the task of protecting the country's first black president at a time of international insecurity and domestic political dysfunction. Sullivan survived in the job as long as he did because he publicly took responsibility for the botches on his watch and because he did something uncommon for agency heads: he fired the people who made mistakes. This made him as much of a change agent as the Secret Service ever had. It clearly needed more.
Before he retired, Sullivan decided to write a personal letter to the man or woman who would succeed him. He told me later what his main message was. "You've got to be willing to evaluate everything from top to bottom here, the way we're running right now, and be open to change."
Though Pierson boasted of talking personally to more than 1,500 employees, the string of embarrassments continued under her watch: in the past year, the Secret Service dealt with reports of agents drunkenly crashing cars in South Florida, passing out in hallways in Europe, and getting into alcohol-fueled public disputes at Washington hotels. Because of the Secret Service's unique mission, every lapse feels like a near-catastrophe because, in theory, every security lapse could lead to a world-altering catastrophe in the blink of an eye. After the saga of Omar Gonzales—after a 42-year old man with a limp took 25 confused seconds to crash through an open White House door with a knife—the urgent task of ending the blunders at the Secret Service falls to someone new.
Marc Ambinder is a GQContributing Editor
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