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What the next Secret Service leader needs to do
President Barack Obama is hanging out the “Help Wanted” sign again.
With the resignation Wednesday of Director Julia Pierson, the Secret Service is the latest beleaguered agency to be deemed in need of a top-to-bottom housecleaning after high-profile management failures — failures that followed numerous red flags and complaints that low-ranking personnel didn’t feel comfortable flagging potential problems.
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In May, Obama accepted the resignation of Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki after reports that staff at VA hospitals were falsifying records to make delays in testing and treatment seem shorter than they were. Just a month earlier, the president announced that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was on her way out following the failed rollout of the Obamacare website.
(Also on POLITICO: Obama and the Secret Service)
And last year, Obama demanded and received the resignation of the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service after conservative and other nonprofit groups were targeted for special scrutiny in a manner the president called “inexcusable.”
Indeed, Pierson was herself supposed to usher in a new era at the Secret Service in the wake of the international embarrassment security agents caused Obama in Cartagena, Colombia, in 2012 by cavorting with prostitutes on the night before the president arrived in town. However, the string of embarrassments continued to pile up under her tenure, with an intruder making it over the White House fence and across the ground floor of the residence before being apprehended and another man reportedly carrying a gun while operating an elevator Obama rode in during a Georgia visit last month.
An interim director has been named for the Secret Service, former Presidential Protective Division chief Joe Clancy. Former agents and lawmakers say he and whoever is named as a permanent director for the agency face an uphill battle to restore the image of an agency badly tarnished in recent days.
(Also on POLITICO: Secret Service director Julia Pierson resigns)
Here are five audiences the new director will need to win over — or intimidate — in order to get the Secret Service back on track:
1) The Obamas
Because of the tradition of presidents not criticizing the men and women who protect them 24/7, it’s hard to gauge the level of presidential outrage over the recent Secret Service slip-ups. However, some former agents say that while Obama is sanguine about a certain degree of risk for himself, that cool is unlikely to extend to indications that his wife or, even more so, his children could be in danger.
“The president of the United States is a father and husband first. That’s his house,” said former agent and current Maryland Republican congressional candidate Dan Bongino. “Gunshots were fired at the home where his children live. … Leaving all politics aside, he’s a doting father, so this has to deeply disturb him.”
(Also on POLITICO: Why we need a less-Secret Service)
A top priority for Clancy will have to be restoring the trust with the Obamas. He may be well-positioned to do that since he headed up the agents who worked most closely with Obama during his first few years in office. “He has a very close relationship with the president’s inner circle. … He will mend the personal fences with the president and his family,” Bongino predicted.
2) Congress
While White House press secretary Josh Earnest made Pierson’s exit sound like a presidential decision by declaring that Obama “concluded that new leadership … was required,” Pierson suggested that a key factor that drove her out was that lawmakers didn’t think she could turn the Service around.
“Congress has lost confidence in my ability to run the agency. The media has made it clear that this is what they expected,” Pierson told Bloomberg News on Wednesday.
The prolonged battering that Pierson took Tuesday when she testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee was striking for its bipartisanship at a time when Republicans and Democrats rarely agree on anything — particularly what constitutes a Washington scandal. When lawmakers on both sides of the aisle began talking about calling for her resignation, her departure was all but inevitable.
“When members of Congress from both parties start to say there’s something wrong with the culture [at an agency], that’s the kiss of death,” former FBI executive Tom Fuentes said on CNN.
One detail members of Congress know that few outsiders do is that the Secret Service has traditionally policed itself, usually escaping scrutiny by the inspectors general who probe other Homeland Security components. Ending that carve-out is one way a new director could try to repair relations with the Hill.
“The internal investigations have proven fruitless,” Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) warned Wednesday. “They have not been thorough or complete.”
3) The rank and file
Morale at the Secret Service was said to be low even before the recent spate of high-profile incidents. Between 2011 and 2013, one key index of employee satisfaction fell from 65.8 to 52.8, leaving the Service ranking 226 out of 300 federal agencies.
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