WASHINGTON (AP) – Secret Service Director Julia Pierson resigned today in the face of multiple revelations of security breaches, bumbling in her agency and rapidly eroding confidence that the president and his family were being kept safe.
President Barack Obama “concluded new leadership of that agency was required,” said spokesman Josh Earnest.
Though the day, high-ranking lawmakers from both parties had urged her to step down after her poorly received testimony to Congress a day earlier – and revelation of yet another security problem: Obama had shared an elevator in Atlanta last month with an armed guard who was not authorised to be around him.
That appeared to be the last straw that crumbled trust in her leadership in the White House. Earnest said Obama and his staff did not learn about that breach until just before it was made public in news reports yesterday.
“Today Julia Pierson, the director of the United States Secret Service, offered her resignation, and I accepted it,” Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said in a statement.
He announced that Joseph Clancy, retired head of the agency’s Presidential Protective Division, would come out of retirement to lead the Secret Service temporarily.
Taking further steps to restore trust in the beleaguered agency, Johnson also outlined an independent inquiry into the agency’s operations.
That trust was shaken by a series of failures in the agency’s critical job of protecting the president, including a breach September 19, when a knife-carrying man climbed over the White House fence on Pennsylvania Avenue and made it deep into the executive mansion before being stopped.
Republicans quickly served notice that Pierson’s resignation would not end their investigation of the Secret Service.
Pierson’s permanent replacement will probably face a gruelling confirmation process before Congress.
