The man who jumped the White House fence this month and sprinted through the front door made it much farther into the building than previously known, overpowering one Secret Service officer and running through much of the main floor, according to three people familiar with the incident.

An alarm box near the front entrance of the White House designed to alert guards to an intruder had been muted at what officers believed was a request of the usher’s office, said a Secret Service official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The officer posted inside the front door appeared to be delayed in learning that the intruder, Omar Gonzalez, was about to burst through. Officers are trained that, upon learning of an intruder on the grounds, often through the alarm boxes posted around the property, they must immediately lock the front door.

After barreling past the guard immediately inside the door, Gonzalez, who was carrying a knife, dashed past the stairway leading a half-flight up to the first family’s living quarters. He then ran into the 80-foot-long East Room, an ornate space often used for receptions or presidential addresses.

Gonzalez was tackled by a counter-assault agent at the far southern end of the East Room. The intruder reached the doorway to the Green Room, a parlor overlooking the South Lawn with artwork and antique furniture, according to three people familiar with the incident.

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Security reviewed after fence-jumper enters White House
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SEPT. 19, 2014
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The Secret Service is under scrutiny after a man scaled the White House fence and made it all the way into the East Room.
Sept. 22, 2014 Security is heightened around the White House following Friday’s breach. Omar Jose Gonzalez, 42, appeared before a judge on one charge of unlawfully entering a restricted building or grounds while carrying a deadly or dangerous weapon. Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post
Secret Service officials had earlier said he was quickly detained at the main entry. Agency spokesman Edwin Donovan said the office is not commenting due to an ongoing investigation of the incident.

People jumping over the White House fence has become a more common occurrence, but most individuals are tackled by Secret Service officers guarding the complex before getting even a third of the way across the lawn. Gonzalez is the first person known to have jumped the fence and made it inside the executive mansion.

Secret Service Director Julia Pierson has said the breach was “unacceptable” to her, and on Friday she briefed President Obama on her plans to shore up security.

Pierson is expected to face tough questions about the Gonzalez incident Tuesday at a hearing by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The hearing is likely to cover a number of security lapses by the agency, including new revelations published over the weekend by The Washington Post about the failure to identify and properly investigate a 2011 shooting attack on the White House.

The more detailed account of this month’s security breach comes from people who provided information about the incident to The Washington Post and whistleblowers who contacted Rep. Jason Chaffetz, (R-Utah), chairman of a House Oversight subcommittee on Homeland Security.

Chaffetz said he plans to ask Pierson how an alarm meant to alert officers to intruders could be silenced or turned down. The congressman said two people inside the agency told him that boxes were silenced because the White House usher staff, whose office is near the front door, complained they were noisy. A Secret Service official told The Post that the usher’s office was concerned the boxes were frequently malfunctioning and unnecessarily sounding off.

The alarm boxes, which officers call “crash boxes,” are key pieces of the agency’s first-alert system, according to former agents and officials. If they spot an intruder, officers are trained to hit the large red button on the nearest box — sending an alert to every post on the complex about the location of an incursion, and piping sound from that location to other boxes around the property.

The night bullets hit the White House — and the Secret Service didn’t know VIEW GRAPHIC
“If true, the fact that crash boxes were muted to avoid being ‘disruptive’ is not due to a lack of resources or an insufficient number of checkpoints or barriers,” Chaffetz said.

He called the incident a “failure of leadership” by the Secret Service.

“The agency needs a solution that goes deeper than more fences and more people,” Chaffetz said. “It must examine what message is being sent to the men and women who protect the president when their leader sacrifices security to appease superficial concerns of White House ushers.”

The new revelations follow accounts provided to The Post last week detailing how Gonzalez’s ability to enter the White House reflected a failure of multiple levels of security around the compound. The agency relies on these successive layers as a fail-safe for protecting the president and the White House complex.

In this incident, a plainclothes surveillance team was on duty that night outside the fence, meant to spot jumpers and give early warning before they made it over. When that team didn’t notice Gonzalez, there was an officer in a guard booth on the North Lawn. When that officer couldn’t reach Gonzales, there was supposed to be an attack dog, a specialized SWAT team and a guard at the front door — all at the ready.

The dog was not released, a decision now under review. Some people familiar with the incident say the handler likely felt he could not release the dog because so many officers were in pursuit of Gonzalez, and the dog may have attacked them instead.

Since the incident, the Secret Service has added an additional layer of temporary fencing while the agency reviews its procedures.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
When the people responsible for protecting the POTUS and his famly, and responding prompting to any breach in security are muting alarms I'm not certain that you can say that they are handling it right

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
When the people responsible for protecting the POTUS and his famly, and responding prompting to any breach in security are muting alarms I'm not certain that you can say that they are handling it right

 Bromsy wrote:

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
When the people responsible for protecting the POTUS and his famly, and responding prompting to any breach in security are muting alarms I'm not certain that you can say that they are handling it right

You just don't understand the concept of stealth alarms then.

 LordofHats wrote:
Maybe it's a really, really annoying alarm;

The man who jumped over the White House fence and sprinted through the main floor of the mansion could have gotten even farther had it not been for an off-duty Secret Service agent who was coincidentally in the house and leaving for the night.

The agent who finally tackled Omar Gonzalez had been serving on the security detail for President Obama’s daughters and had just seen the family depart via helicopter minutes earlier. He happened to be walking through the house when chaos broke out and the intruder dashed through the main foyer, according to two people familiar with the incident.

Gonzalez, 42, was the first person in modern memory to jump over the White House fence and get into the mansion, largely the result of a failure of numerous layers of Secret Service security on the northern fence line.

Though the Secret Service initially said that Gonzalez was quickly detained inside the front door, The Washington Post reported Monday that the man actually made it well into the house before he was tackled on the far southern side of the 80-foot-long East Room. Once he burst inside the unlocked front door, Gonzalez, an Army veteran, overpowered one Secret Service officer and, on his journey, sprinted past a stairway that leads up half a flight to the first family’s living quarters.

The additional information about the incident came as Secret Service Director Julia Pierson was being grilled on Capitol Hill about the Gonzalez incident and other security lapses revealed in Washington Post stories in recent days. The Post on Sunday detailed the agency’s fumbling response to a November 2011 shooting, in which a man fired a semiautomatic rifle into the White House residence while Sasha Obama was home, but the Secret Service discounted the gunshots on Constitution Avenue as a shoot-out between rival gangsters.

In the breach this past month, Gonzalez, who was carrying a knife, reached the doorway to the Green Room, a parlor overlooking the South Lawn with artwork and antique furniture, according to three people familiar with the incident.

Pierson confirmed in the hearing Thursday that, despite the Secret Service’s earlier assertion that Gonzalez was arrested inside the front door, Gonzalez was able to get far deeper into the White House and was eventually tackled outside the Green Room.

Lawmakers from both parties criticized Pierson and her agency for giving misleading and partial accounts of the security breach. The new information about the key role of an agent who happened to be in the building but was not part of the security team may raise further questions.

Pierson did not reveal during her testimony that the agent who tackled him was not actually assigned to the post where he confronted Gonzalez.

The agent, according to people familiar with the incident, who previously worked as a counter-assault team member, could easily have been outside or on his way home.

No officers are assigned to guard the steps to the Obama family’s private living quarters when the first family is not in the complex.

“There’s no telling how long this guy could have run around if the detail guy hadn’t happened to be there,” one person said on the condition of anonymity.

A security contractor with a gun and three prior convictions for assault and battery was allowed on an elevator with President Obama during a Sept. 16 trip to Atlanta, violating Secret Service protocols, according to three people familiar with the incident.

President Obama was not told of the lapse in his security during his trip. Director Julia Pierson, according to two people familiar with the incident, took steps to have the matter reviewed internally and did not refer it to an investigative unit that reviews violations of protocol and standard.

The incident, which rattled Secret Service agents assigned to the president’s detail, occurred as Obama visited the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to discuss the U.S. response to the Ebola crisis.

The private contractor aroused the agents’ concerns when he did not comply with their orders that he stop using a phone camera to videotape the president in the elevator, according to the people familiar with the incident. The man was also acted oddly, the people said.

Agents questioned the man when they exited the elevator and then used a national database check to learn of his criminal history.


There were some heated moments Tuesday when Secret Service Director Julia Pierson testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee about two security breaches at the White House, one in 2011 and one less than two weeks ago. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)
When a supervisor from the firm providing security at the CDC approached and discovered the agents’ concerns, the contractor was fired on the spot and agreed to turn over his gun — surprising agents, who had not realized he was armed during his encounter with Obama.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), who first heard of the breakdown from a whistleblower, said he was appalled at the incident. The Washington Post confirmed details of the event with other people familiar with the agency’s review.

“You have a convicted felon within arm’s reach of the president and they never did a background check,” Chaffetz said. “Words aren’t strong enough for the outrage I feel for the safety of the president and his family. “

Chaffetz added: “His life was in danger. This country would be a different world today if he had pulled out his gun.”

It is the latest in a string of embarrassments for the Secret Service, whose director, Pierson, drew criticism Tuesday from lawmakers in both parties during a combative hearing that focused on her agency’s security lapses. The hearing focused on a man who was able to foil Secret Service officers by jumping the White House fence Sept. 19 and also a 2011 shooting at the residence that the Secret Service failed to identify and properly investigate.

The elevator incident exposed another serious breakdown in the Secret Service’s safety protocols: this one meant to keep the president safe from strangers when he travels to events outside the White House. In close quarters or small events, when the president is on the road, all of the people who could have access to him must be checked in advance for weapons and any criminal history.

In response to a question at the hearing Tuesday, Pierson said she briefs the president “100 percent of the time” when his personal security has been breached. However, she said Tuesday that has only happened one time this year: Soon after Omar Gonzalez jumped over the White House fence Sept. 19 and was able to burst into the mansion.

A Secret Service spokesman said the agency would provide a response soon.

Some elements of the Atlanta incident were first reported Tuesday afternoon on the Washington Examiner’s Web site.

Under a security program called the Arm’s Reach Program, Secret Service advance staff run potential staff, contractors, hotel employees, invited guests and volunteers through several databases, including a national criminal information registry, and records kept by the CIA, NSA and Department of Defense, among others. Anyone who is found to have a criminal history, mental illness, or other indications of risk is barred from entry.

Local police and federal officers are not checked in the same way under the Arm’s Reach Program, with the Secret Service presuming they meet the safety standards because of their employment. But private security contractors would be checked, two former agents who worked on advance planning for presidential trips said.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
Once he burst inside the unlocked front door, Gonzalez, an Army veteran, overpowered one Secret Service officer

 Jihadin wrote:
No Marine Guard at the door.......WTH.....

 Jihadin wrote:
No Marine Guard at the door.......WTH.....

 LordofHats wrote:
It actually would be pretty cool to build a new presidential residence and turn the White House into a permanent 24/7 Museum. It's already parked right there on the mall with a crap ton of other museums

 LordofHats wrote:
Nah, let's build a kick ass McMansion. Nothing more American than that

I also propose the Secret Service's uniform be changed to Captain America

 d-usa wrote:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/01/politics/secret-service-director-resigns/index.html?c=homepage-t

 whembly wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/01/politics/secret-service-director-resigns/index.html?c=homepage-t

Give props for doing this.

How often do you see Government officials held accountable for things?

 d-usa wrote:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/01/politics/secret-service-director-resigns/index.html?c=homepage-t

The Obama administration also says there will be an independent investigation into White House security concerns. pic.twitter.com/mg6x878S7R

— Tamara Keith (@tamarakeithNPR) October 1, 2014

 Ouze wrote:
When will they finally answer some of our questions about Benghazi?

 Ouze wrote:
When will they finally answer some of our questions about Benghazi?