U.S. Secret Service (USSS): An Agency in Crisis

This is a print replica reproduction of a major Congressional report issued in late 2015 about the recent scandals and problems involving the U.S. Secret Service. In addition to a full copy of the report, U.S. Secret Service, An Agency in Crisis, this reproduction includes two additional government reports: The U.S. Secret Service: History and Missions, and The U.S. Secret Service: An Examination and Analysis of Its Evolving Missions. From the Executive Summary of the Congressional Report: The United States Secret Service (USSS) is tasked with a zero-failure mission: to protect the President and other protectees at all costs. For most of its existence, USSS has strived to complete that mission while simultaneously garnering the respect and admiration of the American people. Secret Service agents and officers earned a reputation as stoic and impervious guardians of our government’s most important leaders. The American public’s respect for the agency diminished following the April 2012 prostitution scandal in Cartagena, Colombia, which attracted significant media attention and exposed systemic problems within the agency. Since then, several incidents have made it abundantly clear that USSS is in crisis. The agency’s weaknesses have been exposed by a series of security failures at the White House, during presidential visits, and at the residences of other officials, including Vice President Biden and former presidents of the United States. The Committee’s investigation found that problems that undermine USSS’s protective mission predate and postdate the misconduct in Cartagena. The Committee also found that at times agency leaders have provided incomplete and inaccurate information to Congress. This report examines four incidents in detail: a November 11, 2011, incident where an individual fired several shots at the White House from a semiautomatic rifle; the April 2012 misconduct in Cartagena, Colombia; a September 16, 2014, incident at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, where an armed contract security guard with a violent arrest history rode in an elevator with President Obama and later breached the President’s security formation; and a March 4, 2015, incident where two intoxicated senior USSS officials — including a top official on the President’s protective detail—interfered with a crime scene involving a bomb threat just outside the White House grounds. The Committee also found that one year after the blue-ribbon Protective Mission Panel issued its assessment and recommendations for the security of the White House compound, several serious deficiencies remain. As USSS’s mission has grown, its workforce has had to do more with less. USSS is experiencing a staffing crisis that poses perhaps the greatest threat to the agency. The crisis began after 2011 when the number of employees began to decline sharply, and the decline continued across all categories of employment. Three main causes are significant cuts imposed by the Budget Control Act of 2011, systemic mismanagement at USSS that has been unable to correct these shortfalls, and declining employee morale leading to attrition.