Facing accusations that it cannot adequately protect the White House, the US Secret Service plans to hire 1.100 more officers and agents after a series of scandals and security lapses, law enforcement sources with direct knowledge of the plans told Reuters.
The hiring of 700 uniformed officers and 400 agents over five years would expand the 6.647-member staff by nearly 17 percent, the biggest hiring surge in more than a decade at the 150-year-old agency whose job it is to protect the president, his family and top officials. and to suppress financial crime.
The Secret Service is trying to recover from a leadership crisis and end a practice of covering up mistakes, some of which were committed 12 years ago, when the Treasury Department was separated and merged into the huge Department of Homeland Security, where it had to fight for territory and money.
Secret Service spokeswoman Nicole Minor said the "hiring campaign is the result of attrition, anticipated growth and a response to the recommendations" of a committee formed last year, when a man jumped the White House fence in September, ran across the lawn and into the building.
The Secret Service began providing protection to presidents in 1901 after the assassination of William McKinley. In recent years, her mandate has expanded to include investigations of cyber theft, credit card fraud, and hacker attacks on financial, banking, and telecommunications infrastructure.
The uniformed members are mainly based in Washington and are responsible for the security of the White House and the residence of the vice president. The agents, who require more education and training, are tasked with criminal investigations and security for the president whenever he is in public.
Allegations of misconduct and security lapses have piled up, including an incident on March 4, when two agents crashed their car into a barricade outside the White House after a night out, right next to a suspicious package that was suspected to be a bomb.
The Director of the Secret Service was informed about the incident only after a few days.
The Secret Service has been criticized as too isolated by an independent panel, appointed after a knife-wielding man jumped a fence and ran into a house last September, in one of the worst security lapses since Barack Obama took office in 2009.
That led to the resignation of previous director Julia Pearson, who was appointed a year earlier to clean up the agency after a 2012 scandal in which agents paid prostitutes and visited strip clubs in Colombia. A security breach also occurred in 2011, when a man opened fire on the White House with an automatic weapon, and the damage was only discovered four days later.
Joseph Clancy, who has led the agency since October, is facing strong pressure from Congress to reorganize it and address questions about whether its fragmented mission is distracting from providing security for the president.
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