Security lapse at Bush home lasted year
WASHINGTON — The Secret Service took more than a year to replace a faulty alarm in the Houston home of former President George H.W. Bush, sparking concerns about the family’s safety and necessitating additional deployments of manpower, according to a government report released Thursday.
The situation was corrected last December — almost 13 months after the problem was first brought to light. But the incident detailed in a heavily redacted report adds to a long list of Secret Service travails over the past four years, including a recent White House fence-jumping incident.
The Secret Service issued a statement saying there were no security breaches at the Bush home while
the alarm system was out of commission. A spokesman, Brian Leary, said the agency “has already taken steps” to address broader recommendations in the report for tracking and reporting security problems at residences under Secret Service protection, including those of other former presidents.
Despite the concerns, the elder Bush, now 90, took to Twitter to defend the agency: “Barbara and I have great respect for, and confidence in, the men and women of @SecretService,” the 41st president tweeted. “That respect and confidence has never waned.”
Congressional reaction was less sanguine.
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, and Ranking Democrat Elijah Cummings of Maryland issued a blistering statement:
“It is startling and unacceptable that under the Secret Service protection, an alarm at the residence of former President George H.W. Bush remained inoperable for more than a year,” they said. “Although the Secret Service assigned employees to monitor the grounds, there is absolutely no room for error when it comes to protecting the nation’s presidents.”
‘Significant concerns’
The two leaders said the report “adds to the growing list of significant concerns Congress has had with the management of the Secret Service.”
A potential problem was first identified in 2010, when an agency security expert warned that the alarm system at the Bush property had “exceeded its life cycle” and was due for replacement.
According to the report, written by Department of Homeland Security Inspector General John Roth, Secret Service higher-ups rejected the analyst’s request to replace the alarm system in August 2011. Instead, limited upgrades using “repurposed and new equipment” were made the following year.
But eventually in September 2013, the alarm system — then 20 years old — failed. The Secret Service said that another agent was added to the security rotation at the Bush home, an arrangement that some inside the agency believe enhanced the security.
But at least one Secret Service official told investigators that the addition of a “roving post” was an inadequate substitute for the faulty alarm. Moreover, agency officials could not specify when the new detail was added, meaning that the former president and First Lady Barbara Bush may have occupied the residence “for a period of time” without a roving post or a working alarm system.
The Secret Service obtained a permanent replacement alarm in January 2014, the report noted. But for some reason, only a temporary alarm system was installed the following April. The permanent upgrade was not installed until November or December, after an Oct. 21 complaint of “inoperable” alarms that prompted the Inspector General’s investigation.
The report does not say who made the complaint. A Bush family spokesman said he did not know.
Investigators said they were unable to determine why the original alarm system was not replaced in 2011, when it was requested, or why a replacement system obtained in early 2014 was not installed until the end of the year.
Among the reasons cited by the Secret Service was the need to accommodate the installation of new windows and make decisions on installing the system.
Presidential residence
The new report cites Secret Service reports of “potentially more serious security equipment problems” on the grounds of at least one other former presidential residence where some gear showed “signs of impending failure.”
The identity of the affected former president was redacted in the report.
Secret Service Director Joseph Clancy has been in the hot seat in Congress over security and misconduct allegations. He responded to the new report in an April 1 letter saying that the agency is “committed
to ensuring that all protected persons and places receive the most appropriate level of protection.”
But that promise has been tested by a number of high-profile lapses.
Among the allegations cited by Roth: the recent gyrocopter landing on the U.S. Capitol ground; last year’s White House fencejumping alarm in which an intruder made into the East Room before being tackled; and a 2011 incident in which shots were fired at the White House.
In addition, the Inspector General’s Office is looking into recent misconduct cases, including an incident in which two Secret Service supervisors are alleged to have driven a government vehicle through an active “suspicious-package” investigation while they tried to re-enter White House grounds after a retirement party.