Secret Service Failures Surrounding White House Fence Jumper in September
BERMAN: New this morning, a report that seems to detail shocking incompetence among those charged with protecting the president of the United States. The Department of Homeland Security has published an in-depth review of security failures allowed Omar Gonzalez to burst into the White House in September, running all the way into the East Room before finally being tackled. Some of the details in the report --</s>PEREIRA: Alright, follow me along, here. He jumped a fence. Then a canine officer didn't release the dog in time, because he was on his personal cell phone -- the officer, not the dog. He didn't have his radio ear piece in place. Another officer couldn't see past the bushes, yet another, stationed inside, was apparently not backward when Gonzalez burst in as she was trying to lock the doors. That officer grabbed her flashlight instead of her baton. So many things to talk to. Author Ronald Kessler. Good to see you, sir. Kessler, of course, wrote "The First Family Detail" and in the president's Secret Service. And you've joined us before to talk about the concerns you had about The Secret Service and some of the problems within that agency. None of this comes as a surprise. Were you maybe surprised by the specifics in this reveal? This review, rather?</s>RONALD KESSLER, AUTHOR, "THE FIRST FAMILY DETAIL": Well, you know, I've said in my book that agents say that it's a miracle that there has not already been an assassination given this really corrupt management culture, which leads to all these problems. There's an arrogance, there's a cover-up mentality. One example in the book I describe how when Bradley Cooper went to the White House correspondent's dinner where Obama spoke, a high-ranking management official in New York in the Secret Service told agents at the Washington Hilton to let Bradley Cooper and his SUV into the secure area in front of the hotel where only Secret Service vehicles were allowed, and even they had to be screened by dogs for explosives because someone could attach an explosive to the underside of a car. And the order was let him in, don't screen him, just as a favor to his security people. So what kind of message does that send to agents? It says, you know, we really don't care about security, we don't care if there's an assassination, we'll just do whatever we want, as outrageous as it may seem. And that is the culture that has produced all of these screw ups and a lack of updated equipment, a lack of training, the Secret Service doesn't even have annual updates on training, which is something that the FBI does, any local police department does and, you know, I think that the solution is to bring in an outside director who's not beholden to the interest within the agency, who's not part of this culture, and as one example, a former FBI official, I think would totally shake up this agency, make it perform honestly, stop retaliation against agents who point out problems, which is something that is an everyday occurrence, and, you know, the government has a tendency to want to reinvent the wheel. It's really very simple. There are a few blocks separating the FBI and the Secret Service, bring the FBI in to run the Secret Service and you would have a very good organization. As we see, with the FBI protecting us since 9/11, we have not had a successful foreign terrorist attack, and I can tell you having done books on the FBI and the Secret Service and the CIA, the caliber of official at the CIA and the FBI is so much higher than the Secret Service. The Secret Service culture is to promote agents who go along, who don't question and that's been the problem.</s>BERMAN: All right, Ronald Kessler, thanks so much for being with us. Appreciate your time. Again, when you hear that a Secret Service officer doesn't have his ear piece in or he's on a personal cellphone, you get the sense it's not the first time that someone there did not have their ear piece in or was talking on their personal cellphone.</s>PEREIRA: Makes you wonder about training, procedures, protocol, lots of questions.</s>BERMAN: Clearly a culture there that needs to be radically, radically changed. Ahead for us @THISHOUR, authorities in Ferguson, Missouri now telling residents to get ready to hunker down. What police now say could happen when a grand jury makes its decision in the shooting of Michael Brown.