Friday evening a man was able to jump the White House fence and enter the building's front entrance. He was finally apprehended within a few yards of where he entered, but the White House was locked down for several hours as the Secret Service ensured that he had not brought any potentially dangerous material into the building.
Fence jumpers are not uncommon, but the Secret Service generally apprehends these jumpers within feet of where they enter. The grounds are patrolled by both uniformed and plain clothes agents and they utilize a number of police dogs that are very effective at running down intruders.
Beyond those defenses are snipers on the White House roof whose job is to stop anyone who penetrated those perimeter defenses. There should also be guards on the entrances to the White House itself. These guards are frequently part of the White House Marine detachment, whose role is largely symbolic, but they are Marines so I assume they would be capable of stopping an intruder.
Fortunately, the President and his daughters had just departed for Camp David at the time this incident occurred.
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I am sure that it is a very difficult task to maintain constant vigilance day after day at the White House. I would not want to be in those agents' shoes. But this breach calls the whole White House security system into question. Was it a matter of one agent being out of position? Was it a larger breakdown in the security scheme? We won't know probably for some time. The Secret Service is conscientious in releasing its after-action reports to the public.
I also wonder if the Secret Service was lax about how they responded. Reporters describe Secret Service agents chasing this man across the White House lawn in what seems to be something of a Keystone Kops routine.
I would imagine that the security protocols authorize the use of lethal force to subdue an intruder before he penetrates the home of the President and First Family. Most people who jump the fence at the White House suffer from some type of mental illness. They are generally harmless. but sometimes they are deadly dangerous, like John Hinckley. As in that (almost successful) assassination attempt on President Reagan, the Secret Service needs to revamp its security protocols.
It is also somewhat troubling that the Secret Service acknowledges that they were aware of this intruder, but had never arrested him. I would hope that they have systems in place to alert them if someone who has potentially made threats against the President travels to Washington.
Many people will see this as no big deal. but the man they captured last night could have been a suicide bomber. Imagine the repercussions if he had detonated a bomb in the White House - we would have a security crackdown as big as the one after 9/11 and the drums of war would be thundering awfully loud. This was a potentially disastrous breach of security and one that cannot be tolerated in today's fragile political environment.