[House Hearing, 114 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
U.S. SECRET SERVICE: HOLDING THE PROTECTORS
ACCOUNTABLE
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT
AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MARCH 24, 2015
__________
Serial No. 114-16
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov
http://www.house.gov/reform
_____________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
94-541 PDF WASHINGTON : 2015
________________________________________________________________________________________
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Publishing Office,
http://bookstore.gpo.gov. For more information, contact the GPO Customer Contact Center,
U.S. Government Publishing Office. Phone 202-512-1800, or 866-512-1800 (toll-free).
E-mail, [email protected].
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah, Chairman
JOHN L. MICA, Florida ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland,
MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio Ranking Minority Member
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
JIM JORDAN, Ohio ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
TIM WALBERG, Michigan Columbia
JUSTIN AMASH, Michigan WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri
PAUL A. GOSAR, Arizona STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
SCOTT DesJARLAIS, Tennessee JIM COOPER, Tennessee
TREY GOWDY, South Carolina GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
BLAKE FARENTHOLD, Texas MATT CARTWRIGHT, Pennsylvania
CYNTHIA M. LUMMIS, Wyoming TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois
THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky ROBIN L. KELLY, Illinois
MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina BRENDA L. LAWRENCE, Michigan
RON DeSANTIS, Florida TED LIEU, California
MICK MULVANEY, South Carolina BONNIE WATSON COLEMAN, New Jersey
KEN BUCK, Colorado STACEY E. PLASKETT, Virgin Islands
MARK WALKER, North Carolina MARK DeSAULNIER, California
ROD BLUM, Iowa BRENDAN F. BOYLE, Pennsylvania
JODY B. HICE, Georgia PETER WELCH, Vermont
STEVE RUSSELL, Oklahoma MICHELLE LUJAN GRISHAM, New Mexico
EARL L. ``BUDDY'' CARTER, Georgia
GLENN GROTHMAN, Wisconsin
WILL HURD, Texas
GARY J. PALMER, Alabama
Sean McLaughlin, Staff Director
David Rapallo, Minority Staff Director
Tristan Leavitt, Counsel
Mike Howell, Counsel
Melissa Beaumont, Clerk
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on March 24, 2015................................... 1
WITNESS
Mr. Joseph P. Clancy, Director, U.S. Secret Service, Department
of Homeland Security
Oral Statement............................................... 11
Written Statement............................................ 14
APPENDIX
Statement for the Record, submitted by Rep. Connolly............. 104
Slides entered by Mr. Chaffetz................................... 106
U.S. SECRET SERVICE: HOLDING THE PROTECTORS ACCOUNTABLE
----------
Tuesday, March 24, 2015
House of Representatives
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room
2154 Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Jason Chaffetz
(chairman of the committee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Chaffetz, Mica, Duncan, Jordan,
Walberg, Amash, Gowdy, Massie, Meadows, DeSantis, Mulvaney,
Buck, Walker, Hice, Carter, Grothman, Palmer, Cummings,
Maloney, Norton, Clay, Lynch, Connolly, Cartwright, Kelly,
Lawrence, Lieu, Plaskett, DeSaulnier, and Lujan Grisham.
Chairman Chaffetz. The Committee on Oversight and
Government Reform will come to order. Without objection, the
Chair is authorized to declare a recess at any time. Appreciate
everybody being here.
Reforming the United States Secret Service is not a
partisan issue. Ranking Member Cummings and I have presented a
united front on this issue, and I look forward to continuing
this important work with him on both sides of the aisle.
The most important mission for the Secret Service is
protecting the President and his family. However, a litany of
recent mishaps raise major concerns.
In 2011, nobody recognized shots were fired at the White
House until bullets were discovered by maintenance staff. It
has been well publicized that Secret Service Agents engaged in
misconduct in Cartagena, and Amsterdam, and Miami.
In September of last year, a security contractor with an
arrest record rode in an elevator with the President in Atlanta
armed with a gun completely unbeknownst to the President's
detail. A few days later, a man armed with a knife jumped the
White House fence, made it past the Secret Service, well into
the White House.
And now on March 4th, the second-in-command of the
President's detail drove his car through a crime scene
involving a bomb threat while the President was in the White
House.
This has to stop. The Secret Service has a zero fail
mission to protect our President and his family. This is
especially true for the President's Protective Detail, or what
is often referred to as the PPD. We need to understand why
these incidents keep happening.
This Committee requested the Special Agent in Charge of the
PPD, Robert Buster, attend a bipartisan closed-door briefing
regarding the incident. Director Clancy said no.
The Committee requested the supervisors on duty before and
during the incident in March to testify today, but Director
Clancy said no.
We asked Director Clancy to turn over video footage of the
incident, and again the Director said no.
In our closed-door briefing last week, Director Clancy was
unable to adequately answer questions about the events of March
4th. Instead, he asserted that by referring the matter to the
Inspector General, he was unable to ask any questions of his
own, but Congress is also doing an investigation. To not do an
investigation would be malpractice on our part. Congress has a
role, we have a duty, we have a responsibility to conduct our
own investigation.
By refusing to allow the witnesses we invited to testify
with first-hand knowledge of the incident, Director Clancy is
keeping Congress and the American people in the dark. On top of
that, the Secret Service has missed every deadline to provide
this Committee with information, with no legitimate explanation
as to why.
It is unclear why Director Clancy is choosing at the start
of his tenure to be so unhelpful to Congress. While I was
hopeful Director Clancy would assist Congress in understanding
how we can restore the Agency to its prior stature, this does
not appear to be the case.
The March 4th incident is concerning on three major points.
(1) the interference of crime scenes by senior Secret Service
personnel; (2) allegations involving decisions, communications,
and dispositions of senior Secret Service personnel; and (3)
the Agency's apparent botched response to a bomb threat while
the President was in the White House.
Although the Secret Service has refused to provide video
footage of the incident, the Metropolitan D.C. Police
Department has. Initially, I had indicated that I was
frustrated about the lack of response by the Metropolitan
Police Department. This was based on information given to us by
the Secret Service. I was critical of the Chief, and suggested
that Chief Lanier was going to get a nasty gram from Congress,
which we sent. But I can tell you, I have nothing but praise
and thankfulness for her and her Department and Agency for
swiftly and completely responding to Congress' request.
We appreciate her, the men and women who work at the
Metropolitan Police Department, and their swift response to our
request. It certainly stands in great contrast from what we've
seen from the Secret Service.
Now, we're going to show part of a video here that was
provided to us by the Metropolitan Police Department, but a few
things before you see this.
On March 4th, at 10:24 p.m., a woman drove her vehicle to a
security gate outside the White House fence line on 15th Street
and left a package she claimed to be a bomb. Secret Service
agents and officers at the scene confronted the suspect, but
were unable to apprehend her. The package sat unattended as
traffic drove by for a long period of time. It took 11 minutes
for the Secret Service to call the Metropolitan Police
Department bomb squad. For 17 minutes, 17 minutes traffic
continued through the intersection and several pedestrians
walked within feet of the potential bomb. I don't understand
how that happens.
When the Secret Service finally did call, they failed to
mention to the Metro Police Department that it was an actual
bomb threat, rather than just a suspicious package. It has been
explained to us there is a difference, a difference in the
response time, and the approach that they take. You can
understand how around the perimeter of the White House there
are oftentimes items that are left unattended, but it is a
wholly different situation when somebody comes up and places at
the perimeter of the White House a package that they claim to
be an actual bomb.
Let me show this video, and I'll try the best I can. We
have this. We'll put this up on our YouTube channel. To try to
describe what's happening, it's 10:30--roughly 10 to 20 plus at
night, 15th Street. There's the car, it pulls up. You can start
to see the person who has dropped off the bomb, and then you'll
see an officer come out and try to apprehend the person who's
actually been charged now with a variety of different crimes.
The potential bomb really sits next to that building right
there. And, again, we're doing time lapse video, but you can
see the cars have been driving by and whatnot. Then we're
zooming in here, and you can see that the agents that were in
question about what they were doing. This is a full 30 minutes
after the initial would-be bomb was placed there.
You can see that there are some big cones, or big barrels
that are put out. Now, I--again, we have two crime scenes at
this point; the assault on the officer, and then you have
within just a couple of feet, you can see they're actually
bumping into that barricade there. That is not much of a
barricade, in my personal opinion, but driving right within a
couple of feet of this would-be bomb, which begs a lot of
additional questions.
It takes the Secret Service and the Metropolitan Police
Department about an hour and 20 minutes to finally come to the
conclusion that this is not a bomb, and that the scene is then
rendered safe.
An officer followed the suspect in her car, so we get to
another part of the story which begs a lot of questions.
Somebody drives up, drops off a would-be bomb, and then the
Secret Service actually gets an officer behind this person, but
they were mistakenly called off the pursuit when the Secret
Service identified the wrong car as the suspect's. So,
actually, right behind, I can only imagine this officer saying
I've got this person in my sights, but instead of pulling this
person over, instead of maybe going the extra step to just
check, gets waved off. And they pursue another car, who isn't
actually the suspect.
Thirty minutes, thirty minutes after the woman fled the
scene, the Secret Service finally issued a BOLO, a Be On The
Lookout for a vehicle to local law enforcement. Metropolitan
Police Department didn't know for 30 minutes what vehicle they
were to be looking for, 30 minutes.
The suspect was finally arrested 3 days later 90 miles away
by a different police agency on an unrelated charge, unrelated
charges. The day before she was arrested, she was interviewed
by the Secret Service agent, but the Secret Service claimed
they were unable to arrest her and, instead, canceled the
lookout for the woman.
Back at the White House on March 4th, two senior Secret
Service agents, including Mark Connolly, the President's
second-in-command on his Protective Detail, disrupted the crime
scene. These agents placed themselves, their colleagues, and
the President and his family in potential danger by driving
their government vehicle through a barricade within feet of a
potential bomb.
Under Secret Service's policy, video footage of the
incident should have been retained; however, most of the
footage has evidently, according to the Secret Service, has
mysteriously gone missing. I find this highly suspicious.
In a briefing last week, Director Clancy and Deputy
Secretary Mayorkas played Committee Members two tapes of the
incident that showed the same few seconds from two different
angles, just a few seconds out of an incident that lasted more
than an hour and 20 minutes. There were eight Members there,
three Committee Chairmen, several Ranking Members, four
Democrats, four Republicans. Though limited, the footage
clearly showed the agents purposely moving the barricade aside
with their car.
I want to set aside for a second the concern that the
Secret Service is only maintaining video footage for one of the
most important buildings in our country for only 72 hours. That
makes absolutely no sense on any level to me, because there are
issues related to national security, the prosecution of the
actual event, and the basic ability to learn from past
instances, as we're having to deal with now. But based on the
Secret Service's policy, video footage of this incident should,
nevertheless, been retained.
We have two crimes scenes that should have immediately been
highlighted; yet, an agency spokesperson told CNN: ``In the
event of an operational security incident at the White House
complex, specific video footage is maintained for investigative
and protective intelligence purposes.'' That would seem to make
sense, but that's not what's happened here.
Yet, Director Clancy and Deputy Secretary Mayorkas only
showed two very limited views of the incident to the Committee.
Does a potential bomb near the White House not qualify as ``an
operational security incident?'' If a potential bomb doesn't
qualify, then what does?
These tapes should have been retained, and this Committee
intends to find out why they were not. We were only shown
seconds of a video for an incident that lasted for more than an
hour.
Director Clancy, today we expect answers, and we expect you
to know them. We're nearly 3 weeks after the incident. To help
you prepare for the hearing today, my staff reached out to your
congressional Affairs Office to let you know what subjects we
would be covering here today. Your staff was fully briefed on
what we expect you to know. I want to let you know that the ``I
don't know'' strategy is not going to sit well with our
Committee.
We look forward to your answering the questions and
providing clarity on what happened March 4th. We do appreciate
you being here. I can tell you that you have been personally
very accessible, and I greatly personally very much appreciate
that.
So, with that, let me now recognize the Ranking Member, Mr.
Cummings.
Mr. Cummings. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And I
thank you for calling this hearing today.
Director Clancy, welcome, again. And let me start off by
saying, Director, that there are moments in life that are and
should be transformative moments. In other words, there are
moments in all of our lives where something happens. It may
very well be negative; usually, it is. And then we have to
pause for a moment and learn from it, and correct it. And if we
do not correct it at that moment, in my 64 years on earth I've
discovered it usually gets worse.
I am here to tell you that we are at such a moment. And the
sad part about it is that these moments seem to keep coming.
Usually, in life it's one moment or two, but they seem to just
keep coming, and coming. And I tell you, I have great concerns.
And I'm glad this is a bipartisan effort because this is bigger
than us. This is bigger than the Secret Service.
This is about the security of the most powerful person in
the world, so this is not--I know that this will not get down
to a partisan battle, will not get down to a gotcha. But this
is about us trying to do our job.
Your job, and the great men and women of the Secret
Service's job is to guard the President and his family, our
former President, and other protectees. Our job is to make sure
you do your job, and to make sure that you and the agents are
accountable.
Now, I must tell you that I was disappointed to find out
that we will not hear from the other Secret Service witnesses
the Committee invited to testify here today.
Director Clancy, I have the greatest respect for you, and
your service to our country. Your job is crucial. Your
reputation is exceptional, and sound, and you desire to protect
your agents and officers against unwarranted intrusion is
admirable. But as I've said to you before, if we are going to
err, let us err on the side of the safety and security of the
President of the United States of America.
So, we wanted to speak with these witnesses for a very
simple reason. According to your own testimony, you did not
know about this incident until 5 days after it happened. You,
yourself, had said that is unacceptable. And, again, as I said,
we have those transformative moments, and that's one symptom of
the problem saying that we need to do some transforming.
Your predecessor, in my conversations with her, one of the
things that she said was that quite often she did not get
information, she did not get complete information, she got
inaccurate information, and in some instances got no
information. Something is wrong with that picture, it was wrong
with that one and, obviously, there's something wrong here.
With all due respect, I have to say how disappointed I was
with your initial letter on Friday. It simply announced that
you would be the only witness today without providing any
reason for the other witnesses not testifying. No other
Committee is doing more on this issue than our's, and we are
trying to conduct our work in a responsible, bipartisan manner.
We really have no room for error, and if we're going to err, we
err on the side of the safety of the President.
But when we receive a response that rejects our request
with no explanation at all, it's difficult to view that
response as respectful, which I know is not your intent. I
understand that.
For these reasons, I was heartened to receive your letter
yesterday in which you outline your specific concerns with the
public testimony of agents charged with protecting the
President. I also appreciate your offer to work with this
Committee to examine other ways to provide us with the
information we need to fulfill our constitutional oversight
responsibilities.
Of course, we all understand that there is an ongoing
Inspector General investigation of this incident, and we
respect that. The IG has informed us that he will be moving
quickly, and should be able to answer key questions in weeks,
not months.
We recognize the Inspector General's investigation could
result in recommendations for disciplinary action, and the last
thing we want to do is interfere with that process. But keep in
mind what I said, if we are going to err, we must err on the
side of the safety and security of the President.
That is why the Chairman and I have committed to consulting
with the IG directly before taking any significant action that
could impact this work.
Director Clancy, my most significant concern has always
been and remains today that you did not know about this
incident, and that nobody in the entire agency told you about
it. There's something awfully wrong with that. Five days, 5
days, 5 days went by while you were in the dark.
Last year when the former Director of the Secret Service,
Julia Pierson, sat in the same chair that you're now sitting
in, I warned her that she was not getting the information she
needed to do her job. I alerted her that agents and officers
believe they were better off staying silent instead of raising
their concerns up the chain. I informed her that there were
agents that felt more comfortable coming to Members of the
Congress of the United States than talking to people who were
the higher ups at the Secret Service. Something wrong with the
picture. And I lamented an environment in Secret Service that
would allow these deficiencies to continue; yet, that appears
to be exactly what happened here.
I believe that when the chain of command is broken, when
the chain of command is broken there is no command. It's like a
body without a head. And when there is no command, there is
vulnerability. Again, that vulnerability goes to the safety of
the President of the United States of America. So, let me make
something very clear.
This is not business as usual. This is not just another
Oversight hearing about just another agency. I admire this
President greatly. I admire him for his challenges, the
challenges he's overcome to be President, the accomplishments
he has achieved since then, the principles he stands for on
behalf of our country and the world, and the contribution he's
made to our Nation's history. I also admire the people, our
former Presidents and their families. I want to make sure, and
all of us want to make sure that they are protected, so I don't
want you to take this personally. This is about us doing our
job.
You have to be accountable to us, but your job is, of
course, to guard the President. So, I do not want anything to
happen to him, not under my watch, not under this watch. So,
this would not be about politics, it cannot be. It cannot be
about headlines, or unnecessary disputes that contribute
nothing to the solution. We must come together in a nonpartisan
way to take concrete steps both publicly and privately to turn
this agency around.
Again, this is a transformative moment. If we fail to do
that in this moment, it can only get worse. The agents and
officers of the Secret Service risk their lives on behalf of
this great nation. They are great human beings, great public
servants, and they deserve an agency that they can be proud of.
One of the things that has concerned me greatly is the
anonymous email that you got to us. Would somebody put this up?
This email--you're familiar with it, are you not?
Mr. Clancy. Yes, sir.
Mr. Cummings. And this email concerns me, ``Since last
Wednesday night, the Uniform Division established a crime scene
at Special Post 15 at the White House after a package was
thrown at an officer. The officer was told the package was a
bomb, so they taped off the area and made it a crime scene.
Then at some point an DSAIC from WFO, and a PPD DSAIC drove
through the crime scene tape. Duty officers at the scene said
they were both extremely intoxicated. They were coming home
from Ed Donovan's retirement dinner. They apparently flipped on
the lights on their government vehicles to go around the
roadblocks. Then the nudged the barrels close to closing the
post with their government vehicles. Then were waving their
White House passes around confused as to why the post was
evacuated.
UD officers were going to arrest both of them, but the UD
Watch Commander said not to. Apparently, the whole incident was
captured on video from inside the JLC.''
What I don't understand is this. A lot of people got this
email, a lot of them got it, but you didn't. That is a problem.
But you know what really bothers me, as I read this, I kept
reading this email this morning over, and over, and over, and
you know what I concluded, it appears that we have an agency at
war against itself.
The idea that in an organization like this that somebody
would create this kind of document to bring this kind of
disruption when they are supposed to be guarding the President
of the United States of America. We're better than that, and
some kind of way we have to take advantage of this
transformative moment. If we don't, it can only get worse. And
with that, I yield back.
Chairman Chaffetz. I now recognize Mr. DeSantis of Florida.
He's the Chairman of the Subcommittee on National Security. Mr.
DeSantis.
Mr. DeSantis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The website, Secret Service lays out the vision and that's
``to uphold the tradition of excellence in its investigative
and protective mission through a dedicated, highly trained,
diverse partner-oriented work force that employs progressive
technology, and promotes professionalism.''
Notwithstanding that Statement, the Secret Service has been
falling short of that standard, and I think the Chairman did a
good job of enumerating some of the problems we've seen in
recent years.
We are here to examine this most recent incident, and I've
got to say, I join the Chairman in expressing my disappointment
of the lack of cooperation. We wanted to speak with witnesses,
we wanted to have information sooner, and I think that that's
not the way that this is going to be productive.
This is a very important role that the agency plays not
only in protecting our leaders against threats foreign and
domestic, but that's part of a larger mission to protect the
integrity of our government, and to make sure that elections
are honored, and that the people who are elected to those high
positions are safe. And I think to do that effectively, you
have got to have a system that has robust accountability.
And I think that's what the questions that we're looking at
today say OK, where is the accountability in the agency? And it
just seemed throughout the whole saga with different problems
that there's not swift accountability. And I think that's going
to make it more difficult to get the agency where we all want
it to be.
But I do commend the Chairman, Mr. Chaffetz, Ranking Member
Cummings, and my colleague on the National Security
Subcommittee, Mr. Lynch, for their diligence in insuring that
those that carry out this important mission are given the tools
they need to carry out their responsibilities.
We want high standards, we want accountability. That's
important, and I think the American people want nothing less.
And I look forward to Director Clancy's testimony, and I yield
back.
Chairman Chaffetz. I thank the gentleman. I will now
recognize the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on National
Security, Mr. Lynch of Massachusetts, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Lynch. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'd like to thank
Ranking Member Cummings for his work on this, as well as
Chairman DeSantis. We really appreciate the fact that we're
working together on this.
This hearing is to examine the continuing lapses in
security involving the U.S. Secret Service. I'd also like to
thank Director Clancy for being here, and to testify this
morning.
I have the utmost respect for Mr. Clancy, but I have to
agree with the Chairman, Mr. Chaffetz, and the Ranking Member,
and Mr. DeSantis that the fact that you were not notified of
this incident for 5 days concerning your two agents is totally
unacceptable, and it shows a deep problem within the
organization that we have to deal with.
At the outset, I'd like to notice that the purpose that
we're having this hearing today is not to disparage our
dedicated Secret Service work force; rather, this bipartisan
investigation into recent security incidents at the White House
and other Secret Service protected locations and events is
founded in our genuine concern over the safety of the
President, his wife, and his daughters, his mother-in-law, and
White House personnel.
Regrettably, systemic challenges, antiquated security
protocols and entrenched agency culture have given rise to
glaring gaps in the security, and the critical protection
mission of the Secret Service demands that we make every effort
to address them.
On the heels of the White House fence jumping incident that
occurred in September 2014, and reported gunshots near the
Delaware residence of the Vice President in January 2015, we've
now learned about two security incidents that occurred on the
White House grounds on the night of March 4th that again call
into question the effectiveness of existing security protocols,
security technology, information sharing, and post-incident
review at the Secret Service.
In briefing this Committee on March 17th regarding the
alleged interference of two Secret Service agents with a live
bomb threat investigation at the White House, the Secret
Service played us two brief and seemingly incomplete video
clips of a slow-moving vehicle bumping gently into a plastic
barrier that were--those videos were taken from almost
identical angles and contained absolutely no audio. In response
to member request that he provide us with additional videos of
the incident, Director Clancy revealed that the Secret Service
routinely overwrites security camera footage after only 72
hours.
Given that Director Clancy also informed us that he did not
receive notification of the alleged interference until 5 days
later on March 9th, the security footage in question was
reportedly purged two full days before the Director even found
out about the security incident. That is simply unacceptable,
and it tells me that we need a stem to stern review of our
security technology policy at the White House.
Director, you invited us over, members of the Committee, to
review the command post for the surveillance of the White
House, and I know for a fact we have full spectrum review and
surveillance over that area. We probably have five or six
cameras at least that would have given us useful information
regarding this incident. And as the Chairman pointed out, we
have overlapping incidents, so we have a bomb threat, an active
bomb threat while the President is in the White House, and his
family is in the White House. We have an active bomb threat,
and then we have an interference by these two agents during
that bomb threat, during that incident, and we purge the tapes,
we purge the tapes.
That active bomb threat against the White House was
something that should have raised red flags with personnel from
the Secret Service. It should have been on everyone's mind. I
know that multiple emails went out to supervisory personnel.
Everyone knew this was a bomb threat; and, yet, we went ahead,
at least that's what I'm hearing so far, that we went ahead and
purged the tapes surrounding that 72--excuse me, surrounding
that bomb threat to the White House within 72 hours. We
destroyed the evidence, and that completely is--that is just
mind boggling that we might do something like that.
Now, I've got a lot of questions. I know the members of the
Committee do, as well, but as a frame of reference indicating
the inadequacy of the 72-hour video retention policy, I would
note that my own State of Massachusetts requires State and
municipal agencies to retain their security video tapes for 30
days under the State Public Record Statute. That's why agencies
ranging from the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, to
the Boston Housing Authority have a 1-month video storage
policy in place.
In addition, under its current Memorandum of Agreement with
the Federal Transportation Security Administration regarding
the use of consolidated camera surveillance systems at Logan
International Airport, the Massachusetts Port Authority also
has expressly agreed to retain captured images for 30 days.
That's at the request of a Federal agency, we're retaining that
for 30 days.
Moreover, local educational institutions, such as Tufts
University, University of Massachusetts have also implemented
30-day retention policies for the campus security cameras.
In addition, I have a number of kindergartens in my
district that retain, because of the security interests of
those children, they have a 30-day policy.
You know, I have to tell you, and I've said this before,
you know, my local store 24 has a better surveillance system
than we have at the White House. That's a sad Statement of
affairs, and that's been the--that's been because of a number
of directors going back beyond your own service. So, there's a
lot of questions to be answered here.
I'm going to let the rest of my Statement go. I appreciate
the Chairman's indulgence, and I yield back the balance of my
time.
Chairman Chaffetz. I thank the gentleman.
I will hold the record open for five legislative days for
any members who would like to submit a written Statement.
We welcome today our witness, the Honorable Joseph P.
Clancy, Director of the United States Secret Service.
Before we go forward, though, let me say that the members
of this Committee, I do not believe that the presence of Mr.
Clancy alone is sufficient to achieve the goals of this hearing
today. It is the Committee's intention to bring forward a
series of people in transcribed interviews. We would prefer to
have done this a different way. The Secret Service has refused
our ability to do that, but the people involved in these
incidents should know that they will be invited by this
Committee, both sides will be present for transcribed
interviews as we conduct this further.
To our dismay, the Secret Service refuses let other invited
witnesses testify. In fact, the Committee has questions. When
we issued these letters and invitations for these individuals
to appear, did they receive those invitations, or was the
Secret Service prompted, did Homeland Security become involved?
We have a lot of questions about why those individuals who were
asked to appear are not sitting here today.
We do expect to close the loop with these witnesses in the
future, whether that be at a followup hearing, but I said it is
the intention that we will most likely do transcribed
interviews through this process.
With that said, Mr. Clancy, we do appreciate you being
here. Pursuant to Committee rules, all witnesses are to be
sworn before they testify. If you will please rise and raise
your right hand.
Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony you are
about to give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth?
Mr. Clancy. I do.
Chairman Chaffetz. Thank you. Let the record reflect that
the witness answered in the affirmative.
Mr. Clancy, we will now recognize you for your opening
Statement. And please know that your entire written Statement
will be part of the record. But we're pretty lenient on the
time, but please share with this Committee your thoughts and
perspectives. Mr. Clancy.
STATEMENT OF JOSEPH P. CLANCY, DIRECTOR, UNITED STATES SECRET
SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Mr. Clancy. Good morning, Chairman Chaffetz, Ranking Member
Cummings, and distinguished members of the Committee. Thank you
for the opportunity to be here to discuss the recent
allegations of misconduct on March 4th, 2015, and the agency's
progress in fulfilling the recommendations of the independent
U.S. Secret Service Protective Mission Panel. As Director, I'm
honored to lead the men and women of this important agency
through this challenging time.
With respect to the recent allegations, I personally became
aware of the incident on March 9th, when I received a phone
call from a former agent informing me of an anonymous email
that was circulating. On that same date, I determined that the
allegations should be referred to the Department of Homeland
Security's Office of the Inspector General. I made this
decision because allegations of misconduct involving employees
at the GS-15 and higher level must be referred to the OIG in
accordance with departmental policy. I trust the OIG's
investigation will be thorough. I have committed the Secret
Service's full cooperation to the OIG, and eagerly await the
findings of their investigation.
The fact that I did not learn of this allegation until 5
days after it is said to have occurred infuriates me. This is
unacceptable. I called my senior staff together the week before
last. I made clear my expectation for prompt notification of
allegations of misconduct that could impact our mission, or
that violate the agency's standards of conduct.
If it is determined that any of our employees failed to
report information about this alleged incident, they will be
held accountable. Our mission is too important for this to
happen. It undermines my leadership, and I won't stand for it.
I am resolved to holding people accountable for their
actions, but I want to make clear that I do not have the
ability to simply terminate employees based solely on
allegations of misconduct. This is not because I'm being
lenient, but because the agency's ability to take action is
controlled by Title V of the United States Code, which provides
Federal Government employees with certain statutory due process
rights. I must respect these rights and the procedures Congress
has put in place to preserve them.
As it stands, the next step in this process is to wait for
the issuance of the OIG report, at which point we will
determine the appropriate disciplinary actions consistent with
our established Table of Penalties. Once again, if the OIG
investigation reveals misconduct, those involved will be held
accountable.
I have personally reviewed video footage from the evening
of March 4th with members of this Committee. The initial
reports of a vehicle crash were inaccurate; there was no crash.
The video shows a vehicle entering the White House complex at a
very slow speed and pushing aside a plastic barrel. There was
no damage to the vehicle.
However, many people have expressed serious concerns that
the available footage from the night does not provide a full
picture relative to the alleged misconduct. While the primary
function of the camera systems at the White House complex is
for operational security, specific video footage is routinely
maintained for investigative and protective intelligence
purposes.
I share the concerns of this Committee that more video
footage from the night of March 4th was not preserved. After
receiving consent from the OIG, the Secret Service has
contacted the manufacturers of the digital storage unit and is
leveraging our capabilities in cyber forensics to make every
attempt to recover additional video footage from that night.
Although it predates my appointment as Director, Secret
Service practice has been to retain footage from camera systems
at the White House for a period of 72 hours. This practice
concerns me. Therefore, I have directed that the video footage
storage period be increased to 7 days effective immediately. I
have also directed my staff to explore the feasibility of
further expanding this timeframe while being mindful of
concerns related to security and privacy.
Turning to fulfilling the recommendations made by the
independent Protective Mission Panel. I will touch briefly on
each of these three areas identified in the report. First,
training and personnel; second, technology, perimeter security
and operations; and third, leadership.
Regarding training and personnel, I have consistently held
that a primary focus of mine has been to increase the critical
staffing in the Secret Service to meet the demands of the
mission, and to incorporate regular and consistent training to
sharpen skills, insure preparedness at all times. The Secret
Service is expected to exceed its hiring goals for this fiscal
year, and maintain this pace for Fiscal Year 2016.
We have also fully completed integrated training for
officers and specialty teams within the White House Branch, and
made improvements with respect to the amount of training
received during fourth shifts by agents on protective details.
With respect to technology and perimeter security
recommendations, the Secret Service is in the midst of a multi-
phase project to replace the current fence around the White
House. The goal of this project is to mitigate security
concerns identified by the panel, including delaying potential
intruders to give Secret Service personnel more time to react.
The selection of a final fence option will be followed by
design, procurement, and construction phases.
As discussed in the classified briefings provided to this
Committee, the Secret Service acknowledges the need for interim
measures during this process, and has conducted initial
testing, research, and development to that end.
Finally, with respect to leadership, I am moving to
rebuild, restructure, and reinvigorate the Secret Service,
including elevating and empowering those with specialized
professional skills within our civilian force by insuring our
people have the necessary resources by developing budgets from
the ground up, and utilizing a mission-based approach.
In closing, I would like to make clear, I am proud of our
work force, and would be remiss if I did not recognize that the
vast majority of these men and women perform their duties with
honor and distinction. They deserve strong leadership, clear
and consistent policies, and appropriate resources to support
the important work they do every day. It is my life's work to
insure they get it.
I thank the Committee for this opportunity, and welcome any
questions you have at this time.
[Prepared Statement of Mr. Clancy follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Chaffetz. Thank you. Now recognize the gentleman
from South Carolina, Mr. Gowdy, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Gowdy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Director Clancy, do you believe Congress has a
constitutional right to provide oversight over the Secret
Service?
Mr. Clancy. Yes, sir.
Mr. Gowdy. Do you believe that Chairman Chaffetz and
Ranking Member Cummings are motivated solely by a desire to see
what is best for the President, and for the agency, itself?
Mr. Clancy. Yes, sir.
Mr. Gowdy. With those two thoughts in mind, does this
Committee have every single bit of video footage available from
that evening?
Mr. Clancy. I'm sorry, sir. Would you----
Mr. Gowdy. Does this Committee have all available video
footage from that evening?
Mr. Clancy. It does not, sir.
Mr. Gowdy. Why not?
Mr. Clancy. Sir, we have provided that footage video that
we have to this Committee.
Mr. Gowdy. All of it?
Mr. Clancy. We have shown two clips. We have not shown all
of it.
Mr. Gowdy. That's not my question, Director. You just said
that Congress has a constitutional responsibility to provide
oversight. You just agreed with me that Ranking Member Cummings
and Chairman Chaffetz have the best interest of the President
and the agency in mind, so why would you not turn over all
video footage to this Committee?
Mr. Clancy. Congressman, we will show all video at any time
day or night that this Committee would like to review the
footage that we have. We will--we have done that. In fact, the
Chairman was the first, I believe, to see this video before we
showed----
Chairman Chaffetz. With all due respect, that's not true.
Go ahead, Mr. Gowdy.
Mr. Gowdy. No, I would want----
Mr. Clancy. Mr. Chairman, I'd like to just correct--if I
have to correct the record, I'd like to correct it.
Mr. Gowdy. I would like to yield to the gentleman from
Utah, because I was under the misapprehension, apparently, that
this Committee was not in possession of all available video
from that night.
Mr. Clancy. That's correct; they are not in possession of
the video, but we did allow the Chairman to view the video.
Chairman Chaffetz. You've shown us less than 1 minute of
video.
Mr. Clancy. Yes. Yes, sir.
Mr. Gowdy. Well, back to my question. Will you make all
available video, and I say available because we're going to get
in a second to the fact that all of it was not preserved. Will
you make all available video available to this Committee?
Mr. Clancy. We will make all video available to this
Committee for your review at any time day or night.
Mr. Gowdy. Will you make a copy of it available so we can
retain custody, as opposed to simply showing it to us?
Mr. Clancy. I will not release a copy of this video at this
point.
Mr. Gowdy. Why not?
Mr. Clancy. The OIG has an ongoing investigation.
Mr. Gowdy. You think the OIG's responsibilities supersede
those of Congress?
Mr. Clancy. Sir, I know that they have an ongoing
investigation.
Mr. Gowdy. Well, can't you have simultaneous ongoing
investigations? Why can't Congress provide oversight while the
IG is investigating? Why do you have to pick and choose?
Mr. Clancy. Sir, again, I think we have one initial
investigation from the OIG, and we've given them the film to
look at.
Mr. Gowdy. But you understand the responsibility of the IG
is very different from the responsibility of Congress. Congress
determines funding among other things, the IG does not. So,
those two are not exclusive. Why can't Congress investigate
what's in its jurisdiction while the IG does what's in its
jurisdiction?
Mr. Clancy. Congressman, I'm sure after the OIG's
investigation----
Mr. Gowdy. I don't want to wait until after, because that
makes me think that you believe that Congress' constitutional
responsibility to provide oversight is subservient to the IG.
And surely to the world, you can't believe that.
Mr. Clancy. Sir, the ongoing investigation that the Secret
Service has, as well, regarding the Protective Intelligence
case, we have an individual who committed a crime, made a
threat, and that investigation is also going on at this time
within the Secret Service.
Mr. Gowdy. And how will providing that video footage to
Congress jeopardize that ongoing investigation?
Mr. Clancy. That----
Mr. Gowdy. With precision, how will it?
Mr. Clancy. That video shows the actions of the individual
who would be accused of a criminal act.
Mr. Gowdy. I get that. My question is, how will providing
that to Mr. Cummings and Mr. Chaffetz jeopardize an ongoing
investigation?
Mr. Clancy. Well, again----
Mr. Gowdy. With specificity.
Mr. Clancy. I am happy to show that video all day, and be
available at all hours of the day and night to show that video,
but at this point we cannot release that video.
Mr. Gowdy. All right. That's the video that is available.
The video that is not available, will you agree with me that
there are at least two potential crime scenes at play on the
evening of March 4th, at least two? There's an assault on an
officer, and there's a suspicious package.
Mr. Clancy. That's correct.
Mr. Gowdy. All right. Why would the video not be preserved
as part of that ongoing investigation that you just cited as
the reason you can't give the video to Congress? Why wouldn't
you preserve it?
Mr. Clancy. The process--my understanding of the process is
that the watch commander onsite relays back the incident that
he is the incident commander for, and he calls back to our
Joint Operation Center and says we do have an incident here. We
have a suspicious package. Preserve the video from this
incident.
Mr. Gowdy. Director, I'm out of time, but I want you to
consider for just a moment the dueling narratives that you just
portrayed.
Mr. Clancy. Sir.
Mr. Gowdy. No. 1, we're not going to give the video that
does exist to Congress because its investigation is subservient
to the IG investigation. That's narrative No. 1. And narrative
No. 2 is, you're not even going to preserve video that could be
used in a investigation of two potential crimes. Did I hear
that right?
Mr. Clancy. Well, we did preserve the video, the footage
from the incident as those in the Joint Operation Center viewed
it.
Mr. Gowdy. Are you familiar----
Chairman Chaffetz. The gentleman's time has expired.
Mr. Gowdy. Well, some of my time was taken by the Chairman,
but that is the Chairman's prerogative, and I would, of course,
not ask for any more.
Chairman Chaffetz. And the Chairman, obviously, made the
right ruling.
Mr. Gowdy. I yield back.
Chairman Chaffetz. Good decision. We'll now recognize the
gentlewoman from the District of Columbia, Ms. Norton, for 5
minutes.
Ms. Norton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I think, Mr. Clancy, that you understand that the kind--the
anger, the outrage that you hear really comes from this notion
that you are a zero failure agency. We don't expect that,
frankly, of most Federal officials.
I was really surprised to see that you were just now, and
I'm reading from your testimony on page 3, sent an agency-wide
memorandum saying that they have to report allegations,
apparently, right away. When, for example, before you came to
the agency, you knew of the White House incident where they
actually shot into the White House, and they learned about
that, the Secret Service learned about it perhaps months later
when an attendant found these bullets. It seems to me that the
very first order that should have been given is please let me
know. Don't put me on the hot seat of not knowing.
And I say that, because I think the Committee did the right
thing. It began at the right place with the leadership. So, we
said we wanted new leadership. You're the new leadership. It
said we want an expert panel. We had that expert panel.
Now, I think we ought to go--I realize you've not been in
place for a very long time, but I'd like to focus us on the men
and women who are under you, because I don't think there's been
any focus except for that panel. And that panel really did
focus on what I was amazed to hear that people were working
sometimes 14 days, and with a day off, if they got it, but it
could be denied. And that--and I tried to link this to what I
knew about the Secret Service. A kind of serial misconduct, you
know, in Columbia, for example, in the Netherlands, all of the
drunken agents.
Well, see, I don't think that the Secret Service is a bunch
of bums. I've got to look at what is happening to these men and
women. I asked the staff to get--tell me something, are these
people being trained? Are these people kind of letting it all
out? And it looks like some of that is happening. And nobody's
spoken up, and if somebody doesn't speak up, I'm not sure that
this misconduct is not going to continue. This also was a
drunken incident.
Then I learned that in terms of the training, there's
barely any training going on at the Secret Service. There were
eight special agent basic classes in 3 years, 1908, 1909, and
1910, but 2012 there were zero, by 2013 there was one. The
panel said that you needed staff urgently, for starters. What
is the problem? Is the problem with the leadership, is the
problem with the men and women, you're not getting good people?
Why don't you speak up for these men and women? If, in fact,
they're letting off steam because you're overworking them, are
they being overworked? Will this budget that you've just gotten
begin to relieve some of those serial days in which people
don't get any days off?
So, would you describe that, and would you tell us more
about training, and what training sessions are expected so that
some of this misbehavior will be understood to be absolutely
verboten.
Mr. Clancy. Yes. Congresswoman, thank you. I have the same
concerns you have. In fact, I want to hear more and more from
these agents and these officers what their issues are.
Just in a nutshell, I'll tell you that I walk by and around
the perimeter of the White House frequently. This past Sunday,
I went to the Roll Call Midnight Shift, the following morning
went to the Roll Call, and wanted to hear what are their
concerns. And in terms of the staff----
Ms. Norton. But you can see what their concerns are, you
know, the days off. Are people going to--according to the
panel, the agents were consistently working 12-hour shifts
under high stress, often with no days off. Is that going to
change now that your budget has finally been released by the
Congress, which has to take some of the responsibility for
what's been happening, as well?
Mr. Clancy. Again, you're exactly right. When I first came
back here, my No. 1 initiative was to increase the staffing.
We've got to increase staffing, and to do that, we've separated
one of our directorates, which is H.R. and Training. We
separated them apart to give each more specific training. And
we have been working overtime to buildup----
Ms. Norton. You had a little class for 2013, there was only
one class. If you need more agents and need more training----
Mr. Clancy. Yes.
Ms. Norton [continuing]. With this new appropriation is
there going to be another class of agents trained, and will the
agents who are there who used to get training I understand
every 4 weeks or so, will they have that regimen of training
again?
Mr. Clancy. Yes. In fact, we will exceed our goals this
year. We have six UD Officer's classes, and six special agent
classes that were scheduled. We will now go to nine and eight
classes, so we expect to hire a lot more people in Fiscal Year
15, and continue that into 1916. That is a critical need for
the Service, and that will also help with getting more people
out to training. In fact, since September 19th, the Uniform
Division training has increased 110 percent. That's just a
snapshot that we've got to keep the momentum going. And with
the agent side of the house, and the President's detail, that
training has increased 78 percent. Again, not where we want to
be, but as we increase the staff we'll get more training for
our people.
Chairman Chaffetz. I thank the gentlewoman. Now recognize
the gentleman from Florida, Mr. Mica, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Mica. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And good morning, Mr.
Director.
I've got some questions. I guess this is sort of another
gotcha hearing. We just have incident after incident. We've had
Cartagena, we have the fence jumper, we have this most recent
one. And you testified that you cannot take action because--on
personnel as far as discipline because of Title V. But as
Chapter 102 of Title V sets some requirements, have you seen a
draft that was prepared last year? Can you give the Director a
copy of this draft? It's Deliberate Draft 72214, and its
amendments to the hiring, managing, and discipline of its work
force. This is amendments for Secret Service.
So, rather than just talk about more incidents, let's get
down to the brass tacks of the issues you face. Right?
First is hiring. Right?
Mr. Clancy. Yes.
Mr. Mica. You've got to hire good people. You came and you
said you need more people. I submit that you need better
people, and you need better qualifications.
When I left the White House about a week ago, I followed a
Secret Service car just by accident and I said, ``What's that
on the bumper?'' And it's actually soliciting for folks to work
on the bumper of a police vehicle. This is the way we hire
folks for the Secret Service.
I didn't know your predecessor, Ms. Pierson, although she
came from my local town. She called me after she was there for
a while and she says, ``It's very difficult to get this place
under control. I've got to have some ability to hire better
qualified people.'' I didn't know that you didn't need a
college education for some of those positions. Is that correct?
Mr. Clancy. That's correct.
Mr. Mica. She said that by law we've dumbed down the
qualifications. So, first you've got to hire people. You don't
hire them with an advertisement on a bumper of a vehicle. You
want qualified personnel with the highest qualifications.
Right?
Second, you've got to be able to manage those personnel.
And she asked for these things way back; in fact, on July 2d
there was a meeting with Government Reform staff. Do you know
where these recommendations are? I was told they went back to
DHS.
Mr. Clancy. We have----
Mr. Mica. Where these suggestions for improvement are. Do
you know where they are? Does anyone know? I want to know where
they are, because they've been sitting around. She knew what
was wrong before, you know, she was railroaded out. You'll be
railroaded out, too, if we don't make changes. But the fault is
in the guidelines that you have to follow.
She told me managing personnel, administering them, you
have a 20-year, I guess, retirement, then you have to retire on
the law enforcement side?
Mr. Clancy. That's-the older plan was a 20-year retirement,
but the FERS is not 20 years.
Mr. Mica. OK. Well, in any event, when you get to the
retirement, then it took 2 years to get people trained for SES
positions. That still exists. Right?
Mr. Clancy. Yes.
Mr. Mica. OK. She said that needed to be changed, because
the time we're able to administer, you're hiring people getting
the best qualified. Then you want the best administration.
Right?
Mr. Clancy. Yes.
Mr. Mica. OK. so, we have an impediment in that she asked
for that change. Nothing's been done. It's probably sitting
somewhere over--then, finally, she said to hold people
accountable; Secret Service holding protectors accountable.
That's what this hearing is about.
She asked for the ability to hire and fire an exempt agency
under Title V. Do you agree with that?
Mr. Clancy. Yes, we do.
Mr. Mica. And that's one of her recommendations. But we
have to do that, because you--we heard oh, there's no command.
Well, hell, you don't have the ability to command, because your
hands are tied by Title V. You can't hire and fire. You have to
go through this layer.
I chaired Civil Service, and I know how difficult it is to
get rid of folks, even discipline folks. Most people are just
moved horizontally to some other position. Isn't that just the
case?
Mr. Clancy. That's correct, yes.
Mr. Mica. OK. So, again, you've got to have the ability to
hire and fire.
This proposal, I submit, which was last July, and I read
the recommendations of the little group that came up with some.
Until you address this fundamental problem, that Director, or
whoever succeeds him will not succeed in managing his
personnel, because one, he can't hire people that are
qualified. Two, he can't manage or administer those folks. And,
three, can't discipline, and hire and fire people that need to
be held accountable. Is that right, basically?
Mr. Clancy. Basically, yes, sir.
Mr. Mica. OK. And, finally, if a bullet hits the White
House, a window, or the building, has something been done to
address that? You talked about the fence.
Mr. Clancy. Yes, we have procedures now if there's any--
anything hits the White House. We have instituted procedures
since 2011.
Mr. Mica. And I'd like to know more for the record, or
behind the scenes about drones, and how they can penetrate the
perimeter. Thank you. Yield back.
Chairman Chaffetz. Thank the gentleman. Now recognize the
Ranking Member, Mr. Cummings, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Cummings. Thank you very much.
Director Clancy, I want to get down to something that you
said, that you said was unacceptable, and that is when you
found out about this incident. You learned of these allegations
on May 9th, which was 5 days after the incident occurred. And
that is a big concern for me, and I know it is for this
Committee, too.
First and foremost, there's no doubt that you should have
been informed about this incident immediately. Is that right?
Mr. Clancy. That's correct. Yes, sir.
Mr. Cummings. So, you should have been informed about it
the day of.
Mr. Clancy. Yes, that's correct.
Mr. Cummings. At our briefing last week, you told us that
no one in the immediate office had been aware of this incident.
Is that correct?
Mr. Clancy. That's correct.
Mr. Cummings. Last week you testified that the Secret
Service personnel should have reported this incident up the
chain. If I have this right, they should have reported as
follows: from personnel on the ground to the Deputy Chief of
the Uniform Division, to the Special Agent-in-Charge of
Presidential Protective Division, to the Assistant Director of
Protective Operations, and then to you. Is that correct?
Mr. Clancy. That's correct.
Mr. Cummings. Now, yesterday, the Secret Service produced
documents to the Committee indicating that the Deputy Chief of
the Uniform Division, Alfonso Dyson, became aware of these
allegations on the night of the incident.
Mr. Clancy. That's correct.
Mr. Cummings. According to a briefing she sent to the
Inspector General, and I quote; and I guess the briefing sheet
is what you sent to start the investigation in the Inspector
General's Office. Is that right?
Mr. Clancy. That's correct. And let me, if I can, correct
the record, because I know I met with you and other members in
a closed door briefing, and you had asked how was that process
started? And I said, ``I think it's a phone call.'' And it was
started with a phone call, but I found out subsequently that
there is a followup letter which is what we provided to you,
that followup letter with our preliminary findings the very
first day, on the 9th.
Mr. Cummings. So, in his--in the briefing sheet it says,
and I quote: ``Deputy Chief Dyson advised that he was familiar
with an incident involving DSAIC Connolly and ATSAIC Ogilvie,
and was briefed about the incident on the evening of March 4th,
2015.''
Mr. Clancy. Yes.
Mr. Cummings. So, Director, if the Deputy Chief of the
Uniform Division knew about the allegations, did he alert the
Special Agent-in-Charge of the Presidential Protective
Division? Did he?
Mr. Clancy. I don't know, sir. I'm going to tell you that I
am infuriated that I have not been advised on March 4th. Why I
didn't hear any of that information, I don't know, but I will
tell you that the Deputy Chief needed to raise that up through
the chain of command. And this is something that I've been
battling since I first came back, in a very brief time here.
I've been back about 30 days, and we are working furiously to
try to break down these barriers where people feel that they
can't talk up the chain.
I can tell you personally, I'm going out and reaching out
to people, going to these roll calls and individually. We've
got our Assistant Director of Investigations going out to the
field talking to people. We've got our Assistant Director of
Protective Operations going out talking to people. We've made
all these avenues through ombudsmen, through hotlines and web
pages to even anonymously get information up the chain. And why
it didn't happen in this case, I don't know. If you're not
comfortable, and our work force I'm sure is listening today, if
you're not comfortable going up through your chain of command,
you have all these other avenues anonymously. You can go and
report incidents of misconduct, or whatever you want to report,
but you've got to make use of these outlets.
Mr. Cummings. Let me ask you this. How about the Assistant
Director for Protective Operations, when did he learn about
these allegations? Do you know?
Mr. Clancy. I don't know--well, March 9th. March 9th,
because when I found out. I found out the morning of March 9th.
I reached out to the Assistant Director of Protective
Operations. He did not know at that point. I asked him to go
find what he knew about it, what he could find out about it.
Mr. Cummings. All right. I understand there's an ongoing IG
investigation, but according to your own testimony you did not
learn about these allegations from anyone at the Secret
Service. Correct?
Mr. Clancy. That's correct.
Mr. Cummings. I'm concerned about whether there's still a
problem with the chain of command right now, and it sounds like
there is. Based on what you know today, who is the highest
ranked person who knew about this incident and failed to report
it, to your knowledge?
Mr. Clancy. To my knowledge, again, on March 9th is when I
was given all the details we had, and we turned it over to the
OIG. Then I stepped out of it. In all candor, right or wrong, I
compartmentalize things, and I didn't want to see it. The
Deputy Chief is the last one that was--that's how it went.
Mr. Cummings. Well, on more than one time here this morning
you said you had a meeting with your higher ups.
Mr. Clancy. Yes.
Mr. Cummings. And you told them, this is--you're not going
to tolerate this. Did you ask them, any of them, did you all
know about this?
Mr. Clancy. No, I didn't. I was very blunt with what was
my----
Mr. Cummings. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Rewind.
Mr. Clancy. Yes.
Mr. Cummings. These are your top people. Right?
Mr. Clancy. Yes.
Mr. Cummings. Would that be the top--the eight Assistants?
Mr. Clancy. There would be more than that in this room. At
that point, there were----
Mr. Cummings. But you never asked them, you didn't say,
ladies and gentlemen, who knew about this?
Mr. Clancy. I did not.
Mr. Cummings. Why not?
Mr. Clancy. At that point, I honestly did not want to
interfere with this OIG investigation. I wanted no indication
where I might be pressuring someone, no indication that we've
reached out to people, or people to leave that room and say
hey, the Director is asking for more information. I wanted to
give this OIG complete ownership of this investigation.
Mr. Cummings. Just one last question, Mr. Chairman.
Director, at any time did you have a staff meeting where you
would have expected--I mean, you know, you and I have talked
about the sacred trust in Secret Service, these jobs of honor.
Would you have expected--did you have any meeting amongst your
higher ups where you would have expected somebody who knew
about this to say it to you?
Mr. Clancy. Absolutely. Absolutely. When I heard this on
March 9th, I was in disbelief. I didn't believe it, but I
called the ADMPO and said hey, look, run this out. But I
honestly could not believe, especially over that timeframe.
Mr. Cummings. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Chaffetz. Now recognize the gentleman from
Tennessee, Mr. Duncan, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Duncan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Director Clancy, all over this country there's been a
growing belief for many years now that the Federal Government
and many top-level Federal employees have been becoming more
and more bureaucratic, elitist, arrogant, and there's--along
with this, there's been a growing belief that we've ended up
with a government that's out vying for the bureaucrats instead
of one that is up vying for the people. And when you refuse to
allow these four witnesses to come here and testify to us who
are supposed to represent the people as best we can, when you
refuse to allow these four witnesses to come, and you refuse to
release most of the video that's been requested, you should
realize that this looks very bureaucratic, elitist, and
arrogant.
And it looks as though you feel you're working--you're not
really working for the people of this country, that you're
working to protect the people of the Secret Service. And last
week in the House Appropriations Committee, Chairman Rogers
said in a very strong, very emphatic way that he felt there
should be terminations and firings for all these incidents that
have happened. And I hope that you agree with that.
I assume that you are close friends with Mr. Connolly and
Mr. Ogilvie, but I hope that you feel that you have more of a
duty to the people of this country than you have a duty to
protect Mr. Ogilvie and Mr. Connolly, and the others who have
been involved in this other instance. What do you have to say
about that?
Mr. Clancy. Sir, you're absolutely correct, and I've
already made changes in our agency of people that I know, and
who served honorably, but I wanted a fresh perspective. Friends
of mine, I have moved them, offered them positions in other
components in DHS, so I'm not opposed to moving people that I
know. It's all about the agency. In terms of
Mr. Duncan. Well, that's one of the problems, though. Too
often, Federal employees who really mess up, they aren't really
disciplined. They're not cut in pay, they're not fired, they're
not terminated, they're just moved to a nice desk job someplace
else. And I've already been told that Ogilvie and Connolly have
been moved to some other desk job someplace, and not much at
all has been done to them.
I'm going to yield the balance of my time, though, to Mr.
Gowdy. I think he has another question or two that he wishes to
ask.
Mr. Gowdy. Thank the gentleman from Tennessee.
Director, who has custody of the video that was retained
and preserved?
Mr. Clancy. Our Technical Security Division.
Mr. Gowdy. And who has the power to make a copy of that
video and turn it over to Mr. Cummings and Mr. Chaffetz?
Mr. Clancy. Sir, I would in consultation with my legal
counsel, but I've got to be honest with you. I don't know that
for certain. I'm relatively new in the position. I'll have to
go back----
Mr. Gowdy. Well, to the extent that you do have the power,
or you have influence over those who do have power, will you
recommend that a copy of all video footage be made available to
Mr. Cummings and Mr. Chaffetz?
Mr. Clancy. Congressman, I'll certainly talk to our
department and with our legal counsel.
Mr. Gowdy. Well, you don't need lawyers for everything. I
mean, you've got a bunch of them on this panel. And I'm telling
you, if the only excuse they have for not turning it over is
there some theoretical, potential investigation or prosecution,
I promise Mr. Cummings and Mr. Chaffetz, they're not going to
interfere with either one. I'll promise you that.
Mr. Clancy. Yes, sir.
Mr. Gowdy. So, we can eliminate that concern. Now, will you
turn over all available video to Mr. Cummings and Mr. Chaffetz.
Mr. Clancy. Again, the video will be available at all
times, but I will go back to the department within our agency
and revisit this.
Mr. Gowdy. Do you know if there was, emphasis on the word
``was,'' video footage of the alleged officer misconduct?
Mr. Clancy. No, I'm not aware.
Mr. Gowdy. You don't know whether any of the cameras were
trained on the car that these two agents were in?
Mr. Clancy. The only video I'm aware of, Congressman, is
what we have provided as they entered the gate at the South
Park.
Mr. Gowdy. Well, do you have a policy of retention and
preservation of any video that could be potentially part of a
criminal investigation, or officer misconduct? Is that part of
your policy?
Mr. Clancy. Yes, we retain video that is related to any
incident on the complex.
Mr. Gowdy. So, if there were video of that, no one would
have taped over it, or destroyed it.
Mr. Clancy. The video would not have been destroyed if
there was--if someone saw an incident somewhere else in the
complex, yes.
Mr. Gowdy. How about taped over, would it have been taped
over?
Mr. Clancy. Well, by practice, it's automatic. You have
to--my understanding is, you have to selectively decide what
you want to preserve; otherwise----
Mr. Gowdy. Wouldn't potential officer misconduct be one of
those things that you wanted to preserve?
Mr. Clancy. Without knowing the facts, I don't know what
took place beyond that entry point.
Mr. Gowdy. I yield to the Chairman.
Chairman Chaffetz. Thank the gentleman. The gentleman's
time has expired. We now recognize the gentleman from
Massachusetts, the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on
National Security, Mr. Lynch.
Mr. Lynch. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'm a little bit, more than a little bit put out by the
willful ignorance here. You know, when you--let's just back up
a second. The Secret Service is an intelligence gathering
organization, and then you don't ask questions, and you destroy
evidence.
I guess the--I'm trying to have faith, I really am. And I
offer no disrespect whatsoever. I think you're an honorable
man, but I'll tell you, this whole system--you said at the tail
end of your testimony that you had implemented a change to go
to 7 days retention of video. Is that correct?
Mr. Clancy. That's correct.
Mr. Lynch. So, we went from 72 hours now to 7 days.
Mr. Clancy. That's correct, with the intent to look at our
storage capabilities to go beyond that.
Mr. Lynch. All right. I'm actually going to--if we have to
do it legislatively, the fact that the Department of Homeland
Security requires Logan Airport to retain their video tapes,
TSA, for 30 days, if I have to do it legislatively, I'm going
to make a recommendation that we have--we adopt legislation
that requires that Secret Service keep video for 30 days, if
that's what we've got to do.
Director Clancy, who is responsible, who is the individual
responsible for Technical Security Division, because I want to
send them a subpoena, as well. They're not on this list of
folks that we had, but who's that person?
Mr. Clancy. OK. Now, he is relatively new in the position,
just----
Mr. Lynch. That's OK.
Mr. Clancy. Joseph DePietro is the Chief of the Technical
Division now.
Mr. Lynch. OK. So, would it be correct in me assuming that
he is responsible for that whole surveillance around the White
House, and the technology, the tapes, you know, the purging or
scrubbing of the tapes, and all that? Is that the person I
want?
Mr. Clancy. Yes, he would be able to talk to those
questions that you have.
Mr. Lynch. OK.
Mr. Clancy. Yes.
Mr. Lynch. All right. And we would give him a subpoena
deuces tecum, as well, to have him bring whatever information
he has. That would be good.
You know, I mean, the local Piggly Wiggly, my local
supermarket has 30 days of retained tapes, so it's--you know,
by scrubbing those tapes, not asking for questions, it just--
and coming from an intelligence gathering organization, it's
just--it leaves me almost speechless. And I just can't imagine
a more deliberate attempt not to understand the nature of the
problem.
Let me see. What's the penalty--now, it's clear from the
tape that the two officers drove into an active bomb
investigation. I don't think there's any question about that.
Right? Mr. Ogilvie and the other gentleman, I'm blanking on his
name, but the two agents.
Mr. Clancy. Mr. Connolly.
Mr. Lynch. Mr. Connolly. OK. So, you have an active bomb
investigation going on, and they drive right into the--you
know, they drive right through it. I guess they were going back
to--they left their car at the White House, so they were going
to get their car, I understand that. But in the meantime, they
drove right through an active bomb investigation. Any
disagreement on that?
Mr. Clancy. I don't know the facts in terms of going to get
a vehicle, but I know they absolutely drove through an active
investigation.
Mr. Lynch. OK. So, there's no question about that. And,
yet, we reassign them, so we know that. We don't even ask them
questions about that, and yet, we just reassign them to desk
jobs. There's no discipline at all. What's the thinking behind
that?
Mr. Clancy. To put them on administrative leave, they would
have administrative leave with pay, and I felt that we could
still get some work out of them. And, also, I didn't want to do
the discipline in a piecemeal fashion.
Mr. Lynch. Well, I need to interrupt you right there. The
signal that you're sending to every other Secret Service agent,
Uniformed and PPD, is that those folks were not penalized at
all for doing what they did. And so, you didn't remove them,
you didn't remove them. You know, I think it would have been a
clear signal to send to every other member of the Secret
Service that those two guys screwed up, and they're gone for
now. And we're going to hold them responsible. Instead, and now
you're thinking about OK, they'll be sitting at home instead of
working. But I think on balance, I think it was more important,
especially with the history we've got here of folks shooting at
the White House, and jumping over the fence, and it's like the
Keystone Cops here. So, you know, I think it would be more
important message to send to the employees that these guys
screwed up, and they are being held accountable, rather than
just putting them on a desk job.
Mr. Clancy. And, Congressman, rest assured, once we get the
final report which, again, I'm told will be weeks, people will
be held accountable.
Mr. Lynch. Yes.
Mr. Clancy. And I can understand the frustration for many
here on the Committee, as well as within our work force, but
they're looking to see how are these things handled, and how do
you handle agents as opposed to Uniform Division.
Mr. Lynch. Yes.
Mr. Clancy. So, I respect your view, sir.
Mr. Lynch. I just want to--in closing, I just want to say
there needs to be a rapid response to these incidents. We can't
put this into a bureaucratic process where I get an answer in 8
weeks, or 10 weeks.
Mr. Clancy. Yes, sir.
Mr. Lynch. That cannot happen. We need to--you need to have
the ability to act right now on an incident like that, rather
than, you know, file some forms, and bring in somebody else
and, you know, engage in willful ignorance, and let somebody
else handle the stuff.
You're in that spot because you're very capable, and we
need to--in the future, we need you to have the ability to act.
I'll yield back.
Chairman Chaffetz. Thank you gentleman. Now recognize the
gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Meadows, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Meadows. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Clancy, thank you for your testimony. I want to return
to what you said earlier about meeting with your senior staff
and not asking what they knew. When did that happen?
Mr. Clancy. Sir, it happened--forgive me, sir, my memory
with everything else is converging. If somebody can--Wednesday.
Mr. Meadows. Wednesday.
Mr. Clancy. Yes.
Mr. Meadows. Wednesday, what date?
Mr. Clancy. That would have been the 11th.
Mr. Meadows. All right. So, you met with your senior staff,
but you waited until Wednesday to meet with your senior staff
when you were informed of this on the 9th? Why would you wait 2
days to meet with your senior staff?
Mr. Clancy. I had a hearing on the day in between, and--Mr.
Meadows. I have hearings every single day. It doesn't preclude
me from asking detailed questions like that.
Mr. Clancy. Forgive me, sir, let me correct the record. I
did not have a hearing. I don't know what my schedule was, what
I was doing on Tuesday.
Mr. Meadows. So, why did you wait 2 days? Was it not
important to you, Mr. Clancy?
Mr. Clancy. No, as I expressed earlier, this is hugely
important to me and to the agency.
Mr. Meadows. All right. So, why did you--you said earlier
you didn't ask a question what they knew. You're not
interfering with an investigation for you to be informed of
what they knew. That wouldn't have interfered with an
investigation. Why wouldn't you have asked the question? Is it
so that you could pull a Sergeant Schultz here today that you
know nothing? I don't understand.
Mr. Clancy. No. In fact, when I pulled that group together,
this hearing was not scheduled. I did that because, again, I--
it's probably hard to understand for this Committee.
Mr. Meadows. It is very hard for Mr. Lynch and I to
understand how there would be a lack of inquisitive nature on
why the Director would not want to know.
Mr. Clancy. To be candid, I compartmentalized this
incident. I gave it to the OIG so I could concentrate on--I
have protectees all around the world, classified documents I
have to keep up with, the President of Afghanistan. I've got
all these other issues that really I need to focus on today and
future threats, and this, in my mind, I----
Mr. Meadows. Well, the President of Afghanistan may be very
important and, indeed, he probably is, but the President of the
United States is a lot more important, and I wouldn't
compartmentalize and put that somewhere else. Would you?
Mr. Clancy. All of our protectees are important, but
certainly this--in my mind, I gave it to the OIG, and I was
content to wait until we get all the facts and not do things
piecemeal because I thought that was a dangerous path to take,
to do things in a piecemeal fashion, because information starts
to leak out, and information would have started to leak out.
People would start----
Mr. Meadows. So, keeping these guys there working on
administrative duties, do you not think that they have the
ability to talk to some of their fellow workers and spin a
different narrative instead of sending them home, as Mr. Lynch
had suggested? Do you think it's not dangerous that they might
interfere with the investigation?
Mr. Clancy. They could still converse, in my view, at their
residences with anyone they wanted to, so keeping them----
Mr. Meadows. So, you haven't told them not to converse and
tell a different story.
Mr. Clancy. I haven't spoken to those individuals.
Mr. Meadows. So, these are GS-15, and you haven't spoken to
them, why?
Mr. Clancy. The two individuals----
Mr. Meadows. Right. Why have you not spoken to them?
Mr. Clancy. I didn't want to, again, interfere with the
investigation. One is an SES and one is a----
Mr. Meadows. Mr. Clancy, we-you were hired to clean up the
mess.
Mr. Clancy. Yes.
Mr. Meadows. And you and I have met personally, before you
were actually the official Director. And I told you about a
number of things where I was actually getting emails.
Mr. Clancy. Yes.
Mr. Meadows. And I still get emails, anonymous emails on
all kinds of different things that are happening, details in
Honolulu where we've had some of the same accusations made that
have been made in other parts of the country. Details where
people have actually had major offenses and then were left
within the Secret Service and allowed to retire a year later.
What are you going to do, because I asked you specifically
about forced transfers and how the threatening of taking away
their security clearance for some of the rank and file, and yet
nothing has been done with that, Mr. Clancy. Are you going to
act on that eventually?
Mr. Clancy. Yes. In terms of threatening to take away their
clearances, I understand that was in a letter that went out to
people when they were--routinely, we move people around the
country, and it is----
Mr. Meadows. It's used as a force of manipulation for most
of the rank and file, at least that's the way they see it. And
so, are you going to make sure that they know that their
security clearance will not be taken away? Pure and simple, yes
or no?
Mr. Clancy. Their security clearance is not taken away as--
--
Mr. Meadows. If they decide not to transfer, you're not
going to affect their security clearance.
Mr. Clancy. You can't do that, Congressman. We need to have
people--for example, now the President's Detail needs
additional personnel, so we have to move people from the field
offices to the President's Detail. If they say no, I don't want
to go to the President's Detail, now we're short on the
President's Detail. So, we have to--it's the nature of our
business, and they're informed of that when they're hired.
Mr. Meadows. You know, this sounds like just the same old
problem that we had under the previous Director, Mr. Clancy,
and I'm very troubled. And I'll yield back.
Mr. Clancy. Yes, sir.
Chairman Chaffetz. Thank the gentleman. Now recognize the
gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Connolly, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Connolly. Thank you. And, Mr. Clancy, welcome to the
Committee, and thank you for your service to your country.
Mr. Clancy. Yes, sir.
Mr. Connolly. I want to cite--well, first of all, I think
there's bipartisan, a lot of bipartisan agreement on this
Committee about a problem, obviously, at Secret Service, and I
think that you're going to find there's bipartisan comity and
agreement on an approach to how we resolve this.
My friend, Mr. Gowdy, in his questioning raised a very
interesting point, and I'm pretty sympathetic with his point of
view, but I'm open to hearing a counter argument.
You've got an OIG investigation going on, so they're got
the tapes. Well, Congress has a constitutional role
irrespective of what an OIG is doing. Now, the fact that we
have the power to compel doesn't always mean we should use it,
especially with an ongoing investigation. There are plenty of
precedents for not doing that, for not dropping that hammer
because we don't want to unduly interfere with a prosecution,
or whatever it may be. But I will say, to underscore Mr.
Gowdy's point, I think the burden is on you and your lawyers to
make a case before this Committee representing the institution
of Congress for why at this time it would otherwise corrupt an
ongoing investigation.
Absent such compelling testimony or rationale, it seems to
me this Committee is entitled to those tapes for its own
investigative purposes. We are an independent branch of
government and we have every right to exercise our oversight.
Hopefully, we do it responsibly, but I just--I'm telling you in
my view, we're going to move forward on a bipartisan basis on
this issue, not always the tradition of this Committee, but in
this case, I think that's where we're heading, and I don't
speak for the Ranking Member, but I join with him in his
observations. And I just--a word to the wise, Mr. Clancy,
that's where we're headed.
Mr. Clancy. Congressman, I sense all of you, your outrage,
all of you. And I will go back and revisit this with our folks
and with the department, and see if we can accommodate the
request. I've heard all of you loud and clear today with what
we need to do.
Mr. Connolly. I thank you. I'm going to try to get through
five questions quickly, and hopefully you'll cooperate.
Do you believe, given your new responsibilities, and I know
you've got a lifetime invested in this very noble service with
historic history. Is there, however, do you think parallel with
that, or sort of superimposed on that noble tradition perhaps a
creeping cultural problem that has to be addressed in your
ranks? I think both the Chairman and the Ranking Member
catalogued a history going back of unfortunate headlines.
Mr. Clancy. Yes. Congressman, I think we do. I think, to be
candid----
Mr. Connolly. We do what?
Mr. Clancy. We do have an element that has----
Mr. Connolly. OK.
Mr. Clancy. We do have a small element that has a culture
of, in this case--in most of our recent cases, alcohol has been
involved in the most recent cases. However, I will say that the
OIG did a report, and I think 8 percent of our incidents
involved alcohol. But irregardless, in our--looking back at our
recent history, some alcohol has been used, so that is clearly
something I'm concerned about. And we're looking at how to
address that.
In terms of the culture of not bringing information up
through the ranks there, obviously, is a concern with that as
all of you are getting these anonymous calls, or maybe not
anonymous. Either way, that's something we've got to fix. And I
know it's not a proper answer, but some of these things take
some time, and it has to come with building trust, and it's
communication, and we're trying to hammer this home. Give us a
chance through communication.
Mr. Connolly. OK. The 5-day delay, to what do you ascribe
it? Was it bureaucratic inertia, or do you believe somebody was
deliberately trying to withhold that from you so that--to
preclude your taking action?
Mr. Clancy. This is speculation on my part. I don't think
anyone was intentionally hiding it from me, but at a lower
level, if they felt that--I don't know how they viewed the
incident. And the OIG, again, I'm sorry to keep leaning on him,
but we'll find out those facts. I don't want to speculate for
those at that level, that rank.
Mr. Connolly. Obviously, it would be very troubling if it
were the latter. Right?
Mr. Clancy. Absolutely.
Mr. Connolly. Bureaucratic inertia, we can manage through
that and try to clean it up, but if somebody's deliberately
stymying your ability to scrutinize, you know, an unfortunate
incident that doesn't put us in a favorable light, then you've
got a different problem, Mr. Clancy.
Mr. Clancy. It would be a direct reflection of my
leadership.
Mr. Connolly. Well, it would be a direct challenge of your
leadership. I don't know that it yet reflects your leadership.
And that's another element of concern, I think both for us and
for the public. We had a review panel that recommended strongly
that the President should seek an outside Director for your
position. He didn't take that advice. He chose you, because he
had confidence in your, apparently. And there is an argument to
be made that only an insider, a careerist like yourself, can
actually make the tough decisions, knows where the bodies are
buried, and doesn't put up with sort of nonsensical arguments.
On the other hand, the counter argument can be yes, we'll
put somebody in there who's co-opted, who couldn't possibly be
a change agent, and isn't what we need. I'd like to give you
the opportunity as my final moment of questioning to respond to
that.
Mr. Clancy. Well, thank you, Congressman. Let me just say,
one of the things we've done since I've come in, it's not the
same old upper tier of management. We have made some changes,
and primarily because we wanted to take better advantage of our
subject matter civilian experts. So, what we've done in the
past, we've had a Director and a Deputy Director. Now we have a
Deputy, just recently made a Deputy Director was named, but
additionally at the same level, a Chief Operating Officer.
We're reaching out for a Chief Operating Officer who will not
be from within the agency. He or she will be from the private
sector. And then underneath that Chief Operating Officer, who
again is on equal level with the agent, the Deputy Director, we
have a tier of several, a Chief Financial Officer, a Chief
Information Officer, several other civilian experts in that
side of the house, and we're integrating both of them. So, this
is not the same old Secret Service from 1 month ago. In the
short time, 30 days I've been here, we've made significant
changes to the traditional culture and the structure of the
upper management. And we are new, including myself, and I'd
like to have some time to try to let that progress.
Chairman Chaffetz. Thank the gentleman. Now recognize the
Chairman of the Subcommittee on National Security, the
gentleman from Florida, Mr. DeSantis, for 5 minutes.
Mr. DeSantis. Director, I'm trying to figure out with this
video policy, last week you said that there were three clips of
the woman with the suspicious package, but only two clips of
the agents in the vehicle, so why is there one more clip of the
woman than of the agents?
Mr. Clancy. Where the female was positioned, it's outside
of that gate area, just outside, so that is specific to that
incident with the suspicious package, and the confrontation
between the officer and the lady. So, there are three very
short clips of that and her actions.
The other two clips are more--although, it captures the
package, the suspicious package, but it also captures the
agents nudging that barrel and coming through a secure zone.
Mr. DeSantis. So, the third angle just would not have
captured the vehicle. Is that why?
Mr. Clancy. The first one would not have--well, there are
two different timeframes. Yes, I can't answer that question,
sir. I don't----
Mr. DeSantis. OK. So, the--because on Mr. Gowdy's questions
about allowing Congress access, you do not want to provide
Congress with any of its own versions or copies that we could
then look, review with the staff, and then determine the next
steps that we may want to take with the investigation. Is that
your position?
Mr. Clancy. I just recently said that I will revisit it.
Mr. DeSantis. OK.
Mr. Clancy. I understand the outrage on this. Our initial
offer was to be there whenever you needed to view it. We would
provide it at any time day or night, but I understand that's
not----
Mr. DeSantis. OK, good. Yes, and I've been bouncing around,
so I apologize, I did not hear that.
Now, Mr. Gowdy also raised the issue of this Inspector
General. And I know you're doing what you think you're required
to do, but sitting here in hearings and across the whole
Federal Government conducting oversight, the number of times
when witnesses say well, that's the IG, you know. We can't do
anything. We can't give you information, Congress, because of
the IG. And I just don't believe that that was ever the intent
of Inspector Generals to cause the rest of the world to stand
still. I mean, we have an independent duty to conduct oversight
over all these agencies. We are asked to fund the agencies, and
I think the American people, obviously, need to know what's
going on, so that we can make decisions about that.
What is the timeline of the IG investigation?
Mr. Clancy. I'm told weeks. Now, again, I haven't been
conversing with the IG. I did have one call with the Inspector
General, but I'm told that it would be a matter of weeks, not
months.
Mr. DeSantis. And he's also doing a kind of look-back
investigation for some of the previous incidents. Is that
correct?
Mr. Clancy. I saw that somewhere in print, but I'm not sure
we talked about that.
Mr. DeSantis. So, that was not something that you asked the
IG. You went to the IG with the incident at the gate.
Mr. Clancy. Specifically, this incident, yes.
Mr. DeSantis. OK. And then at that point--well, let me ask
you this. With the witnesses that were invited, we had four
witnesses that we asked to attend. They are not, obviously,
here, so what is the reason for not bringing those witnesses
here today?
Mr. Clancy. There's a couple of reasons for that, right or
wrong. They're the rank and file. They didn't sign up for
coming in front of an open hearing with this--with the cameras,
and lights. And I think it's my responsibility. It's my
responsibility----
Mr. DeSantis. But, did you--correct me if I'm wrong, but
you have not allowed them to be interviewed behind the scenes,
have you?
Mr. Clancy. We have not. I understand the staffs may still
be discussing that, and correct me if I'm wrong in this, but my
understanding is that we're not doing that. Again, it goes back
to interviewing people twice, you get different stories. Every
time you interview someone, you get a little slight difference,
not intentionally, but it could be perceived different. And we
went through some examples of this in the closed-door hearing,
but I think you should have one investigation, initially, to do
their investigation, and then if there are gaps or whatever,
then certainly others can followup.
Mr. DeSantis. Well, I think that that's problematic. I
mean, we have our own duty to conduct oversight, and the
questions that we may ask from a congressional perspective may
be different than what an IG would be looking at. And I think
we're all interested in accountability, but how that
accountability will be done within the executive branch will be
different than how we, as a group that has received
recommendations, that knows that there's going to be funding
issues with this, of some of the issues that we would want to
examine. So, I'm not satisfied that that is the way to do it,
and I join the Chairman. I wish, you know, at a minimum that
these witnesses would have been provided, at least behind the
scenes so that we could have received some answers. And I yield
back.
Mr. Clancy. I will revisit that, sir.
Chairman Chaffetz. Thank the gentleman. Now recognize the
gentlewoman from Michigan, Mrs. Lawrence, for 5 minutes.
Mrs. Lawrence. Thank you, Chairman.
Director Clancy, I looked for the core values of the Secret
Service, and on the website it says that the agency has five
core values, ``Justice, duty, courage, honesty, and loyalty.
These values in the Secret Service which is worthy of trust and
confidence. And that to reinforce these values, Secret Service
leaders and employees promote and measure personal accountable
and program performance across the agency by holding each
person to the highest standards of personal and professional
integrity. The Secret Service assures that they preserve the
core values and the fulfillment of the vision and the success
of that mission.''
And then I'm always interested in leadership, and so I
understand that you have 27 years as a veteran of the Secret
Service. And during your career, you were a special agent in
charge of the Presidential Protection Division.
Mr. Clancy. That's correct.
Mrs. Lawrence. You, yourself was in charge of that
division. And that during your tenure of 27 years, you also
served in the Secret Service Office of Investigation, the
agency's Internal Affairs Division. Is that correct?
Mr. Clancy. That's correct, for a brief time.
Mrs. Lawrence. So, my concern after listening to all the
testimony, and my question to you today, is that I recognize
that you were brought into this office, or given this
opportunity. You've been in the office a little more than 30
days, but you were brought in in February of this year.
Correct? And I would--in looking at your resume, I would think
that experience like this would put you in a position where
investigative skills, the knowledge of how a department should
operate having--because you went up through the ranks, so you
have actually performed the duties of the people you are now
the Director of.
But I hear things like I don't know, I'm outraged, that
shouldn't have happened, yes, there is a culture. When you're
put into the job, you're expected to bring all those skills and
to provide leadership, and to be able to address issues and
concerns.
I'm really challenged right now. My question to you, with
all of your experience, and with the continuing--because when
you were brought on, we already had those issues that we have
outlined today. What--how are you going to make a difference? I
know that you said you need time, but when I hear you didn't
talk to those who were your executive level to investigate
this, when you, yourself were in charge of the agency's
Internal Affairs, I would think that you would be really
prepared to be able to dig right into that. And to sit here
today and have a clear vision, and a clear mission under your
leadership, how you're going to address these. And I'm not
hearing that.
So, my question to you today as a Member of Congress and of
this Committee is, where is the vision, the leadership, and
just the fierce commitment to these core values that you took
yourself personally, that you now personally are in charge of
making sure that that is the mission of this agency? I need you
to give that to me, because I'm not hearing it.
Mr. Clancy. Congresswoman, in my opening Statement I said
this is my life's work. I've spent most of my life, 27-28 years
protecting four Presidents. I've given everything I had at
great expense, personal expense, to insure that our protectees,
our Presidents are safe. I didn't come back from private
industry to just enjoy the ride. This is critical for me, it's
critical for the country. I'm going to give it everything I
have. I'm immersed in it, I spend hours talking to people at
all levels, and we're pushing it out to this new leadership
team that we've just built. We built this new leadership team,
we're bringing up the professional people to marry the
responsibilities of law enforcement, get them working together.
This is a new look. We're trying to reinvigorate the look
of the Secret Service. And, unfortunately, I can't--I don't
have a magic wand. It's going to take a little bit of time, but
one of the things that's going to be key here is once this
report is done, our people are held accountable. And we have
this Table of Penalties that we'll work with, and it's based on
what other agencies use, and we've only had it for about a
year, but we will definitely be holding people accountable. And
that's what our people want to see. You know, when you go
around and ask why is their morale down, there's several
reasons. Quality of life is one of them, but the other thing is
we're not holding people accountable in a consistent manner.
And I think that's what one of the members said here today, so
that's our first test. Are we being consistent with the way we
hold people accountable? And insure we followup with that
accountability.
Chairman Chaffetz. I thank the gentlewoman.
Mrs. Lawrence. I yield back my time, but results is what
will measure your leadership.
Mr. Clancy. Yes.
Mrs. Lawrence. Thank you.
Chairman Chaffetz. Thank the gentlewoman. Will now
recognize the gentleman from South Carolina, Mr. Mulvaney, for
5 minutes.
Mr. Mulvaney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr.
Clancy, for being here.
I'm going to ask you a couple of specific questions about
the incident that we've been discussing here today, and then
we'll talk more generally, I think, about the agency.
As best I can tell, a layman summary of this is that a
woman dropped off what she said was a bomb at 10:24 on a
Wednesday night. Yet, it looks like the Be On The Lookout order
didn't go out until Thursday afternoon at 4:15. Is that--does
that delay surprise you? Is that ordinary course of business?
Is that unusual?
Mr. Clancy. I can't confirm. I'm going to ask my staff if
that's the actual timeframe for that to go out.
Mr. Mulvaney. Well, let's assume for sake of discussion
that it is. Would that be too long?
Mr. Clancy. It would be too long.
Mr. Mulvaney. Have you all looked into why, because I can
assure you it did take that long. I'm looking at the document
in front of me. I'd be happy to share it with you, but have you
investigated why that happened yet?
Mr. Clancy. Our Investigative Office certainly will
investigate why. They're going to look at the whole process.
Mr. Mulvaney. OK. But you've talked to your folks about
this. Right? I mean, you said you talked to your senior folks
about it. You've done perhaps not a formal investigation, but
you've asked them why. Right?
Mr. Clancy. On the incident involving the lady throwing the
suspicious package, I have talked to our people about that,
been briefed on the incident.
Mr. Mulvaney. But you still don't have any idea why it took
that long to put out the Be On The Lookout Order?
Mr. Clancy. I don't know why it took that long, no.
Mr. Mulvaney. And then--and, again, I'm just coming to this
issue for the first time. You found her, Friday morning, the
woman who threw a package at the White House, and then ran over
a Secret Service agent with an open car door as she was
speeding away. Well, you found her on Friday morning at a hotel
in Virginia. Your agents talked to her in the lobby of the
hotel while she's having breakfast and they didn't detain her.
Were you aware of that?
Mr. Clancy. I am aware of it after being briefed, yes.
Mr. Mulvaney. Why didn't they detain her?
Mr. Clancy. I'm going to make an assumption here. Other
than the fact that there was no arrest warrant out, the arrest
warrant came out the following day, I believe.
Mr. Mulvaney. How long should it take you to get a warrant
for somebody who throws a bomb at the White House?
Mr. Clancy. Well, the other factors here, again, making an
assumption, is that at this point we know there are--we know
that she has a history with the Secret Service, and she has
been interviewed in the past.
Mr. Mulvaney. She does have a history, so you knew who she
was. The arrest warrant, by the way, didn't go out until the
following Tuesday. It took you 7 days to get the warrant to
arrest this lady, which takes me to the next step in the
timeline. On Saturday, she was arrested by local police in
Virginia, and the local police called your PIOC, and the PIOC
told the local police that the suspect is no longer a Secret
Service--on the Secret Service Lookout. Were you aware of that?
Mr. Clancy. I was not.
Mr. Mulvaney. Does that strike you as something unusual and
strange, and perhaps wrong?
Mr. Clancy. It does. I'm not sure why she would not be a
lookout.
Mr. Mulvaney. And I guess we--I don't want to pile on, Mr.
Clancy, because I know it's been a rough day for you, but I
would hope that--this has been a month now since this happened.
You knew it was a high-profile event, and granted a lot of the
attention went to what happened with the officers that evening,
but still, a woman threw a bomb at the White House, at least
something she said was a bomb when she dropped it off. It
turned out that it wasn't. And for you at this point, sir, not
to know these details is a little disappointing to me, but
we'll leave that for another day.
Let me ask you my general question. You've been there 27
years. You seem like a very dedicated public servant, and I
thank you for your service. I think people undervalue folks
like you and what you do for this Nation. Has it always been
this bad?
Mr. Clancy. No, sir.
Mr. Mulvaney. What changed?
Mr. Clancy. Sir, I've got--I don't know that answer. I wish
I did. I know there was great dedication when I was younger,
and I think there is--I know there's great dedication now.
I honestly believe it's a smaller element of people that
are not satisfied. And, again, it goes back to how we're
treating our people, you know. And they're getting crushed,
some of them, with the hours because the staffing is so
limited. And we're up for some real challenges as we go into
the fall here with the Pope's visit, and the U.N. That is going
to be a tremendous challenge which, again, is going to create a
tremendous burden on our work force. And I think that's part of
it, too.
I think that the demands on the work force as our mission
has somewhat expanded, but primarily our staffing levels
haven't kept up. And I think that's affecting our morale, but I
don't want to dismiss the leadership. You know, leadership is a
key part of this, too, and that's something that I've got to
correct and have got to work on. But the staffing levels which
we're making some headway to, I think that's going to help over
time.
Mr. Mulvaney. Let's look at that together. Let me ask you
one last question, Mr. Clancy, just out of curiosity. Was it
better when you all were under Treasury? Is that part of the
problem here, that you're under Homeland now, and not Treasury?
Mr. Clancy. Again, I was a young agent, a young manager
when we were under Treasury, so I don't know those
relationships and how that worked during that timeframe, so I
wouldn't be able to give a good answer on that.
Mr. Mulvaney. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Chaffetz. Thank the gentleman. Now recognize the
gentlewoman from the Virgin Islands, Ms. Plaskett, for 5
minutes.
Ms. Plaskett. Yes, good morning. And thank you very much,
Chairman and Ranking Member. Mr. Clancy, thank you so much for
your time here.
My questions really go along the same line, but a much more
condensed timeframe, as my colleague, Mr. Mulvaney. And I
wanted to really talk with you about allegations that are out
there, as opposed to facts. I have a real problem with people
putting information out that is not substantiated by direct
facts, so I wanted to talk about this anonymous email, and some
of the allegations that are in it.
We understand that you received this anonymous email 5 days
after the fact. Correct?
Mr. Clancy. That's correct.
Ms. Plaskett. And you're now very familiar with this, and
it was given to this Committee yesterday. And I wanted to walk
you through some of the allegations that were in there to see
what you have been able to ascertain as being factual, as
opposed to those which are not credible, or you still do not
have information about.
In the email, it says at some point an ATSAIC from WFO,
George Ogilvie, and a PPD DSAIC, Marc Connolly, drove through a
crime scene tape. Now, I'm going to get back to that
allegations of a crime scene tape specifically, but later on it
says the officers at the scene said that they were both
extremely intoxicated. They were coming home from Ed Donovan's
retirement dinner.
Were they, in fact, coming home--coming, returning from a
retirement dinner? Do you know that?
Mr. Clancy. I know there was a retirement dinner that
night. I don't know if they were coming from the retirement
dinner.
Ms. Plaskett. You haven't been able to ascertain the list
of the guests or individuals who were there?
Mr. Clancy. I have not. I stepped away from it, for the
OIG.
Ms. Plaskett. OK. But the OIG is looking into that.
Mr. Clancy. Yes, they are.
Ms. Plaskett. All right. And they apparently flipped on the
lights of their GOVs to go around the roadblocks. What's a GOV?
Mr. Clancy. It's a Government-Owned Vehicle.
Ms. Plaskett. So, they were in government vehicles coming
back to the White House.
Mr. Clancy. That's correct.
Ms. Plaskett. And they went--did they, in fact, go around
the roadblock? What does that mean?
Mr. Clancy. I don't know that. It would be an assumption on
my part. I know that when they arrived at the gate on E Street
and 15th Street, there was a barrel there that was placed there
by our officers to secure the zone, and they did go through,
they moved that barrel over.
Ms. Plaskett. OK. Well, it says--the email says apparently,
flipped on the lights. Does that mean--you know, I've been an
investigator and a prosecutor. Apparently means that the person
doesn't know themselves. What do you think? Were they--do you
believe that this individual who sent this email was, in fact,
there at the scene?
Mr. Clancy. I can only--I don't know that, because I don't
know if the lights were flipped on or not. You know, reading
that, it sounds like it's secondhand information, but that
would be an assumption on my part.
Ms. Plaskett. That's what I get out of it. And that the
agents nudged the barrel, as opposed to--we have heard nudged,
we've heard crashed. Which one was it?
Mr. Clancy. It was more of a nudge. It was on the right
side of the bumper. It was----
Ms. Plaskett. And why would you call it a nudge, as opposed
to a crash?
Mr. Clancy. Because there was--the barrel didn't crossover.
It wasn't--it was more of a purposeful move, it wasn't losing
control of a vehicle. It was a very delicate movement of the
barrel with the vehicle.
Ms. Plaskett. How fast were they going?
Mr. Clancy. One to two miles an hour.
Ms. Plaskett. So, to crash something would probably require
a much greater speed.
Mr. Clancy. Yes, the barrel would have been tipped over.
Ms. Plaskett. OK. Now, I want to talk about a specific time
period. We have, and you tell me if I'm correct with these
times, at 10:24 the suspect drives up. Correct?
Mr. Clancy. Yes, that's correct.
Ms. Plaskett. And then at 10:30, the Joint Operation Center
notifies the Metropolitan Police Department.
Mr. Clancy. Yes, that's correct.
Ms. Plaskett. 10:32, they report the--the Uniform Division
reports the incident to the Joint Operating Center. Right,
10:32?
Mr. Clancy. I don't have the timeline in front of me, but
yes.
Ms. Plaskett. And then at 10:47, a notification message
goes out. Right, at 10----
Mr. Clancy. According to the timeline, yes, I believe.
Ms. Plaskett. OK. Now, at 10:47 the PIC sends a
notification message regarding the suspicious package.
Mr. Clancy. Yes.
Ms. Plaskett. And then at 11:12, the PIC issues the first
of two notification alerts regarding the suspicious package.
Mr. Clancy. Yes.
Ms. Plaskett. OK. What is the difference between the one at
10:47, a notification message, and the 11:12, the notification
alerts?
Mr. Clancy. 11:12, the alerts should be the same. They're
both Protective alerts to alert the Director staff that there
is a suspicious package, or there's an incident at the White
House, or whatever the incident is. So, they are updates to the
original alert.
Ms. Plaskett. OK. And when did the officers arrive on the
scene?
Mr. Clancy. Metropolitan arrived----
Ms. Plaskett. No, the two officers in question.
Mr. Clancy. Oh, the two officers in question arrived at----
Ms. Plaskett. 10:58.
Mr. Clancy. 10:58.
Ms. Plaskett. 10:58, so they didn't know that there was a
scene there, did they, at 11:12 when the notifications went
out?
Mr. Clancy. They should have. They would have received the
notification. Typically, senior staff would receive these
notifications, so they should know. And the assumption is they
saw the barrels there, and they should know.
Ms. Plaskett. But was, based on the emails, was there crime
scene tape? Was there any notification, was there anything
there that would have let them know that this was a scene, a
crime scene?
Mr. Clancy. From the video that I looked at, the Committee
has looked, I don't remember seeing any crime tape or any tape.
There may have been some out there, but I just--I didn't see it
in the video that I saw.
Ms. Plaskett. OK, thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your
indulgence with the time. It just appears that this anonymous
email does not, necessarily, comport with the information that
we have.
Chairman Chaffetz. That is why we need to see the tapes.
We will now recognize the gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Hice,
for 5 minutes.
Mr. Hice. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Clancy, who is required, under the policies of the
Secret Service, to report misconduct?
Mr. Clancy. Anyone can report misconduct.
Mr. Hice. OK. We have a slide in that regard. So my
question is not, can anyone report misconduct, but who is
required to do so?
Mr. Clancy. Every supervisor is required--is required to
report misconduct.
Mr. Hice. OK. And if a supervisor fails to report
misconduct, there are penalties.
Mr. Clancy. Yes.
Mr. Hice. And we have another slide. OK.
Mr. Clancy. That is correct.
Mr. Hice. All right. So these slides are accurate in terms
of what is required and the punishment, the penalty, if policy
is not followed.
On the night of March 4, Captain Michael Braun was a watch
commander overseeing the White House. Is that correct?
Mr. Clancy. That is correct.
Mr. Hice. OK. And in a nutshell, what does the ``watch
commander'' mean?
Mr. Clancy. The watch commander is the on-duty supervisor
for the White House complex.
Mr. Hice. OK. So the on-duty supervisor in charge that
night. Who does the supervisor, the watch commander, report to?
Mr. Clancy. He reports to the--to an inspector in uniformed
division.
Mr. Hice. OK. Who does the inspector report to?
Mr. Clancy. The inspector reports to the Deputy Chief in
uniformed division.
Mr. Hice. Which would be who?
Mr. Clancy. Which would be Alfonso Dyson.
Mr. Hice. OK. Who does Deputy Chief Dyson report to?
Mr. Clancy. He reports to the special agent in charge of
the President's detail.
Mr. Hice. Which would be who?
Mr. Clancy. Robert Buster.
Mr. Hice. OK. Now, you have confirmed that the incident was
reported. Is that correct?
Mr. Clancy. The----
Mr. Hice. Yes. The incident on March 4, it was all
reported. Did it go through the proper chain of command?
Mr. Clancy. It was reported up to the Deputy Chief of the
White House complex, Mr. Dyson, and from that point on I don't
know what notifications were made.
Mr. Hice. OK. Were the reports that were made done so in a
timely manner? When were they reported?
Mr. Clancy. And, again, there is two separate incidents,
though. If you are talking about the misconduct, I know that it
stopped at----
Mr. Hice. Or, really, both. I mean, the question, I am
trying to determine if we are following the proper chain of
command----
Mr. Clancy. Right.
Mr. Hice [continuing]. And doing so properly.
Mr. Clancy. The incident involving the throwing of the
books, that followed the proper chain of command. The incident
involving the misconduct, it did not follow.
Mr. Hice. It did not. OK. And so it did not. Could it be
that it did not follow the proper chain of command for the
misconduct because he was a superior officer, a superior agent?
Could they have been intimidated, fearful, or even instructed
not to report Mr. Connolly?
Mr. Clancy. I can't answer that, but I am sure when they
interview the watch commander that would come out. But I
don't--I can't answer that. I don't know.
Mr. Hice. Don't you think you should know?
Mr. Clancy. Well, I will know once the investigation is
completed.
Mr. Hice. OK. What would have happened to this crime scene
had it been disturbed by someone other than Secret Service
agents? Would anything have been handled differently? What if
someone driving a car ran into the area?
Mr. Clancy. Yes. I would say they would be interviewed--
they would be detained, they would be interviewed, and see if
there was intent. Did they know what they were doing? Was there
intent to disrupt the zone?
Mr. Hice. But that did not happen if it is an agent. So is
one set of policies for an agent, which is basically nothing,
versus had it been a civilian, the entire scenario would have
been treated differently?
Mr. Clancy. Again, not knowing all the facts, it may have
been longer----
Mr. Hice. But that is what you seem to be indicating. Had
it been someone else----
Mr. Clancy. Yes.
Mr. Hice [continuing]. It would have all been treated
differently.
Mr. Clancy. Yes.
Mr. Hice. Do you have policies for agents who are
intoxicated?
Mr. Clancy. Yes. If you are driving under the influence and
operating a motor vehicle, there are penalties for that.
Mr. Hice. Do you believe that the agents who responded to
this incident should be reprimanded for any failure not to
report according to policy?
Mr. Clancy. Now, I am prejudging here, but--the
investigation, but if they--if we find that people did not
report to their--all the way up through the chain of command,
absolutely.
Mr. Hice. But you have already admitted----
Mr. Clancy. Absolutely.
Mr. Hice [continuing]. You have already admitted that that
did not happen.
Mr. Clancy. Yes. I can't say that I know that it went to
the Deputy Chief, but I don't know where it went after that.
Mr. Hice. But there was a breakdown. So there was
obviously----
Mr. Clancy. Well, there is a breakdown, yes, sir.
Mr. Hice [continuing]. A breakdown.
Mr. Clancy. Because I----
Mr. Hice. Yes. OK.
Mr. Clancy [continuing]. I didn't hear about it. Yes, sir.
Mr. Hice. And so you have also admitted that there should
be reprimands.
Mr. Clancy. Yes.
Mr. Hice. What reprimands have taken place to this point
for those agents who did not properly report?
Mr. Clancy. None to this point, sir, because, right or
wrong, I don't want to piecemeal some of these disciplinary
actions. And I want to wait until I hear all the facts, too,
because there is a lot of hearsay out there right now, and I
would like to get the one definitive report.
Mr. Hice. You have Stated a significant number of facts,
and there has still been no reprimand. I find that inexcusable,
sir.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Chaffetz. Thank the gentleman.
We will now recognize the gentlewoman from New Mexico, Ms.
Lujan Grisham, for 5 minutes.
Ms. Lujan Grisham. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Clancy, I recognize that this is a difficult
environment, and I have to say that I think there is general
agreement by both sides of the aisle in this Committee, and in
other committees of jurisdiction, that this is a significant
series of issues that affect the Secret Service, and then
ultimately affect the security and safety of the Commander-in-
Chief, and largely everybody else in the White House, and the
credibility of the country as a whole about our ability to
provide that level of protection and security here and
currently abroad.
And I also know that no amount of money will fix an
environment that is like the environment that you are
describing, where there are questions of accountability,
transparency, whether there are reprimands, whether those are
fair, whether it is clear that you have got low morale, that
folks aren't reporting incidents.
You have said--while you are having an independent review,
you did say that the chain of command on the face was not
followed, and I would have to agree that even if you get
ancillary and additional information that that, in and of
itself, warrants some action. And there may be other actions as
you garner more information about what is coming. And so I
believe that without a sustained and concerted effort to change
the culture of the Secret Service that nothing will change.
Now, I say this because I have headed a difficult culture
change in my career when I was the Department of Health
Secretary, and it requires rigorous, constant work, and a clear
timeframe where you are evaluating whether or not those culture
shifts are making a difference. And while it is--I understand
that you are making administrative changes, that there will be
some new folks, if you are not careful and that is all
administrative, you still aren't going to attract the right
kinds of shifts in a culture change in that--in the Secret
Service.
And I also recognize that you have got a very difficult
job, and that we expect you, because that is part of your job,
you have to restore not only the operations but our trust, and
the public's trust, that you can do that. I also know it is an
honor and a privilege to work for the Secret Service.
So here is the question. Tough environment, we don't feel
like we are getting the right answers. You are trying to have
some independence, but we are not seeing the kind of work day
to day that would indicate leadership on culture change. Give
me some substantive, clear examples, more than the CAO, about
what you are doing to instill a culture shift in the Secret
Service.
Mr. Clancy. No. 1 is staffing. We know that our people are
being overworked, and we are trying to buildup their staffing
and, once we do that, give them more training, so that they
can--if they receive this training, they are going to feel more
pride in their work I think, be more efficient, and just
operate better.
We have also initiated about 5 weeks ago, 6 weeks ago now,
a work life initiative, where we are reaching out to our work
force to see what is troubling them, what do they need from us,
what suggestions do they have. We have brought in an outside
contractor to do this. We expect to hear some very promising
results.
But I would say also that some of these changes we are
making, including the COO and the CIO, et cetera, the chief
financial officer, those changes are going to have an impact on
the work force.
Ms. Lujan Grisham. I am not getting a sense, though, about
that timeline. And I am not saying I disagree that those
investments are important, but I am going to disagree that you
need to give me something--I would like something about your
management style.
If there is not accountability for every investment that
you make in supporting that work force, which I agree you have
got to have a work force that feels like they are supported,
but they also have to feel like it is a fair work environment.
And if there is no accountability or transparency, I don't
believe that you will have the changes that you desire. What
kind of management style, what is the message that you are
providing today to the Secret Service?
Mr. Clancy. We are reaching out in ways that we haven't
done it in the past, to hear our work force, all of our
executives are getting out to talk to the work force, an
investigation. In fact, next week I am going----
Ms. Lujan Grisham. So accountability is not part of your
management style.
Mr. Clancy. Oh, absolutely, it is.
Ms. Lujan Grisham. I mean, I am not hearing that from you,
Mr. Clancy.
Mr. Clancy. Well, accountability--and, again, once this
investigation is completed, then we will see what
accountability is administered. And we do have this table of
penalties, which is very strict, we have to follow, and it
shows that we are serious about holding people accountable.
So there is no making decisions on our own here, how do we
discipline; we have it in stone and it is modeled after other
agencies. So, and you are right, that is what our people want
to see--accountability, fairness across the board.
Ms. Lujan Grisham. I am still concerned, I have to say.
With that, I yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Chaffetz. We thank the gentlewoman.
We will now recognize the gentleman from Georgia, Mr.
Carter, for 5 minutes. Mr. Palmer, pardon. Mr. Palmer.
Mr. Palmer. Second straight hearing where I have been
misappropriated to the wrong State. My jurisdiction has
expanded.
Thank you, Mr. Clancy, for coming in today. There is many
reports that suggest the Secret Service morale is at an all-
time low. According to the Best Places to Work in the Federal
Government Report, the agency ranks 226 out of 300 agencies.
There are routine requests for uniformed division officers to
work on their days off, and the Secret Service's failure to pay
proper overtime.
This is particularly troubling in the context of what we
have been discussing, because when you have low morale at what
was once one of the most respected agencies in the world, it
seems to be indicative of a climate and an environment not
conducive to excellence and, in some respects, not conducive to
integrity.
How do you respond to that?
Mr. Clancy. Well, you are exactly right. When I went to
this roll call the other night, the first question when I
asked, what are the issues here, what do you need and why, why
are we having these issues? And the staffing was the first
thing they said. They said, ``We can't get a day off.'' To get
a day off in uniformed division, very often you have to put in
a leave slip to--sick leave, because--and you may have a very
important function within your family.
Now, we all grow up with that. You know, you miss your
anniversaries and birthdays, and all that, growing up, but it
is more exasperated now, especially within uniformed division.
They are routinely held over for an additional 4 hours or their
days off are canceled, and that is one of the most important
things we have got to address.
Mr. Palmer. Let us talk about the excessive overtime. And
this was brought up in a previous hearing and the lack of
training. I think they said that uniformed officers were
getting 25 minutes of training, and that the protection detail
previously had been spending 25 percent of their on-duty time
in training. It is now down to 2 percent.
Does that not indicate that you have got a staffing
problem? And not only that, in the context of what has
happened, the quality of the people that you are recruiting--I,
frankly, don't understand why you are advertising for Secret
Service agents on bumper stickers instead of going to college
campuses and recruiting the best and brightest that you can
find.
Mr. Clancy. Well, first of all, we have corrected that. We
have asked for funding to go out to these universities, to the
military bases, and do a better job of recruiting. I will say,
we get still, last I heard, 40,000 people apply for a special
agent position. So we are getting a lot of people, but trying
to get the right people, it takes us a while to get to them.
Mr. Palmer. All right. In that regard, though, Deputy
Assistant Director James Helminski sent an email to all of the
Secret Service field offices saying that because of an upcoming
class the Secret Service was trying to fill in March, all
background investigations had to be completed within 3 days. I,
in a previous position, had a national security clearance, and
I can promise you that they did not do the background check in
3 days. Are you familiar with this email?
Mr. Clancy. I am not familiar with that particular email. I
know typically they are given 14 days, and I think there is
some talk to bring it back to 10 days, to speed up that
background check. But they still go through the polygraph
examination, they still go through several other steps.
Mr. Palmer. Ten days, though. Even 10 days, you know----
Mr. Clancy. Yes, right.
Mr. Palmer [continuing]. When you are responsible for
safeguarding the President and his family and other members of
the executive branch, does it make sense to have in this case a
3-day background check?
Mr. Clancy. No. Let me just say this, that there are
specific requirements in that background check, so they have to
be met. We don't lessen the requirements. And, again, it is
about a 7-month or 8-month process to ensure that we get right
people, good people. They are fully vetted, and that is one of
the reasons why it takes a while to get our staffing levels up.
Mr. Palmer. You have had some foreign nationals----
Mr. Clancy. And, yes, clearance. Yes, sir.
Mr. Palmer [continuing]. You have had some foreign
nationals apply, and in one case you had a Chinese-born foreign
national who had--apparently had her review expedited in the
Washington field office, despite the fact that it wasn't
confirmed whether or not she had renounced her Chinese
citizenship. What is the Secret Service's policy for someone
who applies--a foreign national who applies who has dual
citizenship?
Mr. Clancy. I don't have that answer. But to be an advisor,
you have to renounce your citizenship, renounce your
citizenship. Mandatory.
Mr. Palmer. I realize that this country is a melting pot,
but does it make sense that we are not--that we are recruiting
foreign nationals to serve in the Secret Service?
Mr. Clancy. Yes. You have to be a U.S. citizen. That is--to
be employed by the Federal Government.
Mr. Palmer. I believe my time has expired. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman.
Chairman Chaffetz. Thank the gentleman from Alabama, great
State of Alabama.
Mr. Palmer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Chaffetz. Now recognize the gentleman from
Wisconsin, Mr. Grothman, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Grothman. Thanks much. First of all, I want to just say
I disagree a little bit for one of my Statements of one of my
colleagues. It doesn't bother me if some of your guys don't
have college degrees. That is overrated. I know so many great
people without college degrees.
But let me ask you some questions, digging a little bit
more about this situation with this woman's vehicle. According
to Metropolitan Police, they weren't contacted until 30 minutes
after she fled the scene. Is that an accurate Statement?
Mr. Clancy. I don't know if that is accurate or not, sir.
Mr. Grothman. OK. I would look into it, because at least
that is what I have here on my paper. And, I mean, to me if you
had two law enforcement divisions--you know, say in my neck of
the woods the county and the city--and somebody was fleeing
into the county, man, the sheriff's department would be
notified immediately. I mean, it is kind of scary if it took
them 30 minutes.
Mr. Clancy. I would just say that I know they in a very
short period of time I think reached out for the bomb explosive
unit, so it should have been in that same timeframe that the
police force was notified.
Mr. Grothman. Maybe my stuff here is wrong, but check into
it. Did you have a copy of her license plate right away?
Mr. Clancy. They had a license plate.
Mr. Grothman. OK. Did the officer--did you find somebody
show up like right away where she lived, assuming there was----
Mr. Clancy. My understanding is that the license plate is
what helped identify who this individual was.
Mr. Grothman. Right, right, right. And I assume that once
you know who the person is at least they have an address on
file. Did somebody show up at the----
Mr. Clancy. Yes.
Mr. Grothman [continuing]. House?
Mr. Clancy. They showed up at the spouse's address in the
Philadelphia region, and we had agents go out to that residence
and talk to the spouse, who indicated that this lady was down
in the Washington area.
Mr. Grothman. OK. What was their name?
Mr. Clancy. I can't say that in a public hearing. I will be
happy to give it to you later.
Mr. Grothman. OK. What else can I say? For every open spot,
how many applications do you get for Secret Service?
Mr. Clancy. When I first came back here at the Acting
Director, I was told that for a special agent vacancy
announcement we had 45,000 people apply, and very few actually
made it through the process.
Mr. Grothman. OK. Like ``very few'' means how many?
Mr. Clancy. I am told there are about 70 that made it
through the process. Now, that is on USAJobs, 45,000, and so it
was very cumbersome.
Mr. Grothman. OK. But you get 70 people who at least make
the first thing for everybody--everybody in there. You have
said a lot of these problems are alcohol-related, which is kind
of scary, but you were not familiar with how to deal with them.
I guess it kind of bothers me because like I have a lot of
trucking companies in my district.
Mr. Clancy. Yes, sir.
Mr. Grothman. And you can't drink at all. And,
nevertheless, these guys never seem to have huge problems
finding guys to drive a truck who don't have an alcohol
problem. And I guess I will just suggest you talk to some of
the local trucking firms. And if, you know, you guys are having
a hard time finding guys without alcohol problems, you can ask
them how they do it.
Mr. Clancy. Well, first of all, we have changed the policy
driving--within 10 hours, you cannot enter a government-owned
vehicle or a leased vehicle. That policy has gone out. We
revisited that and--yes.
Mr. Grothman. OK. I would just wrap up with one more thing
and kind of a followup on what Congressman Palmer said there.
When I was a kid, I mean, the Secret Service was the top of the
top. I mean, if you heard the Secret Service was coming to
town, you really felt you had an elite institution.
And, you know, you go through the stuff in the file when
they got their name in the paper the last four or 5 years, it
is kind of embarrassing. I mean, it is almost like a screen
play for some comedy or something like that. So just good luck
in your new job, and hope you can do something to bring back
the pride, and just explain to the guys you are working with,
and gals that you are working with, that right now it is like--
like I said, you look at it, it is like it is some comedy movie
starring Phil Silvers or something or other.
Mr. Clancy. Congressman, thank you, and I will say that as
we are focusing on certainly the negative aspect that we have
had over several years here, I don't want to paint the entire
6,500 force in a negative light. We have people that are doing
great work, and they are pained by this as much as we are here.
But there is certainly an element, and rightfully so, we have
got to work to try to get them to where they need to be.
Mr. Cummings. Would the gentleman yield?
Mr. Grothman. Thanks much for coming over. I yield the
remainder of my time.
Mr. Cummings. Let me ask you, 45,000 applications. Why do--
what is the reason most of these people don't make it? And I
think a lot of people don't realize that we are hitting a brick
wall in this country, in many instances with regard to quality
of people. And I hate to say it, when I listen to my Bowman
City Police Department and others, they tell me they have to go
through a whole lot of applications before they can get to a
few people.
And I am just wondering, when you are talking about 45,000,
to fill how many positions?
Mr. Clancy. That would be a class of 24 is my
understanding, that that is what I heard when I first came
back.
Mr. Cummings. And so what is the main reasons why--if you
know.
Mr. Clancy. Yes. Again, this is more anecdotal than having
the stats right in front of me, but primarily it is drugs,
drug-related past or credit issues in the past. They are two of
the things that rule people out.
But one of the things we are doing now is with this
excepted service we can bring people in that we may know that
have a good background, and they can get into that pipeline a
little bit quicker to go through the polygraph and do the
background check and all that. So rather than waste a lot of
time on people that we don't know if they are going to make it
through or not, we can highlight those that we know will
probably get through that process.
Mr. Cummings. Thank you.
Chairman Chaffetz. Thank the gentleman. Pursuant to Clause
B of Committee Rule 9, we will use the next 60 minutes for an
extended period of questioning of the witness. I will now
recognize myself for 30 minutes.
Director Clancy, who was the most senior official on duty
the evening of March 4?
Mr. Clancy. Most senior official on duty at the White House
was the watch commander, Captain Braun.
Chairman Chaffetz. Captain Braun. Did the individual act
appropriately and report the incident per United States Secret
Service policy?
Mr. Clancy. I know he reported it up to the next level.
Chairman Chaffetz. Which is?
Mr. Clancy. To the lieutenant or, I am sorry, the
inspector. He reported it up to his inspector, who was not on
the complex.
Chairman Chaffetz. Is it the Joint Operations Center?
Mr. Clancy. No. The inspector is just his in-line
supervisor.
Chairman Chaffetz. And he did report it.
Mr. Clancy. To the inspector. That is my understanding.
Chairman Chaffetz. Did the inspector report it, then, to
who?
Mr. Clancy. My understanding, again, from the initial
preliminary review was he reported it to the Deputy Chief,
Alfonso Dyson.
Chairman Chaffetz. Who is he supposed to report it to?
Mr. Clancy. He would report it or should report it to the
special agent in charge, Robert Buster.
Chairman Chaffetz. Both of which these--again, these people
were invited, too. You indicated that you learned of the event
from a former Secret Service agent.
Mr. Clancy. That is correct.
Chairman Chaffetz. Can you describe that call?
Mr. Clancy. Yes. On the morning of March 9, I was getting
ready to leave our headquarters to an offsite meeting, and I
received this call from this individual who said, ``Hey, are
you aware of this incident that happened supposedly on March
4?'' And I said, ``No.'' And he went into some of those details
based on the email that you put up there on the screen and----
Chairman Chaffetz. Who is the first person you called?
Mr. Clancy. The first person I called I believe--now,
again, please forgive me as I go through this, because this is
weeks ago and I don't have notes in front of me, so I don't
intentionally mean to misspeak--but I believe it was the
assistant director of protective operations.
Chairman Chaffetz. Who is?
Mr. Clancy. William Callahan.
Chairman Chaffetz. Who counseled you not to ask questions
on your own following the incident?
Mr. Clancy. I am looking at the Management Directive from
Homeland Security regarding the OIG investigations.
Chairman Chaffetz. Who is that?
Mr. Clancy. No, no. I am sorry. The Management Directive--
it is a memorandum with the Department of Homeland Security.
Chairman Chaffetz. Who did you consult with to make the
decision that you couldn't ask any questions?
Mr. Clancy. I don't know if I spoke to or--well, re
security, the Office of Professional Responsibility. And I
think that is--they described the process.
Chairman Chaffetz. Did you consult with Homeland Security?
Mr. Clancy. Not other than advising them of this incident.
I didn't consult with them in terms of what I could
investigate.
Chairman Chaffetz. Who in your chain of command is
ultimately responsible for briefing you about security threats
around the complex?
Mr. Clancy. The assistant director of protective
operations.
Chairman Chaffetz. When did you know that there was an
assault on one of your officers?
Mr. Clancy. The evening of March 4, I would have received
that alert via email. And I believe they called me as well.
They typically call as well.
Chairman Chaffetz. So you knew that there was an assault on
your officer that night. What did you do?
Mr. Clancy. No. I know that there was a suspicious package,
and I would have to go back to the PIOC alert, but that there
was an altercation with an officer. That is routine. They
happen almost--I wouldn't say every day, but that is a routine
event at the White House complex.
Chairman Chaffetz. Should that have triggered the saving of
the videos?
Mr. Clancy. It would have--the fact that there was a
suspicious package would have triggered saving videos.
Chairman Chaffetz. Assaulting--assault on one of your
officers, does that trigger----
Mr. Clancy. Yes. That would have as well. It was one in the
same. It was the same incident.
Chairman Chaffetz. Well, two different incidents, but----
Mr. Clancy. OK.
Chairman Chaffetz [continuing]. What period of time is
reasonable before and after that altercation should they have
saved the videos?
Mr. Clancy. I would say within--once things settled down,
they would call that evening. Before the shift--certainly
before the shift was over, I would assume that the watch
commander would call the Joint Operations Center.
Chairman Chaffetz. No. I am saying how much video before
and after the incident is a reasonable time to save?
Mr. Clancy. I think anything that captures the incident--
that captures the incident.
Chairman Chaffetz. Do you deal with these incidents
different when the President is in the residence?
Mr. Clancy. I am sorry. Do you mean video----
Chairman Chaffetz. Does your policy change--all of these
discussions about response and video and----
Mr. Clancy. No.
Chairman Chaffetz. Does not change if the President is in
the White House.
Mr. Clancy. No, Mr. Chairman, it does not.
Chairman Chaffetz. Was the President or anybody in the
White House briefed on the March 4 incident?
Mr. Clancy. The White House was briefed on the March 4
incident, not on March 4, though. When I found out about it on
March 9. That is my assumption. March 9, when I found out about
it was----
Chairman Chaffetz. Who was briefed?
Mr. Clancy. The Deputy Chief of staff.
Chairman Chaffetz. And who briefed him?
Mr. Clancy. The special agent--no, I am sorry. Initially, I
did via an email, and I think the special agent in charge may
have followed up on that.
Chairman Chaffetz. So you sent an email to the Deputy Chief
of Staff. Who is the Deputy Chief of Staff?
Mr. Clancy. Anita Breckenridge.
Chairman Chaffetz. Have you ever spoken with Metropolitan
Police Chief Lanier regarding this incident?
Mr. Clancy. I have not.
Chairman Chaffetz. Have you ever visited with her?
Mr. Clancy. I have not. We had a----
Chairman Chaffetz. You are the director of the Secret
Service. She is the Chief of Police.
Mr. Clancy. And can I just say that we did have a meeting
scheduled, and it was--there was a conflict.
Chairman Chaffetz. You have been in this position for 6
months as the acting and current director, and you are--you
have never had a personal conversation with the Chief of Police
for the Metropolitan Police Department?
Mr. Clancy. Since I have been back, I have not had a
personal----
Chairman Chaffetz. In the last 6 months.
Mr. Clancy. That is correct.
Chairman Chaffetz. And not about this incident.
Mr. Clancy. And not about this incident. Again, there is
interaction all the time with Metro around the White House
complex. There are issues every day. There are arrests every
day.
Chairman Chaffetz. I just don't understand when the
principals don't talk to each other.
Mr. Clancy. And I don't think the Chief would want me to
call every time we have an incident at the White House complex.
Chairman Chaffetz. But I would think there would be some
open lines of communication, some indication that--do you all
even know each other, and that you have each other's telephone
number.
What time did the Protective Intelligence Operations Center
alert Secret Service personnel about the bomb--about the email
about the bomb threat? I believe the answer is 11:12 p.m.,
correct?
Mr. Clancy. Yes.
Chairman Chaffetz. This is 47 minutes after the package was
dropped and 15 minutes after the crime scene was disrupted. Who
drafted the alert?
Mr. Clancy. Protective Intelligence Division would draft
the alert.
Chairman Chaffetz. Do you have a specific name or title?
Mr. Clancy. I don't.
Chairman Chaffetz. Do you think it was complete?
Mr. Clancy. I think based on the information they received
it was complete. I don't----
Chairman Chaffetz. You have reviewed this.
Mr. Clancy. I am sorry?
Chairman Chaffetz. You have reviewed this. You have gone
back, looked at it.
Mr. Clancy. I have read the PIOC alert, yes.
Chairman Chaffetz. Why didn't this alert contain
information about the suspicious package barrier being breached
by Mr. Connolly and Mr. Ogilvie?
Mr. Clancy. I don't know that they were aware of it. I
don't know that the Protective Intelligence Division was aware
of it.
Chairman Chaffetz. They are watching this on--there is a
live feed of this, correct?
Mr. Clancy. There is, yes.
Chairman Chaffetz. And nobody notices that a car kind of
just drives right through the scene?
Mr. Clancy. They may have noticed it. I can't answer, but I
do know----
Chairman Chaffetz. That is why we are going to drag these
people in and have a discussion with them. We tried to invite
Mr. Buster, Kimberly Tello, Thomas Rizza, and Michael Braun,
very senior people within the organization. Did the witnesses
we sent invitations to for this hearing personally receive
those invitations?
Mr. Clancy. I don't know that answer. I know they were
aware, but I don't have the answer if they personally received
them.
Chairman Chaffetz. How do you know that they were aware of
it?
Mr. Clancy. Because I know that some of our people have
talked to them.
Chairman Chaffetz. But not you.
Mr. Clancy. I have not.
Chairman Chaffetz. Did they personally decline?
Mr. Clancy. Did they personally?
Chairman Chaffetz. Decline to come testify before Congress.
Mr. Clancy. I was not involved in those conversations, but
I----
Chairman Chaffetz. Whose decision----
Mr. Clancy [continuing]. Don't know if they were asked.
Chairman Chaffetz. Whose decision was it to not allow
witnesses invited to testify before this Committee? Who made
that decision?
Mr. Clancy. Ultimately, it is my decision.
Chairman Chaffetz. Why is it your decision?
Mr. Clancy. They work in the Secret Service, and it is my
responsibility to make those decisions.
Chairman Chaffetz. So you told them not to come testify
before Congress.
Mr. Clancy. I didn't specifically tell them. Through our
staffs I said, working with the department, that we would not
provide them in this open hearing.
Chairman Chaffetz. Why?
Mr. Clancy. Again, I was focused on this open hearing, and
I didn't think it was proper to have them in an open hearing
giving testimony which would--as we have heard today, the
morale in the Secret Service among many people is not where it
should be. And as we bring out----
Chairman Chaffetz. Are you concerned that it would have
been embarrassing?
Mr. Clancy. I am concerned that some of the information
that would have been released would have generated a lot more
conversation within the ranks, and they would have said, well,
if those four were brought up, why didn't we have others, or
why were they representatives, or their story doesn't sound
right. It might taint others that have to be investigated or
interviewed. So there is a number of things that would have----
Chairman Chaffetz. So instead of transparency, you opted
for just keep it close to the vest and don't provide that
transparency, correct?
Mr. Clancy. No. I wanted--again, I----
Chairman Chaffetz. You wanted one filter point.
Mr. Clancy. I wanted the Office of the Inspector General to
give them some----
Chairman Chaffetz. We will go back to the conversation that
we had. Did you or your staff have any conversations with any
White House officials regarding their appearance?
Mr. Clancy. With the White--no. No.
Chairman Chaffetz. You had no conversations with anybody at
the White House.
Mr. Clancy. No. My conversations were with--actually, it
was through my staff, with the Department of Homeland Security.
Chairman Chaffetz. Who at the Department of Homeland
Security?
Mr. Clancy. I can't answer who at the Department of----
Chairman Chaffetz. Was it Mr. Mayorkas?
Mr. Clancy. No. I did not speak to Mr. Mayorkas regarding--
--
Chairman Chaffetz. Will you give us the answer to that
later?
Mr. Clancy. I will research that. Yes.
Chairman Chaffetz. When will you give us that answer?
Mr. Clancy. We should be able to get that this afternoon, I
would assume. Yes.
Chairman Chaffetz. Thank you. That would be great.
If we invite these individuals, and others within the
Secret Service, if we invite them in for transcribed
interviews, will you provide these individuals to the
Committee?
Mr. Clancy. I will.
Chairman Chaffetz. Will you provide all personnel we
request to the Committee for transcribed interviews?
Mr. Clancy. With the department, I will certainly work
through this. But I answered----
Chairman Chaffetz. You are the director.
Mr. Clancy. I am the director under the Department of
Homeland Security.
Chairman Chaffetz. Can you make this decision by yourself?
Mr. Clancy. I can take responsibility for it.
Chairman Chaffetz. Can you make this decision by yourself?
Mr. Clancy. Well, we would have to see. We would have to
see.
Chairman Chaffetz. What does it depend on?
Mr. Clancy. I am sorry?
Chairman Chaffetz. Is it Jeh Johnson that makes the
decision?
Mr. Clancy. No.
Chairman Chaffetz. Is it the President that makes the
decision? Who makes the decision?
Mr. Clancy. I would seriously doubt this raises to that
level. I would imagine--again, I am assuming--that it gets to
the legal offices, and decisions are made there. And I don't
know if they are looking at precedent. I don't know what they
might look at there.
Chairman Chaffetz. Why haven't you fully responded to the
Committee's letter, done in a very bipartisan way, the letter
of March 19 for our document request?
Mr. Clancy. I think some of that takes time to acquire
all----
Chairman Chaffetz. Do you intend to fully comply with it?
Mr. Clancy. Yes, we do.
Chairman Chaffetz. By what timeframe?
Mr. Clancy. I can't answer that. I know the intent was to
try to have it ready completely by today. But some of these
things it just takes time.
Chairman Chaffetz. Have you had conversations with Homeland
Security about the fulfillment of these requests?
Mr. Clancy. Our staff, I would assume, has.
Chairman Chaffetz. Is anybody else in the administration
clearing or approving your response to the Committee?
Mr. Clancy. No.
Chairman Chaffetz. But Homeland Security is.
Mr. Clancy. Homeland Security is looking at the work and
the decisions that we make, yes.
Chairman Chaffetz. Anybody at the White House?
Mr. Clancy. Not that I am aware of.
Chairman Chaffetz. Why haven't you provided the Committee a
detailed description and timeline of when you became aware of
the alleged misconduct or other events of March 4?
Mr. Clancy. I don't know. I thought I was forthright in the
testimony today of what my account of that day was.
Chairman Chaffetz. We need a more complete timeline. You
have yet to provide a list of all the personnel on duty or
otherwise involved in the response on March 4. Is that
something you will provide to the Committee?
Mr. Clancy. We will.
Chairman Chaffetz. When?
Mr. Clancy. I don't have a timeframe for that.
Chairman Chaffetz. What is reasonable?
Mr. Clancy. Depends.
Chairman Chaffetz. It shouldn't be that hard to tell who is
on duty.
Mr. Clancy. No, it shouldn't be that hard, so I would
assume by the early--early tomorrow.
Chairman Chaffetz. That would be great. We appreciate it.
Thank you.
Let me ask you, when you were the special agent in charge
of the Presidential Protective Detail, the PPD, did you ever
have a situation in which a lower level agent or officer raised
concerns about security at the White House complex?
Mr. Clancy. Well, I am assuming yes, because I was pretty
open talking to officers.
Chairman Chaffetz. How did you respond?
Mr. Clancy. This is when I was a special agent in charge?
Chairman Chaffetz. Yes.
Mr. Clancy. Yes, I----
Chairman Chaffetz. How did you deal with those?
Mr. Clancy. Well, I would talk frankly with them, what is
your concern, what can we do, what vulnerability do you see,
have you talked to your chain of command, I am glad you came to
me, but be--you should be comfortable going through your chain
of command. But I don't think it would be unusual for me to
say, ``I won't talk to you.''
Chairman Chaffetz. Do you think you encouraged junior
officers or agents to raise concerns up the chain of command?
Mr. Clancy. I think I did, and I think my manner was the
same as it is today, that I am very--I would think very
approachable.
Chairman Chaffetz. What is a fireable offense?
Mr. Clancy. Well, something that would require your
security clearance to be removed if you have something that
might affect national security in terms of your relations with
foreign nationals.
Chairman Chaffetz. Did you take any disciplinary action
regarding the failure to report misconduct by your staff?
Mr. Clancy. In this case, I have not at this point. Well,
the only--it is not discipline, but I did move the two
individuals involved until we get through this investigation.
Chairman Chaffetz. At the time of the March 4 incident,
what was the Secret Service policy for driving a government
vehicle after drinking alcohol?
Mr. Clancy. At the time of the incident, you cannot drive a
government vehicle under the influence of alcohol.
Chairman Chaffetz. Can you have a drink? What level is
acceptable?
Mr. Clancy. The way the policy reads, going off memory
here, is that if you are impaired, if you have--you are not
able to control your actions. So it is not a legal limit. It is
not the legal limit. So, in other words, it could be less. You
may not be intoxicated by a legal limit, but someone could say
that you don't have proper abilities.
Mr. Gowdy. Will the Chairman yield for a question?
Chairman Chaffetz. Yes.
Mr. Gowdy. Has the Chairman or the Ranking Member been able
to establish who asked Agents Connolly and Ogilvie to respond
to the scene?
Mr. Clancy. Again, I don't know the facts of this case.
What I have heard--and, again, at this point, some are news
reports and so much information, but I am told that they were
returning to retrieve a vehicle. They were not responding back
to the White house.
Chairman Chaffetz. Can you determine somebody's level of
intoxication based on a phone call?
Mr. Clancy. I don't think so.
Chairman Chaffetz. Do you know how many people attended the
retirement party of March 4?
Mr. Clancy. I do not.
Mr. Gowdy. Will the Chairman yield for another question?
Chairman Chaffetz. Yes.
Mr. Gowdy. Director, I am trying to understand this
dichotomy between the inspector general and you. Does the
inspector general have jurisdiction to issue subpoenas to
people outside the Secret Service?
Mr. Clancy. I don't know that answer.
Mr. Gowdy. Does the inspector general have jurisdiction to
interview former agents?
Mr. Clancy. I am assuming he can ask. They are private
citizens.
Mr. Gowdy. But the answer might very well be different,
right?
Mr. Clancy. Different in which way, sir?
Mr. Gowdy. Different from a current agent than a former
agent.
Mr. Clancy. Yes.
Mr. Gowdy. You can't discipline a former agent.
Mr. Clancy. You are absolutely----
Mr. Gowdy. Does the inspector general have the power to
subpoena, say, surveillance video or credit card receipts from
a bar, hypothetically, where a retirement party may have taken
place?
Mr. Clancy. Yes.
Mr. Gowdy. So the inspector general does have subpoena
power.
Mr. Clancy. My understanding is they do. My understanding
is they are 1811s. They are investigators.
Mr. Gowdy. Well, my understanding was that they had less
power than even you would have to investigate your own folks,
which is why I am kind of wondering, and I am sure the Chairman
is headed there, why you would stand down your investigation of
agents in lieu of the inspector general who has no authority
over former agents at all.
Mr. Clancy. Yes. I may be wrong on that in terms of the
subpoena power, but I believe they are investigators and we can
confirm that. And also, looking at the Management Directive
from the Department of Homeland Security, specifically says
that you have to stand down with your investigation.
Chairman Chaffetz. Let me jump in on this, and we can come
back if that is all right with the gentleman. So I understand
that the Washington field office requested the video the
morning after the incident, within the 72-hour period whereby
the video should be retained. Why were the videos then erased
if they were requested within that period?
Mr. Clancy. I am not aware of that.
Chairman Chaffetz. Do you think it is suspicious?
Mr. Clancy. From what I understand of the process, it does
not seem suspicious to me, first of all, no. You can argue that
that loop every 72 hours, you can argue that that is not
enough. But we are not in the position where we delete--we
intentionally delete film. It is a matter of just selecting
what you think is pertinent to the incident.
Chairman Chaffetz. By the way, the Washington field office
requested, and something that you actually did produce to this
Committee, but how many different videos or angles have you
reviewed?
Mr. Clancy. I would say the same--well, I would say
including the lady who--yes, I would say three, four. I don't
know. I know there were five clips.
Chairman Chaffetz. Right.
Mr. Clancy. So there may have been five views, very
similar----
Chairman Chaffetz. When did you first get to the see the
videos?
Mr. Clancy. Again, the days, I don't know when the days
are. I know I saw it before----
Chairman Chaffetz. It is kind of important.
Mr. Clancy [continuing]. Before you saw it. I wanted to see
what we were going to present to your Committee.
Chairman Chaffetz. By the way, the timeline, Thursday,
March 5, 10:40 a.m., WFO requests a copy of the surveillance
video recording of the incident, is where this comes from.
Would it have been U.S. Secret Service policy to train
cameras on the alleged misconduct by Mr. Connolly and Mr.
Ogilvie in the event--in the evening of March 4?
Mr. Clancy. I wouldn't say it is policy, but I think if
there is an incident the watch commander has to decide what an
incident is, and then he calls back to the Joint Operations
Center and says, ``Preserve this video,'' if he saw--whatever
he sees as an incident.
Chairman Chaffetz. Have you discussed providing custody of
the video to our Committee with Homeland Security?
Mr. Clancy. I have not personally, but I believe our staff
has.
Chairman Chaffetz. Have you communicated with the White
House, you or your staff, on possession of the video?
Mr. Clancy. No, not that I am aware of.
Chairman Chaffetz. You said you sent an email to the White
House Chief of Staff regarding the Deputy Chief of Staff on the
March 4 incident. Did it reference that your staff had
interrupted a crime scene?
Mr. Clancy. It referenced--yes, it--I think the way I
phrased it was that two individuals drove through the secure
zone. I think that is it.
Chairman Chaffetz. Did you receive a response?
Mr. Clancy. I am trying to recall if I spoke to the Deputy
Chief of Staff or the special agent in charge did. I don't
honestly remember. I know I did speak to the deputy special
agent--I am sorry, to the Deputy Chief of Staff. But I don't
know if the SAIC spoke to her first. I don't know that
timeframe.
Chairman Chaffetz. So, but you did speak with her.
Mr. Clancy. I spoke to her, yes. Yes. I don't know the
timeframe, though. I honestly don't know the timeframe.
Chairman Chaffetz. But you will get that to us?
Mr. Clancy. I will look for it. I didn't keep notes, but I
will look for when I may have spoken to her.
Chairman Chaffetz. And will you give us a copy of the email
you sent?
Mr. Clancy. Yes. Sure.
Chairman Chaffetz. Who in the Joint Operations Center would
have been responsible for real-time flagging of the video
during the March 4 incident? Who at the Joint Operations Center
is responsible for that?
Mr. Clancy. There is an on-duty supervisor at the Joint
Operations Center that----
Chairman Chaffetz. You have a forensic services division,
correct, at the----
Mr. Clancy. We do.
Chairman Chaffetz. Have they been engaged in this?
Mr. Clancy. I think everyone has been trying to retrieve
these videos.
Chairman Chaffetz. When you say ``everyone''----
Mr. Clancy. Well, I am sorry. I should be more concise. I
know that when we didn't have these videos available that you
requested we brought in some of our people from cyber
investigations, as well as some of our people from our
technical side, as well as the manufacturer. I directed the
staff----
Chairman Chaffetz. So did you engage the forensic services
division?
Mr. Clancy. I don't know personally who--I just don't know.
Chairman Chaffetz. Who gave orders on which tapes to
preserve, which to not, during the March 4 timeframe?
Mr. Clancy. I don't know that answer.
Chairman Chaffetz. Who should have been responsible for
that?
Mr. Clancy. I would--there is a sergeant, a lieutenant in
the Joint Operations Center, as well as a GS-14 supervisor. And
the watch commander decides who or what--what is an incident,
and typically, as I understand it, would call back and make
that request.
Chairman Chaffetz. Recognize the gentleman from South
Carolina.
Mr. Gowdy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Very briefly, and then
I want to go to the gentleman of North Carolina who has done so
much work on this issue.
Director, I am a little bit vexed as to whether or not
these two agents were on duty or not. I am sure that you have
policies on the consumption of alcohol while you are on duty,
and I don't know whether or not either of these agents consumed
alcohol. Do you?
Mr. Clancy. I don't know if they consumed alcohol. That
will be a matter of the investigation. It will come out.
Mr. Gowdy. What we do know is that they either responded to
a crime scene, which would be problematic because they
potentially contaminated a crime scene, or, secondarily, they
were unaware and they just can't drive worth a damn and drove
over a barricade, neither of which would be good scenarios,
right?
Mr. Clancy. That is correct.
Mr. Gowdy. I continue--and then I want to go to the
gentleman from North Carolina--I continue, honestly, to not
understand this desire/willingness of government agencies to
stand down for the inspector general and suspend their own
internal investigations. I just--you have been an investigator
for how long?
Mr. Clancy. Well, I have been in the business 27 years.
Mr. Gowdy. All right. Twenty-seven years. If you saw two
GS-15s fighting in the parking lot, would you call the
inspector general?
Mr. Clancy. Well, we call the inspector general, and then
it is their option whether to take it or give it back to our
agency. They could have refused to investigate and give it back
to us, but I think, again, in an effort to try to be
transparent, you know--and, again, I am required to do that by
the Department of Homeland Security's memorandum.
Mr. Gowdy. But if there were an ongoing theft, just an
ongoing theft of, say, a vending machine at your headquarters,
you wouldn't call the inspector general. Wouldn't you interrupt
that theft?
Mr. Clancy. Yes, that one would not be required, because it
is not a GS-15.
Mr. Gowdy. Well, what if it were a GS-15?
Mr. Clancy. If it is a GS-15, we could notify the OIG, and
then they could make a decision on----
Mr. Gowdy. I cannot believe that in the throes of an
ongoing crime you would notify the inspector general. I mean,
we trust you to protect the life of the President of the United
States, and you can't investigate a suspected drunk driving?
Mr. Clancy. Well, we would investigate the incident that--
of the protective interest, which is the female with the bomb.
That is ours, and we would take that. With regard to
misconduct, that is something that we would offer to the
special agent--or to the OIG.
Mr. Gowdy. Well, I am going to say this in conclusion, and
then I am going to give the time to the gentleman from North
Carolina, it is great to correct and punish misconduct after
the fact. It is even better to prevent it in the first place.
Mr. Clancy. Yes.
Mr. Gowdy. And there is not a person here who does not want
to see you successful, Director. Not a single person on either
side of the aisle does not want to see you successful. I just
don't think this is a training issue, and I don't think it is a
resource issue. But you have got to get to the bottom of
whatever is pervading the culture, and I hope you can because
it is a venerable, well-respected agency, and I hate to
participate in hearings like this.
Mr. Clancy. Yes, sir.
Chairman Chaffetz. Thank the gentleman. I reclaim my time.
Director, it was, according to the Metropolitan Police
Department, 11 minutes after a suspect has dropped what might
be a bomb on the gate of the White House with the President in
the residence. It takes 11 minutes to call Metro Police
Department. Why does it take so long?
Mr. Clancy. Yes. I don't know the answer to that.
Chairman Chaffetz. But how do you not know? This is what is
so infuriating. You are the director of the Secret Service. It
is almost 3 weeks after the incident, and you don't know why it
takes 11 minutes to pick up the phone and say, ``Hey, Metro
Police Department, we have got a problem down here and we need
your help.'' It takes 27 minutes to secure the scene, 27
minutes. What if it was a real bomb? What if it was a real
bomb?
Mr. Clancy. Mr. Chairman, I have been at the White House
complex when we have cordoned off areas, when we have secured
zones, and it happens very rapidly from my----
Chairman Chaffetz. But this didn't, and this is the most
recent example. Why didn't it happen?
Mr. Clancy. I don't know, and----
Chairman Chaffetz. Who are you holding accountable?
Mr. Clancy. Well, we are going to wait--we are not going
to----
Chairman Chaffetz. You are going to wait. That is the
problem.
Mr. Clancy. We are going to wait and not----
Chairman Chaffetz. That is the problem: we are going to
wait.
Mr. Clancy. Yes.
Chairman Chaffetz. That is the problem.
Mr. Clancy. Yes.
Chairman Chaffetz. That is the problem. It took you 30
minutes--30 minutes--to be on the lookout for a woman who
dropped a package at the White House and said, ``This is a
bomb.'' I want her taken down. I want a net to go over that
city. I want her in custody immediately. You take 11 minutes to
call Metro Police Department, you take 27 minutes to secure the
area, and you take 30 minutes to say, ``Hey, we have got a
problem here.''
You get an officer behind the right car and they get waved
off. They didn't pull them over. You said you had the license
plate number. We spent millions of dollars building a video
capability. Somebody can't push rewind and go see what that car
make, model, and license plate is? Don't we trust that officer
who had that person in their sight and say, ``Go ahead and pull
them over until we clear this up.'' But, no, that is not what
happened.
Then, you go out to Virginia, you find the person and the
agents say, ``Well, we don't--we can't really arrest this
person.'' This is somebody who had already come in contact with
us, and the problem is, you are still waiting. We are not
playing games.
This is the life, safety, and security of the President of
the United States and the White House. Don't let anybody get in
that gate. And when they come to the gate and they have got a
bomb, and they say they have a bomb, believe them. Take them
down. Take them down. That is what I want to see. I want to see
determination. I want those officers and those agents to know
we have got their back. You take those people down. You do not
let that happen.
This is the United States of America. The threat is real,
but I don't feel it, I don't see it, and it is unacceptable.
Time has expired. Yield to the gentleman from Maryland.
Mr. Cummings. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Clancy, I want to just go back for a few minutes,
because when all of the dust settles the question is--when all
of the dust settles, is the President of the United States and
his family and all of the other protectees safe?
Mr. Clancy. The President, the White House, the First
Family, is safe. Absolutely.
Mr. Cummings. And tell us why you say that.
Mr. Clancy. I have protected four Presidents. Four
Presidents who apparently respect the work that I have done. I
have directly protected Presidents. I know what it takes to
protect Presidents and their families, and I know that we are
not a perfect agency. And this is not a perfect science.
When you look at the number of sites that we have per year,
you look at the 36,000 people that come through that White
House every month, we know what we are doing. But do we make
mistakes? Yes, we do. We make mistakes, and we followup on
them. Our mistakes, compared to the number of visits that we
have throughout a year, 5,700 sites in 1 year, we have got a
pretty good track record. Doesn't mean that we have got to--we
have a problem here, definitely have a problem. We are going to
fix it.
But it is not that all of our practices are off or our
foundation is bad. We have just got to get--do a better job of
training our people and responding quicker to some of these
events. I could list several very positive events where we have
saved lives, where we have responded very quickly to
individuals who wanted to climb the fence. I could cite
numerous examples of that. But I know that today we are looking
at the--this negative incident.
But I am confident that because of the good work that is
being done by the vast majority of our people that the
President is safe, the First Family is safe, and the White
House is safe. But it is not an easy task. It is a challenge in
an urban environment.
Mr. Cummings. A little earlier I said that when I looked at
the memo, the email, the anonymous email, that it made me
realize that--or believe that we had an agency in war with
itself.
Mr. Clancy. Yes.
Mr. Cummings. Do you understand why I say that?
Mr. Clancy. Yes. There is conflict within the agency.
Mr. Cummings. The idea that someone would even create the
email, would create it, put it out there--let us assume it is
not true. That makes it even worse----
Mr. Clancy. Right.
Mr. Cummings [continuing]. To put it out there. You know,
there used to be a--when I was a kid, there was a saying that
said, ``When two elephants fight, the ground suffers.'' And the
point is is that when people are involved in conflict, and that
is distracting--I know that is--from the mission----
Mr. Clancy. Yes.
Mr. Cummings [continuing]. That is a problem. Would you
agree?
Mr. Clancy. Absolutely.
Mr. Cummings. Just the idea that somebody would put that
out there.
Mr. Clancy. It is a reflection on all of us that we are
not--there is not enough trust within the agency that you can't
bring things up through the agency. Somehow we have got to
regain that trust. Rather than going out and doing an anonymous
email, bring it to someone's attention.
And, again, we have so many avenues that we have created so
that you can do that, even outside your chain of command, use
these hotlines and ombudsmen and--or call me directly. I have
had people directly contact me with issues that they have, and
then I have followed up on them.
So, and to the work force that is listening today, if you
are not getting results, contact me so that we can get results.
Mr. Cummings. What is the--you know, I think one of the
things that becomes frustrating for a lot of us up here is
that--is something I sent to you a little bit earlier. It is
one thing when you have one incident here, then maybe 2 years
go by and you have a little incident there. But when you see
them and they just keep coming, keep coming, keep coming, that
is when you move into that zone of culture.
Mr. Clancy. Yes.
Mr. Cummings. And It seems like the problems, because they
keep coming, it seems like we are not maybe digging down deep
enough to try to get to that ongoing situation.
Now, hold that point, and let me go to number 2 with that.
One of the things you also talked about, and Congresswoman
Eleanor Holmes Norton talked about, was this overtime and the
fact that people can't even get a day off and all that. And all
of that--and I am sure that plays a role. But help us try to
understand how you see it.
I mean, you have got to be sitting there scratching your
head saying, OK, it is one thing after another. Is it--am I
digging deep enough to get to the problems? What else do I have
to do? I mean, when you look at all that you have seen, what--I
am sure you see some daylight at the end. The question is: how
do you see yourself getting to that daylight?
And when I say ``that daylight'' I mean bringing the agency
back to the level of integrity that it once held. And how do
you do that? I mean, how do you see yourself doing it? And can
you see yourself accomplishing that?
Mr. Clancy. I am trying to stay the course. I am trying to
stay the course of what we have started 30 days ago when I was
named the director. As an acting director, you do some things,
you make some changes, but you are not the permanent director.
And to be honest with you, I thought if they brought in someone
else, they would want to bring in their own team, bring in
their own restructuring, and I didn't want to extend too far
out until I was the director.
And now in the last 30 days, I want to stay this course of
trying to do all we can to hire this staffing. That is the
biggest issue we have. And I admit there are other issues we
have got to work on with the way we have handled this incident.
But if we handle this staffing problem, I honestly believe it
is going to help the morale a little bit. When people start to
get days off, then they are more excited to work as a team and
get back into the business. But that is something we have just
got to fix, the staffing and the communication. I can't say it
enough and I know it doesn't mean maybe a lot here as I speak
to the committee, but we have been stressing with all of our
officials in Uniform Division, as well as my executive staff.
And I have personally tried to engage people, engage them and
make them feel comfortable to talk to us and try to make this
agency better.
It is that 1 percent. And I have said this to our roll
call. It is the 1-percent that is tearing down the 99 percent
and it is that 99 percent who has got to stand up to that 1
percent. And that is what I am asking our work force to do. If
you see someone starting to go south on their professional or
personal conduct, then that 99 percent has got to straighten it
out. That person in that vicinity has to grab that individual
and say that is not what we do. And somehow I need the help of
the work force, too, besides the supervisors, I need the help
of the work force to stand up for that agency and make it the
way it was so many years ago.
And one last thing, I know I am talking too much here, but
again, we are talking about some very negative things here, but
there are so many wonderful, wonderful agents and officers,
these professional people--I am sorry.
Mr. Cummings. I agree with you. They are great agents. And
I have talked to a number of them and as a matter of fact, I
had one visit with me not long ago. And this was an agent who
has been around for a good while. As a matter of fact, he is
about to retire. But he really wanted to make sure that the
Agency got back to that place that I just talked about.
And the reason why I ask you these questions is because I
am trying to figure out can we--I mean it seems as if some
people probably have to go. And do you understand that? That
there may be some people who maybe this is not where they need
to be or maybe they are good people, but it doesn't mean that
they are necessarily good for this Agency.
Mr. Clancy. Right.
Mr. Cummings. And so I mean how do you make those
determinations? I mean how do you come to that? How do you come
to those kind of decisions? And do you feel that you can make
those decisions? If you know somebody, known them for 20 years,
I mean it is----
Mr. Clancy. I have made that decision with some people that
we did offer some other positions in DHS. Again, good people,
but I wanted this fresh look and this aggressive work that we
need to have done on the upper levels. If we can set a tone, if
we can set a tone at the upper levels, that is going to filter
down. Not only the work ethic, but the professionalism, but
also this idea of trust.
I am a great believer in trust. You have got to try to
through your actions, through your actions, gain trust of
people. I think we just have to--it is going to take time. But
I am not giving up. It is going to take time. But we are going
to have to just keep working through it.
Mr. Cummings. Now Chief Lanier had told the committee that
30 minutes was a quick time response. Do you see that as quick,
30 minutes?
Mr. Clancy. I don't know. I can't evaluate the chief's
force. But ideally, we want them there as soon as possible. We
have our own people on the complex.
Mr. Cummings. Is there a bomb expert inside?
Mr. Clancy. Inside the complex, but not for the
metropolitan streets. Not for the District.
Mr. Cummings. But inside the White House.
Mr. Clancy. It is actually in the--I believe it is in the
NEOB, the New Executive Office Building, so they can respond
within minutes.
Mr. Cummings. A question also came up with regard to the
IG. And according to code, the IG does have the--the IG is
authorized to require by subpoena the production of all the
information, documents, reports, answers, records, accounts,
papers, and other data. Did you know that? Were you aware of
that?
Mr. Clancy. I made an assumption and an answer to an
earlier question, I thought that they could, yes. They are
1811s.
Mr. Cummings. Yes, I just want to make sure that we are
clear on that.
Mr. Clancy. Thank you.
Mr. Cummings. Tell me, describe your relationship with--
between the relationship between the Secret Service and the
Metropolitan Police Department.
Mr. Clancy. Well, with our Washington Field Office, the
Agent-in-Charge or Washington Field Office, they work very
closely with the Metropolitan Police Department. And I can see
it myself as I walk around the White House, as we have
protestors and incidents at the White House. They are very
responsive. I can see them in force. It is actually very
comforting as just maybe it was a week ago, 2 weeks ago, I
walked down, it was St. Patrick's Sunday, I think, I walked
around--or that weekend. We had a St. Patrick's Day Parade, and
there was a Syrian protest group and there was a large crowd on
the north fence line. And the Metropolitan Police was there
offering a lot of support.
And I remember talking to some of the officers as I walked
around. My view, it is much better than it was from years ago.
So I think the relationship was very strong, but their support
has been very helpful to us. I think there is a very good
relationship.
Mr. Cummings. And what has their communications been? How
has that been between your agency and theirs?
Mr. Clancy. Well, at the level with the Washington Field
Office, it has been very good. But to the chairman's point I
agree that I should have made more of an effort to meet with
Commissioner Lanier.
Mr. Cummings. Do you plan to do that any time soon?
Mr. Clancy. I do. It is on the schedule for maybe next
week. I can't remember off the top of my head, but I know that
it had been canceled, and then we had another event that we
were going to have a table top exercise and that had to be
canceled, so we have missed a couple of opportunities, but that
is on me. I should have made more of an effort to reach out to
the chief.
Mr. Cummings. Now going back to the incidents of March 4th,
I understand what you were saying when you said that you were
concerned. You turned this investigation over to the IG. Do you
think your Agency, if you had the authority, could have done
the investigation?
Mr. Clancy. Absolutely. I think we could have done it much
faster. I think we would have worked, again, I don't want to
cast judgment on the OIG. I am sure they are doing a very good,
thorough job, and that is why we gave it to them, but we would
have worked on this very quickly. But I didn't want that view.
The concern was that it is the Service taking over their
investigation of their people and then I just didn't want to
take that chance. And again, I am required to give it to the
OIG.
Mr. Cummings. I understand that. But I have heard you say
this many times about being concerned about--first of all, you
had a duty to do it, but putting that aside, this idea of the
perception----
Mr. Clancy. Yes.
Mr. Cummings. Talk about that for a minute, the perception
that if you had gotten involved. Because I have heard you say
this now at least five or six times.
Mr. Clancy. Yes, I just wanted to be as transparent. Maybe
the best example I can give you is I know many members wanted
an outsider in this position so that that outsider could make
decisions. So here we have this incident and I have reached to
an outsider to investigate. And now I am being told that it
should have been an insider, us, to do it. So I am trying to be
transparent here.
I admit that being new in the role that there is a lot for
me to learn and I am going to learn from my mistakes, but I did
want to be transparent. I just didn't want to have any
indication that we were tainting the investigation. And that is
why again right or wrong, I compartmentalized things and said
OK, the OIG has got it, let me focus on the protection of the
White House today and tomorrow and future trips, the First Lady
who is making a trip overseas.
There are so many other issues and threats that are coming
in and this is my third hearing and I had the closed hearing,
too. As you can imagine, that takes considerable amount of time
from some of my other duties that I am concerned that are in
the future here. And I have got to focus on these like the
Pope's visit, and the campaign. These are things that I should
be looking at now, in advance, to make sure that we don't go
down the wrong path. And again, it is on us. We put ourselves
in this position, I realize that. But it has taken a
considerable amount of my time to look back when I was content,
at this point, to let the OIG do that investigation so I could,
I had hoped to be able to focus on the protection today and our
future events.
Mr. Cummings. You know, I told you that one of my concerns
all along here is that, and I think you are getting a feel that
it is probably the concerns of a number of us is that in the
process of waiting for the OIG to come back with their
findings, recommendations, and what have you, that the
President still has to be seen.
Mr. Clancy. Yes.
Mr. Cummings. And a lot of the concern went to if there are
things that could be threatening to the safety and welfare of
the President and the family and all the others that you
protect, whether while we are waiting something could not be
happening. Now let me finish. You had mentioned to me, you had
told us that you were going to go back a few days later to the
OIG and be in contact with them as to things that they could
let you know that would allow you, if they being serious enough
to be able to act with regard to disciplinary issues. Did you
have that conversation?
Mr. Clancy. I did not have a second conversation with the
OIG. I will say that as a result of what I do know here where
these agents drove through the secure zone, we had our
assistant director for training. We gave him the task of going
back out and looking at our model for incident commands, what
do we do when we have an incident like this? Are we securing
the zone properly? Is the communication done properly? So that
directive has gone out from my office to the training director.
So we are looking at this from where we are now from the
outside. And just from that, we know there are things that we
can do better and we are addressing those. The piece that is
missing, primarily, is the accountability piece, and that comes
when we get the definitive facts as they come through.
Mr. Cummings. Now you were going to, you told the chairman
that you were going to produce certain witnesses. Now I am not
trying to put words in your mouth now, let me finish. I want to
make sure we are all on the same page and I want to make sure
you said what I think you said, that you are going to produce
certain witnesses for interviews. Is that right? Is that your
understanding?
Mr. Clancy. I have to go back to the Department, but that
will be my recommendation that if we go back to the Department
and not in open hearing though.
Mr. Cummings. Right.
Mr. Clancy. We will do it in a closed hearing.
Mr. Cummings. Right.
Mr. Clancy. And do it in that mode.
Mr. Cummings. And would that satisfy your concerns with
regard to interfering with the IG? And by the way, we told the
IG that we would work with them so as we would avoid those
kinds of problems.
Mr. Clancy. It would satisfy my concerns. In all candor,
that will go through the work force and they will know who has
been brought in, who hasn't, and it generates a lot of chatter,
but it would satisfy my concerns.
Mr. Cummings. But you know, when you say it would cause a
lot of chatter, a lot of chatter is going to be caused no
matter what because the IG has to interview the same people we
want to interview. You understand that, right?
Mr. Clancy. Yes. If you are going to do all the interviews
they are doing, yes, sure.
Mr. Cummings. We probably will do quite a few interviews.
And so what is the difference?
Mr. Clancy. There may not be, Congressman, in a closed
hearing.
Mr. Cummings. Yes, I am talking about closed. Yes, I am
talking about closed. So what can you tell us, so if you were
working with the IG, you said that if you had done the
investigation, it would have been much faster. Is that right?
Mr. Clancy. That is my view. Again, it would be an
assumption, but knowing that we would throw all of the assets
that we have available, we would take investigators, we would
empty out our Internal Affairs and 24 hours a day, we would
follow through on this to get it done so we can act on it
quicker.
Mr. Cummings. Now when you have a shortage of manpower, how
do you deal with that? You talked about all the vacancies. I
still can't get over this 45,000 people.
Mr. Clancy. Yes, sir. When we have a shortage of manpower,
operationally, we pull people in. Just as an example, at the
White House now, the Uniform Division, as we have discussed is
short in terms of manpower. So we have brought in agents to
assist in some of these positions until they get up to staff.
And we are working toward building up their staff. In fact,
this year we should hire approximately 192 officers, maybe a
little bit more to bring them on.
Now the key here is the retention piece of it. It is one
thing to bring them on, but if we lose a hundred, then our
increase is not as great as we would like. So we are looking at
both, not just the hiring, we are looking at retention matters,
too. Should there be bonuses available, retention bonuses? We
are looking at other options, too, looking at annuitants,
people who have retired. Can we bring them back in some kind of
a role with our Uniform Division? So we are looking at as many
different options available to try to buildup our staff and
that is where we are.
Mr. Cummings. Does it surprise that out of 45,000 people,
you can't get a few? I mean does that surprise you?
Mr. Clancy. It absolutely does.
Mr. Cummings. And you said mainly because of drugs.
Mr. Clancy. Primarily because of drugs.
Mr. Cummings. And when you say drugs, do you mean a history
of drugs or they come in for a drug test and they are still on
drugs?
Mr. Clancy. Very often it is through the polygraph
examination, when they are asked questions through the
polygraph examinations, there are admissions to possibly
selling drugs or having some kind of a past, crime in the past
or something.
Mr. Cummings. Let us say if somebody is asked have you ever
used marijuana? And they say, yes, I used it in high school and
now they are 27 years old. What happens to that person? In
other words, is that the kind of thing that disqualify them?
Mr. Clancy. I don't know that I can go into specifics for
each one. Because, I am sorry, others may hear that----
Mr. Cummings. I got you. So it is a major problem though.
Mr. Clancy. It is a dilemma, but we have to go through that
in order to get good people. We are willing to--we are not
going to compromise our hiring standards.
Mr. Cummings. Right.
Mr. Clancy. Because we have got to get good people. Now the
thing I have got to battle with, we have done all this vetting
and it takes seven or 8 months and they go through the
polygraph and the background checks and they get this Top
Secret clearance, where do we lose them when they get to the
10-year mark, the 15-year mark? Why are they not--why do they
write to the members? Why are they disgruntled? Why are they
not reporting up through the chain of command? That is
something I have got to find a solution to that because we are
getting good people on the front end. And again, I am so sorry
to keep saying this, but again, we are looking at a smaller
element. Our work force is listening to this, probably saying
hey, this isn't the work force I know. But there is an element
that we have got to do a better job of reaching.
Mr. Cummings. Do we have to do a better job of making sure
that the people in the supervisory roles are well selected?
Because I have told you several times I have been sitting for
years on the board of the Naval Academy. And one of the things
I have noticed is that they are very--the students are very
selective about who has leadership roles up and down the ranks.
And it is earned. People have earned trust. People have shown
good examples. And it is not a I am going to scratch your back
and you scratch mine, none of that. But I am just wondering,
are you looking at how you are elevating people because you can
have people at the top, but if you have got folks in
supervisory roles, for example, who might say to officers rank
and file don't conduct a sobriety test, hypothetically. We are
still figuring all this out.
Mr. Clancy. Right.
Mr. Cummings. That is pretty bad because then you have got
the person who is trying to do their job being told not to do
their job. You are talking about something that would be
harmful to morale and at the same time take away from the
mission. That is a hell of a dilemma. So are you looking at how
you promote people and trying to make sure you have the right
people in the right positions?
Mr. Clancy. Well, a couple of things. I know some things
that have taken place in the time that I was not in the Service
when I had left. To make it more objective, there is testing.
So you have got to either pass the test or you don't pass the
test to go on to the next level. So that prevents someone from
just tapping their friend and saying you are going to be a
supervisor. So you have got to get through that test. But
beyond that, we have got to do more training with those
supervisors we have in place today. We have got to do more
ongoing training so that they engage their work force. I am
just thinking of the Uniform Division, for example. Those
officials need to be walking around that complex as much as
possible, engaging their employees, testing our employees. Go
up to the officers and say OK, if this happens, what are you
going to do?
I often give the example, you know, if you have ever played
baseball, you sit out there in right field and you are thinking
about what if it is a ground ball or what if it is a fly ball,
what am I going to do with the ball? Well, that is what we have
to do in our line of work. I think you have always got to be
thinking about if this happens, what is my reaction so that you
are not slow in reacting.
Mr. Cummings. Yes. My time is running out, but let me say
that first of all to the men and women of the Secret Service, I
want to thank them for what they do. And I have watched them
whenever they are around. I mean I have just seen phenomenal
professionalism. But when these things happen, you are right,
it just takes away from all of those folks who are doing a
great job. And I am hoping that they will accept your
directions. And that is that if there are people who are not
doing the right things, that they themselves will weed them
out, like they do in the Naval Academy. They will weed them out
in a minute because they want to make sure that they keep this
elite organization elite and maintain that reputation. They
want to make sure that the reputation matches the performance.
So again, I want to thank you, but I have got to tell you,
as I have said many times, we have got a high-powered
microscope on this agency.
Mr. Clancy. I understand.
Mr. Cummings. And we will not rest in a bipartisan way. We
will not rest until we get back to where we need to be. Thank
you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Chaffetz. I now recognize the gentleman from
Georgia, Mr. Carter, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Carter. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Clancy, thank you
for being here. We appreciate this very much. I want to
reiterate what Representative Gowdy said earlier and that is
that we all want to see you succeed, we do. We truly, sincerely
bipartisanly. We want to see you succeed and we hope that you
will do that. Unfortunately, off to a bad start.
Mr. Clancy. Yes, sir.
Mr. Carter. And that happens, OK? Let me ask you something.
When your agency hires a new employee, can you tell me what the
process--how much time it usually takes when you hire a new
employee, the amount of time?
Mr. Clancy. Well, to go through the hiring process is
approximately 7 months, seven or 8 months. We have cut it down.
It was longer up until about a year ago, but we have cut it
down to about seven or 8 months. And then once we get them on
board, they go through training for 7 months. We send them down
to Georgia for three and a half months of training down at the
Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.
Mr. Carter. By the way, that is in my district. Thank you
very much.
Mr. Clancy. It is a great facility. It has grown quite a
bit since I have been down there, but they get excellent
training down there in basic law enforcement training. And then
they come up to Washington for more specific training related
to the Secret Service laws, investigations, and protection and
of course, our cyber mission. So it is about a 7-month
training.
Mr. Carter. Of that 7-month training, and I am not talking
specifically about training, but what about background
investigations? How long does that usually take?
Mr. Clancy. And others can correct or we will correct the
record later if I am wrong on this, but it was 14 days----
Mr. Carter. I am looking specifically for the background
check.
Mr. Clancy. For the background, the field office to the
best of my knowledge is they get 14 days to go and go to your
schools and neighborhoods and do that background check.
Mr. Carter. Right.
Mr. Clancy. Now it may have been brought down to 10 days.
Mr. Carter. But recently, has it been adjusted to be less
than even that, maybe just 3 days?
Mr. Clancy. You know, one of the other members had
mentioned that. I am not aware of that down to 3 days. I was
aware that it may go down to 10 days. I will research that when
I go back to see if it dropped down to 3 days.
Mr. Carter. Wait, you weren't aware of it. We have got
information that says there was an email sent out that said
because you were trying to fill a class for March that you
wanted to decrease it to 3 days, but you didn't approve that?
Mr. Clancy. No, now I don't get involved at that level to
be candid with you, sir, with how they are--I set the tone with
how many classes we wanted to get, what is the goal? To get
nine classes or eight classes, and then just fill those
classes. I don't know if they have brought it down to 3 days. I
am not aware of that.
Mr. Carter. Do you feel like you should get involved? I
mean that seems to me like that is a pretty high management
decision and that is something that you ought to run by the
boss.
Mr. Clancy. Yes, well, the requirements stay the same
though. There is somewhat of a check box. You have to make sure
you talk to so many neighborhood--neighbors, somebody at
schools. You have to still do a background check. It is just
that your time to do it is condensed. It is not that you can
knock off some parts of the background check.
Mr. Carter. OK, well, let me ask you in the background
check, if you find someone who has got a dual nationality, does
that impact whether you hire them or not?
Mr. Clancy. A dual nationality? You cannot have dual
citizenship.
Mr. Carter. You cannot have dual citizenship.
Mr. Clancy. Yes.
Mr. Carter. But it is my understanding that that did happen
during this time that you had the 3-day background check
period.
Mr. Clancy. That someone was brought in with a dual
citizenship?
Mr. Carter. That is my understanding.
Mr. Clancy. I will check on that. Our staff will check with
yours and we will followup on that.
Mr. Carter. OK. I am just concerned. It seems to me like
when there is an alteration in policy, you know, the one
thing--look, I am a small business owner. OK? The one thing I
don't like is surprises. And that is all I tell my staff.
I believe you surround yourself with good people and you
let them go at it and I admire that and I think that is good
management practice, but at the same time I don't like
surprises. And it would appear to me that going from a 14 or a
10 day background check period to a 3 day, that is a surprise.
Mr. Clancy. Yes, sir. That is a considerable condensing of
our hiring process. We will definitely followup on that and
certainly if you will help us with that dual citizenship issue.
Mr. Carter. OK, back to the dual citizenship. If you do
find out they have dual citizenship, then they are ineligible?
They have to renounce one of their citizenships?
Mr. Clancy. My understanding is yes, they have to renounce
their citizenship. They have to be American citizens.
Mr. Carter. OK. All right, well, again, let me reiterate
that we want to see you succeed and we don't want to see you
here. OK? The less we see of you, the better off we are and the
better off you are.
Mr. Clancy. Yes, sir.
Mr. Carter. Thank you.
Mr. Clancy. Thank you, Congressman.
Mr. Carter. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Chairman Chaffetz. Thank the gentleman. Listen, on behalf
of all of us, please convey to the men and women who do the
hard work day in and day out, holidays, weekends, they have got
the family lives going on and yet, they are asked to continue
to perform their duties. Please, I hope they know how much we
love them, care for them, and wish them nothing but the best.
That is why we go through this process. It is part of what
makes the United States of America the greatest country on the
face of the planet is we are self critical. You can't do this
type of discussion that we are having in most countries.
As representatives of the people who care about what you do
and how you do it, that is the spirit in which we approach that
and I know you share that as well. So we thank you for your
personal service. We thank the men and women for all that they
do and the men and women who are behind you supporting you here
today, but probably most importantly back at the office or at
home or on the grounds of the White House or wherever it might
be we thank them. So this will continue. We do appreciate it,
but the committee stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 1:33 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
APPENDIX
----------
Material Submitted for the Hearing Record
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
[all]