At the first State party of the Obama Administration, a couple managed to get through the first security check point at the party.
This is very terrifying to me. I remember when President Kennedy was shot and killed from a book depository in Dallas, Texas, more than 40 years ago. I would hope that with technology, the security might have improved through the years.
My first reaction was, who is the Secretary of the Treasury? The Secret Service has traditionally been under the Department of the Treasury. I then discovered it was Tim Geithner, the master mind of the great bailout, but the Secret Service is no longer under the Treasury Department. In 2003, the CIA, FBI and the Secret Service were all put under the umbrella of Homeland Security, hoping to have all the departments share their information. I wonder now, if this homogenization of security might have taken the edge off the Secret Service. Maybe they are not as sharp as they were before.
One of the comments made was that the White House social secretary was supposed to be sitting with a Secret Service agent to screen people as they walked in the door.
There was some communication error, and she was not there. It seems like a simple maneuver, checking the guest list as one would at a wedding reception, but the president of the United States is more important than the average bride and groom.
Another comment was that, at least the party crashers had gone through the metal detectors. What a relief! There were dinner knives on the tables.
All they would have to do would be jam one of the dinner knives in the president’s windpipe, before the Secret Service could take their eye off the guest list, and it would be all over. Not only that, but a trained terrorist could shove the president’s nose in his brain, and it would be all over.
Vice President Biden was also at the party. If they had killed President Obama and Vice President Biden, then Speaker Nancy Pelosi would have become president. That alone is enough to make Rush Limbaugh want to be the president’s personal guard.
The point is that in the last 40 years, President Kennedy was shot and killed, President Reagan was shot and seriously injured, and 12 terrorists passed through security and managed to kill 3,000 Amercians on American soil in 2001.
The Secret Service needs to get its act together and tighten its security for the sake of the nation and the world.