By using easily available technology, the Secret Service could have prevented the Sept. 19 incident in which a man jumped the White House fence and entered the building, said Rep. Darrell Issa.
The California Republican
chaired Tuesday's grilling of Secret Service Director Julia Pierson before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and later appeared on CNN's
"The Lead with Jake Tapper."
The Secret Service has a $1.5 billion budget, thousands of employees and plenty of time for training, Issa told Tapper, but he added that the agency also has low morale and little actual training.
The agent who was supposed to have manually locked the door when Omar J. Gonzalez made it onto the White House North Lawn thought she had done so, but didn’t know how, Issa said. Since the incident, an automatic electric lock has been installed.
"This is a 150-year-old-plus building," Issa said. "This is an example where a couple of thousand dollars worth of prevention would have stopped this to begin with."
He also pointed out that technologies that distinguish between a gunshot and a car backfiring have been available for years and could have alerted the Secret Service when gunshots were fired at the White House residence area in 2011. No one knew the White House had been hit until a housekeeper noticed broken glass days later.
Issa said he and his Democratic ranking member Elijah Cummings failed to see the "sharp answers" from Pierson that they had hoped for at Tuesday's hearing.
"It's clear that just saying, we can do better or it's just human error doesn't get it anymore," Issa said. "The president has not been well-served by the Secret Service … during his entire presidency."