Breaking: Embattled Secret Service Director Resigns One Day After Congressional Testimony

Julia Pierson, the Secret Service Director who was lambasted by Congress yesterday, has resigned. 

Pierson, a longtime veteran of the Secret Service who was promoted to Director just last year, has resigned. She was the first female director of that agency, and was promoted after serving as the Secret Service’s Chief of Staff. Pierson spent over 30 years in the Secret Service.

Her testimony in front of Congress yesterday resulted in Democrats and Republicans calling for her to resign. The President, despite the agency’s flagrant violations of protocol, had said she had his support. 

Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner had both expressed dismay over the agency’s performance.

“Today Julia Pierson, the Director of the United States Secret Service, offered her resignation, and I accepted it,” Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said in a statement. “I salute her 30 years of distinguished service to the Secret Service and the Nation. As an interim Acting Director of the Secret Service, I am appointing Joseph Clancy, formerly Special Agent in Charge of the Presidential Protective Division of the Secret Service. Mr. Clancy retired from the Secret Service in 2011. I appreciate his willingness to leave his position in the private sector on very short notice and return to public service for a period.”

CBS News recaps:

The day before Pierson’s appearance, CBS News learned that Gonzalez made it much farther inside the White House than just inside the front doors, as the agency previously said – a “false report,” as House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-California, called it. On Sunday, a Washington Post report revealed that it took the Secret Service took four days to realize a gunman had fired at and hit the White House in 2011, despite the fact that some agents on duty believed the building had sustained fire.

Just after the hearing, there were more revelations: a security contractor, who had been convicted three times of assault and battery, rode in an elevatorwith Mr. Obama during a Sept. 16 trip to Atlanta while carrying a gun.

Pierson took over as the agency’s chief in March 2013 after the retirement of former director Mark Sullivan, who struggled with a prostitution scandal among agents traveling with the president and a pair of gate-crashers at a state dinner. Prior to taking over, Pierson had served as the Secret Service Chief of Staff since 2008.

Not discussed by much of the media, Pierson told Congress she was operating the agency with 550 agents less than it should be, and that cuts from the sequester had harmed operations.

 

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