first step to fixing the Secret Service: Pull it out of dysfunctional Dept of Homeland Security.

[cali]

It's not enough. Julia Pierson's otherwise distinguished career at the Secret Service ended Wednesday when she resigned as director of the disgraced agency—her last act the right one. Now President Obama and Congress must do their part to fix the Secret Service.

They should start by undoing a Bush-era reform approved by Congress in the name of hardening U.S. defenses against terrorism. After 9/11, several Secret Service agents, including those in leadership, warned me that no good would come from plans to yank the quasi-independent agency out of the Treasury Department and fold it into the fledgling monstrosity that would come to be known as the Homeland Security Department.

"We are who we are because we aren't a bureaucracy," a senior Secret Service official told me in February 2003, a month before DHS swallowed the service.

At the Treasury Department, the Secret Service's leadership had autonomy, and its agents were encouraged to consider themselves elite. The Secret Service was not just the leading law-enforcement agency at Treasury, it was at the apex of the entire profession. Only the best cops became agents.

<snip>

http://www.nationaljournal.com/white-house/no-joke-here-s-how-to-fix-the-secret-service-20141001

[MohRokTah]

1. I cannot agree more.

Let it sit as its own agency apart from all the bureaucracy. I know it was originally part of the Department of the Treasury, but really. Let it be its own agency.

[madinmaryland]

3. Interestingly one of the original functions of the Secret Service was with the Treasury Department

fighting counterfeiting. I don't know if originally they had responsibility for the protection of the POTUS.

[Lamonte]

16. Homeland Security

Homeland itself should be eliminated. It is a hindrance to our security. The people that created it do not understand. The FBI and the CIA for example cannot always share their information. The CIA wants to know who the terrorist are an observe them to learn their plans and connections. The FBI makes that impossible because it s their job to arrest and hopefully get convictions. So to look good the Bush gang placed a cosmetic called Homeland Security in business to ensure sharing of info. Not possible. Eliminate a bureaucracy with an impossible job.

[orpupilofnature57]

2. I sent THEM there to put Common Sense in to Homeland security .

[Little Star]

4. Yep!

[monmouth3]

5. "Homeland" needs to go too. I think of old Europe when I hear it...Ugh...n/t

[lonestarnot]

8. I think of cows on a plate in print. Ackety.

[The Magistrate]

6. I Agree, Ma'am

The 'Homeland' bureau is a failed experiment; its constituent agencies should be sent back to their original departments.

[lonestarnot]

7. Yes. Continue to debush everything possible while still possible.

[MFrohike]

9. DHS was always a failure

DHS was sold as a solution to the problem that Bush was too incompetent to pass along CIA's warnings to the FBI. I still don't get how anybody took it seriously. I mean, the problem was that the president clearly failed at maybe his most basic responsibility and the response is "hey guys, let's give Tom Ridge a job!" My mind still reels.

[Bette Noir]

10. While we're at it, can we free the Coast Guard, too?

The Coast Guard used to be an independent military force. Now, it's DHS. Yuck.

[DirkGently]

11. Yes. DHS is a malicious boondoggle at best. n/t

[LiberalArkie]

12. I would like to see the secret service just go back to currency protection and

have a separate presidential protective service that has the sole obligation of protection of the president and family and vice president and family. I would go so far to say that it would be budgeted out of the DOD just to make sure that someone would not try to cut the funding.

[spanone]

13. exactly, put it back in treasury. pronto.

[marble falls]

14. The very first thing today. Absolutely.

[jobendorfer]

15. an interesting dynamic

The interesting thing is, there were specific failures of communication between the CIA and FBI
that allowed the 9/11 attacks to occur.

The response to 9/11 (aside from flattening Iraq, that is) was to massively re-organize every *other* law
enforcement agency in the federal government into the DHS. Leaving the CIA and FBI, the agencies
that principally dropped the ball, comparatively untouched.

It's amazing how that sort of thing happens.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

17. So, Obama inherited Bush's Secret Service.