Secret Service agent distracted by cellphone allowed fence-jumper to enter White House

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last updated 8 January 2015

A cascading series of failures by the Secret Service allowed a fence-jumper to penetrate the White House in September, according to a scathing internal review made available to The New York Times. The details are not pretty:

The review found that the Secret Service’s alarm systems and radios failed to function properly, and that many of the responding officers did not see the intruder as he climbed over the fence, delaying their response.

But the review found that Omar Gonzalez, the man charged in the incident, could have been stopped by a Secret Service officer who was stationed on the North Lawn with an attack dog. But the officer did not realize that an intruder had made it over the fence because he was sitting in his van talking on his personal cellphone. [The New York Times]