Reforms in place to bolster White House security after intruder incident - Earnest

WASHINGTON, Oct 1 (KUNA) -- In the immediate aftermath of the incident last month when a man with a knife scaled the White House fence and entered the executive mansion, a number of reforms were put in place to strengthen the security perimeter at the White House and change some security protocols to make sure the President was safe, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said on Wednesday.
"I am obviously not going to be in a position to detail all the security protocols from here," Earnest said in an MSNBC "Morning Joe" interview. "Those security protocols work because they are not widely known by the public. But there were some reforms that were implemented that very night." More important, a broader review is under way to determine exactly what happened the evening of Sept. 19, Earnest said.
"What was the Secret Service's response to that incident?" Earnest said. "And what changes need to be made, whether it is staffing changes, whether it is additional technologies that should be deployed to protect the President, to protect the White House? Are there some protocols that should be different, the response to these incidents? Should the protocol for responding to these incidents be changed?" A "pretty broad look" is being conducted, and President Barack Obama "and the team here at the White House is obviously very interested in reviewing the reforms that they recommend," Earnest said. "But this is something that the Secret Service appropriately takes very seriously, and they are hard at work on." Earnest defended Secret Service Director Julia Pierson, who he said was "more than qualified to do her job." "She took responsibility for that (the White House intruder incident)," Earnest said. "She also took responsibility for leading a review and implementing the needed reforms to strengthen the security posture here at the White House." In a new report of Secret Service failings, sources on Tuesday evening told several newspapers that a security contractor with a gun and three convictions for assault and battery was allowed on an elevator with Obama during a Sept. 16 trip by the President to Atlanta, Georgia.
The incident occurred when Obama visited the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to discuss the U.S. response to the Ebola crisis, the sources said.
The private contractor first aroused the agents' concerns when he acted oddly and did not comply with their orders to stop using a cellphone camera to record the President in the elevator, the sources said.
Asked about this security breach, Earnest said, "I cannot speak to the briefing that the President received on this issue." Obama himself "has articulated that he is concerned about the security around his family, as any parent would be," Earnest said. "But he continues to have confidence in the ability of the leadership of the Secret Service to protect him and his family, and to implement the necessary reforms to strengthen that security." (end) rm.mt