Am I the only one who's wearing a tin foil hat here on the lax WH security?

[Drunken Irishman]

I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but this entire episode gave me pause...

[ZombieHorde]

1. Wasn't he caught fairly quickly?

How long was he on the property before he was caught?

[elleng]

3. Too long.

Never should have gotten over the gate, across the lawn, and INTO the WH.

[ZombieHorde]

5. For me, knowing the actual duration

of him running around before he was caught is important. In my mind, there is a big difference between 30 seconds and 10 minutes.

[elleng]

23. Sure is.

[former9thward]

27. Close to thirty seconds, if that.

They have shown the video. He was stopped immediately after entering the door.

[ZombieHorde]

34. Capturing someone within 30 seconds seems reasonable to me. nt

[former9thward]

35. Me also.

I think this is invented hysteria.

[elleng]

2. No tin foil here,

funding problem for Secret Service, understaffed for some time, and employees overworked and unhappy.

[cali]

4. so what's your conspiracy theory? That the Secret Service, headed by an Obama

appointee is actually trying to assassinate him? That they're in cahoots with the guy who made it into the White House? Or is it that they' just leave him unprotected (which he was not) in the hopes that someone will kill him? Or do you believe that the Secret Service has been infiltrated.

What do you believe?

[Drunken Irishman]

8. I don't know what to believe...

There are people out there who believe the SS was complacent in JFK's assassination. So...

[m-lekktor]

12. if this breach was an inside job what would be the reasoning

for having it happen when the Obama's weren't even there? that makes no sense to me.

[tularetom]

21. Complacent or compliant?

I can believe they were complacent, that's not tinfoil. Bored, lazy unmotivated civil service employees forced to work away from home for days at a time, it's not hard to imagine they could be easily distracted and lose their focus.

Compliant implies to me that they were in on it, or at least knew about it and looked the other way. That's getting into the conspiracy theory realm and I tend not to buy into these because a conspiracy takes a lot of planning and organization and a whole lot of people need to be involved, not all of which are the sharpest tool in the shed. There are so many opportunities for somebody to screw up or blab, that the chances of pulling off a successful conspiracy are remote IMO.

I sort of agree with you. I can believe that the ISIS bombings, like the WH intruder, might be a diversion from some other nasty shit that we are about to get dumped on us, but what that might be, I have no clue.

[winter is coming]

16. I think it's a passive-agressive attempt to get less overtime/more SS people hired.

There was a report on The Rachel Maddow Show a couple of nights back to the effect that the Secret Service detail has been putting in a lot of overtime and they're not happy about it. I don't think there was any intention of putting the President in jeopardy; it was just supposed to look scary and make people think, "we need to beef up the Secret Service."

[cali]

19. that makes a lot of sense.

[CJCRANE]

6. I wondered about it at first, but I don't think

there is anything more to it than a relatively insecure section compromised by an unstable person.

[Drunken Irishman]

9. Very possible.

Just weird how easy he got through before being caught. Scary stuff.

[CJCRANE]

11. In many organizations there is too much reliance

on "shoulds" IMO...

In this situation, so-and-so should do this, this should happen etc.

It needs to be made idiot proof with multiple redundancies in case one of the 'shoulds' fails.

[get the red out]

7. No, you are not

I am thinking there may be a wolf in sheep's clothing at the Whitehouse.

[whistler162]

10. I was surprised he made it through the mine field

and past the automatic laser death ray batteries! Sometimes a fast runner is just a fast runner.

[Man from Pickens]

13. You mean that he wasn't hunted down and summarily executed like Miriam Carey was?

I found that most curious as well. The contrast could not be more striking.

[FSogol]

18. Except that a car can be a deadly weapon and she did injure a cop. If she was on foot,

I doubt she would have been shot.

[Man from Pickens]

36. Actually she was on foot when executed

And she didn't try to break into the WH, she just made a wrong turn... and the guy who did break into the WH could have been carrying any number of weapons, which they definitely did not know for sure he wasn't and by his behavior had reason to suspect he was... oh and they found 800 rounds of ammo in his car, so that suspicion would have been justified.

Almost anything "can be a deadly weapon" if you're inclined to view it as such.

[FSogol]

38. Not true: "Actually she was on foot when executed"

The Capitol Police fired 5 shots into her car, striking her in the back. Plus striking a barrier, driving thru a WH checkpoint, and ramming a barricade is hardly making a wrong turn.

[Man from Pickens]

40. When the car stopped

She was still alive and not mortally wounded... and they had time to check to see her child was OK, then they put the final shots into her.

Look up the details on exactly how she was killed... this was a street execution, nothing less.

[FSogol]

42. Sorry, but your "facts" and analysis are incorrect. Ciao. n/t

[Man from Pickens]

43. They are correct

and even if you do dispute them and believe entirely the cops' version of events (key evidence which would prove or disprove that version has been withheld to this day), there's no consistency between the treatment of Carey and the treatment of this latest WH intruder.

Every justification you raise with respect to the killing of Carey applies double to the intruder, whose actions were objectively far more intrusive than hers. If the same standard were applied in both cases, the intruder should have been lit up like a Roman candle as he approached the building.

He wasn't shot even while actually entering the WH itself. She was hunted down and killed a mile away. There's no reconciling the two events with any consistent RoE.

[Feral Child]

14. Nope.

It's pretty shakey.

[Nye Bevan]

15. Looks more like good old-fashioned incompetence to me (nt)

[FSogol]

17. Yup, someone was slacking off at work. n/t

[Paladin]

25. Agreed. And some people need to lose their jobs because of it.

The domestic right wing and the current and future Mid-Eastern street gangs like ISIS are going to be dining out on this incident and the footage of that guy loping into the unlocked front door of the White House for years to come. Unforgivable lapse in procedures and performance. Severe and immediate professional punishments are in order.

[Vinca]

20. Pass the tin foil. It crossed my mind.

[CTyankee]

22. well, since joe scar has been pounding away at this for days now, my sense is that

it's probably a mix of bad oversight and understaffing. of course joe wants to make it "Obama can't do anything right."

[TexasMommaWithAHat]

24. The first family had already departed

imo, there was no reason to shoot the intruder, thereby, requiring an extra few seconds to apprehend him.

[Tatiana]

26. I think they're being deliberately complacent.

There have been reports of low morale and resentment of so much overtime (though... doesn't that come with the territory?). Seems to me like they want more agents hired (and it looks like they will get their wish).

Either that or they just do not take the job of protecting this President seriously.

[former9thward]

30. "they just do not take the job of protecting this President seriously."

Really? Has Obama been shot at? That is the most effective way of killing a president. Four of our presidents have been shot to death and several others have been shot at, Reagan, Ford and FDR come to mind with Reagan being hit. An assassination squad of Puerto Rican nationalists engaged in a gun battle outside of the White House when Truman was there. Bush II had shoes thrown at him in Baghdad and those shoes could have been anything else.

Obama has had nothing like these incidents happen to him.

[Historic NY]

28. A simple cost effective solution....

[Skidmore]

29. Sometimes a thing is not fraught with more drama than

what appears to have happened.

[grasswire]

31. see my thread from yesterday

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025573007

It may have been a warning.

[malaise]

32. Ditto n/t

[Proud Public Servant]

33. Take off the tin foil

This is a security vulnerability that was first flagged in the late 90s. We know that.

The secret service has been horribly managed and staffed in recent years. We know that.

13 years of non-stop war has filled our country with mentally ill vets. We know that.

Nothing that happened is even surprising, let alone cause for suspecting conspiracy.

[NuclearDem]

37. It was incompetenence on the part of the Secret Service.

[Hekate]

39. No, you are not.

Grim, isn't it.

[JI7]

41. i think it could be that the amount of threats this President gets have been more than Previous

and maybe they have needed more resources and different strategies and this could end up leading some mistakes like this where some things end up being ignored with focus on other areas.

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

44. After watching Rachel last night, it was confirmed as to how I feel. So no, DI, as usual you and I

are on the same wavelength. And let me tell you, I know a whole lot of people who feel as we do. Very many indeed.

[Drunken Irishman]

45. My tinfoil hat is still firmly on my head.