The Secret Service is removing four of its top officials while a fifth has decided to retire in what is likely the biggest management shakeup in the agency’s 150-year history.
The action taken Tuesday by acting Director Joseph Clancy responds to a string of complaints about upper management’s failure to run the Secret Service in a professional manner and comes after a series of security failures in recent months that drew intense scrutiny to the agency’s leadership.
Clancy on Tuesday told four assistant directors who oversee the agency’s main functions that they must leave their posts, according to two agency sources.
Those officials who are being reassigned include: Dale Pupillo, who runs the protective division, Paul Morrissey, who oversees the investigative section, Mark Copanzzi, who heads the technology division and Jane Murphy, who leads the agency’s governmental and public affairs.
A fifth top official, Vic Erevia, the assistant director for training, retired within the last few weeks, a source confirmed.
The remaining four have the option of transferring to another position with the Department of Homeland Security if they do not resign or retire, according to the two sources familiar with the move.
Clancy said he made the decision to remove the top officials in response an outside panel’s top-to-bottom review of the agency and his “own assessments.”
“Change is necessary to gain a fresh perspective on how we conduct business,” Clancy said. “I am certain any of our senior executives will be productive and valued assets either in other positions at the Secret Service or the department.”
The Washington Post first reported news of the shakeup Wednesday afternoon.
Clancy took over after former Director Julia Pierson resigned last fall after news that a knife-wielding fence-jumper had penetrated the ceremonial heart of the White House, much further than the agency initially admitted.
Pierson’s resignation came the same day the Washington Examiner reported that an armed security guard was in an elevator with President Obama during a September visit to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
No one but law enforcement can carry guns in close proximity to the president, and the Secret Service was unaware that the man possessed a gun.
An independent review panel set up by DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson late last year issued a scathing report about the lack of leadership at the agency.
The outside panel, which interviewed 120 experts inside and outside government as well as numerous agency employees, found an organization “starved for leadership” and recommended more training and staff, a higher fence around the White House and, most importantly, a new director from the outside who can change the agency’s insular culture.
“From agents to officers to supervisors, we heard a common desire: More resources would help, but what we really need is leadership,” the panel said in its report.
“Only a director from outside the Service, removed from organizational traditions and personal relationships will be able to do the honest top-to-bottom reassessment this will require,” they wrote.
The organization has a zero-failure mission, and must constantly improve and evolve to face changing threats, the report said. For the Secret Service to maintain its high standards, the organization needs to be assured that managers believe in the standards and “enforce them in a consistent, evenhanded manner.”
Sources last fall repeatedly told the Examiner that the top agency brass routinely engage in a “culture of cover-up,” operate in a tight and exclusive clique and fail to punish officers and agents in a consistent manner.
