Secret Service Director Julia Pierson resigned on Wednesday after her agents failed to adequately defend the president twice in two weeks. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson announced Joseph Clancy, a former Secret Service agent in charge of the Presidential Protective Division, will be appointed director in the interim. (Clancy is currently the chief of corporate security for Comcast.)
Pierson's resignation comes after it was revealed on Tuesday that White House intruder Omar J. Gonzalez was tackled by an off-duty agent who happened to see him enter running through the White House with a knife. Three days earlier, agents failed to prevent an armed felon from getting on an elevator with President Obama.
Ironically, Pierson was tapped last year as the service's first female director to clean up the mess left by Mark Sullivan. Under his direction, the agency let an unauthorized couple into a White House state dinner in 2009, failed to stop a gunman from shooting at the White House in 2011, fired eight agents over a prostitution scandal in Colombia, and saw three "counter assault" agents drinking on the job in Amsterdam.
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