The triumvirate of syndicated columnists Charles Krauthammer, George Will and Fox News anchor Bret Baier slammed the Secret Service during the “Special Report” All-Star Panel Monday night, after new revelations were reported by the Washington Examiner. The trio were also extremely critical of the protection agency following the House Oversight Committee’s hearing on the recent breaches of security at the White House and elsewhere.
Krauthammer: “Look, this is an agency that is lax, not doing its job, and absolutely out of control…The first instinct of the Secret Service when there’s a breach, when there’s a failure, which is a guy who ran across the White House lawn a few months ago is to diminish civil liberties of tourists walking outside the gates. The problem is not outside the gates, it’s inside the gates, and the failures, the multiple ones that occurred, all happened inside the gates, and that’s where you have to take action.”
“I think it starts with the culture in Washington where no one is accountable for anything. You say the word ‘I am accountable, I am responsible’ and nothing happens to you. Anybody who says the words in the hearing “I take full responsibility out to be required by law to resign within the hour. That’s what it means by ‘I take responsibility.'”
“The defense minister in Britain when the Falkland Islands were taken over by Argentina resigned within days even though there was nothing he did that had allowed it, there was no neglect. He said I’m in charge, I’m secretary of defense, I’m gone. Now that kind of responsibility…doesn’t exist here. But time after time, with the VA scandal, with the rollout of Obamacare, with what happened in Benghazi, people always say ‘I am accountable’ and nothing happens to them.”
“If you’re accountable, if you say the words, you’re gone.”
Baier: “I covered the White House for 3 1/2 years and there are people in the Secret Service who are very good at their jobs, and they protect the first family. This is a string of incidents, George, that is stacking up bipartisan outrage up on Capitol Hill.”
Will: “Yes, and the phrase ‘mistakes were made’ is the way of beginning to lay gas all over the idea there of accountability.”
“…Let me tell you a Secret Service story: A week before he was inaugurated in January 2009, Barack Obama comes to my house for dinner. Mr. Krauthammer was there. He was a perfect gentleman. The same cannot be said for the Secret Service.”
“My neighbors across the street, a nice young family with a boy, I guess Max was about ten years old at the time, came out on their front lawn to watch the president. A Secret Service agent crossed the street and ordered them off their lawn and into their house and he said there will be no arguing about this. Now there is something badly wrong in the United States when an American family is ordered of their lawn for no reason other than the person could do so.”
Baier: “They should’ve ordered the fence jumper off their lawn.”