Recently-replaced Secret Service director Julia Pierson told colleagues that the Secret Service needed to be “more like Disney World.”
“We need to be more like Disney World,” Pierson reportedly said this past spring as she tried to downgrade her agency’s security plan for President Obama’s U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit. “We need to be more friendly, inviting.”
Pierson previously worked as a Disney World costumed character.
In 2007, Pierson said, “I started off in the parking lot, advanced to watercraft, and I wore one of those character outfits for a while in Americans on Parade. I think the experience of dealing with large crowds at the park had a good influence on my ability to do that sort of work with the Secret Service.”
Obama accepted Pierson’s resignation Wednesday, one day after enduring a bipartisan grilling from lawmakers at a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on her agency’s inability to stop Omar Gonzalez from scaling the White House fence and entering the president’s residence.
“Congress has lost confidence in my ability to run the agency,” Pierson said after resigning.”The media has made it clear that this is what they expected.”