WH: Secret Service’s ‘task is incredible’

The White House said Sunday it remained confident in the Secret Service despite news that the agency didn’t realize for five days that bullets had hit the White House in a 2011 shooting incident.

{mosads}“I know the Secret Service is on top of this and they will take every necessary step to correct any problems,” deputy national security adviser Tony Blinken told CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Blinken said the agency was again investigating the incident as part of a review ordered earlier this month after a knife-wielding man was able to scale the gate outside the White House and run all the way in through the front door without being captured.

But the Obama aide largely offered praise for the agency tasked with protecting the president, saying “their task is incredible and the burden they bear is incredible.”

Details of the 2011 incident published this weekend in The Washington Post suggest the agency botched its initial response to the shooting.

According to the report, officers initially rushed to respond to the shooting incident but were told to stand down because the noise was backfire from a nearby construction vehicle. It was not until a housekeeper noticed broken glass days later that the agency realized what had happened.

The president and first lady were not in town during the 2011 incident, although their daughter, Sasha, was in the residence. The gunman, Oscar R. Ortega-Hernandez, was later arrested, but largely out of luck — he crashed his car blocks from the White House and left his gun inside.