WASHINGTON — Long before a pair of gate-crashers penetrated a White House state dinner, the Secret Service had detailed for its internal use a lengthy list of security breaches dating to the Carter administration, including significant failures in the agency’s protection of the president.
The document, confirmed by a Secret Service official, listed 91 security breaches since 1980.
A summary of the 2003 report places Tareq and Michaele Salahi in a rogues’ gallery of autograph hounds, publicity seekers, unstable personalities and others identified by the Secret Service.
The document, the most complete accounting of recent Secret Service security breakdowns, includes officers mistakenly admitting to the White House grounds a family in a minivan, a man believed to be a delivery driver, and a woman previously known to agents after she had falsely claimed a “special relationship” with Bill Clinton.
The Salahis were not on the guest list for the Nov. 24 dinner and had not been cleared by the Secret Service for admission into the White House. Despite that, they were allowed in, shook hands with President Barack Obama, and had their picture taken with Vice President Joe Biden.
While testifying before Congress last week, Secret Service director Mark Sullivan said normal security protocols were not followed during the dinner. Three officers have since been put on administrative leave.
The Salahi incident was among 10 security breaches since 2001, Donovan said. The historical list of perimeter breaches indicates that intruders have reached the president or another person under Secret Service protection eight times since 1980. Four of the incidents involved the same man.
The only assailant to injure a president in the past three decades was John Hinckley, who shot and wounded Ronald Reagan in 1981 from outside the security perimeter established by the Secret Service.
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