WASHINGTON — The White House defended the Secret Service on Sunday after a newspaper investigation detailed how the agency fumbled its response to a gunman firing on the White House in 2011, while President Barack Obama’s youngest daughter and his mother-in-law were inside.
“The men and women of the Secret Service put their lives on the line for the president of the United States, his family and folks working in the White House every single day, 24 hours a day,” deputy national security adviser Tony Blinken said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “Their task is incredible and the burden that they bear is incredible.”
Blinken spoke after publication of a story in The Washington Post about the Secret Service’s slow and confused response to the 2011 shooting. The gunman, Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez, was arrested for firing rifle shots at the White House from a nearby street.
On the night of 2011 shooting, Ortega-Hernandez hit a window on the second floor very close to the first family’s formal living room. “At least seven bullets struck the upstairs residence of the White House, flying some 700 yards across the South Lawn,” the Post reported.
