Keller @ Large: Secret Service Fiasco Must End With Firings

BOSTON (CBS) - I confess, I am not big on horror movies. I don't like knives, blood or getting scared, and that pretty much rules me out of going to see "Don't Look in the Bread-Box, Part Four" or whatever the screamer of the moment might be.

But my assignment Tuesday for WBZ-TV was to watch a nearly four-hour long horror movie, the appearance of Secret Service Director Julia Pierson before a congressional committee probing the horrific security breach at the White House 12 days ago, when a mentally-ill man armed with a knife jumped the fence and ran inside the building, right past the stairs leading up to the First Family's quarters.

The event itself was awful enough, given the robust, pathetic volume of death threats against our president and the pleasure assorted terrorists would no doubt take in harming him or the building itself.

But the true horror of watching Pierson try to tap dance away from accountability for the utter incompetence of her agency came from the realization that things are so bad, there's no reason to think this can't happen again.

Members of the committee, including our own Stephen Lynch and John Tierney, did a good job of framing the sheer idiocy of the Secret Service and its managers. The fence-jumper was well-known to the agency; just a short time before his assault on the White House, they spotted him outside wandering around with a hatchet.

According to Julia Pierson, when he explained he was using it for camping, they let him go.

Criminal abuse of power within the FBI and the IRS?

That's bad enough.

But the horror of an inept Secret Service allowing harm to come to our president is unbearable.

I'm sure all Americans join me in awaiting the mass firings that are the only acceptable outcome to this fiasco.

Listen to Jon's commentary:

You can listen to Keller At Large on WBZ News Radio every weekday at 7:55 a.m. You can also watch Jon on WBZ-TV News.

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