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Secret Service must change its ways

Unless the Secret Service is shaken up at the very top, the agency charged with protecting the president and other top officials will not correct problems that threaten its mission, an investigation has concluded.

After scandal after scandal – including lapses in which the president was put at risk – a group of former government officials was asked to examine the Secret Service and propose solutions. Recently, their report was released.

Reform will not occur unless a new director from outside the agency is placed in charge of the Secret Service, those who studied it emphasize. They referred to the agency as “insular.”

In other words, the Secret Service is a bureaucracy where inefficiency has become acceptable.

The outside director proposal certainly touches on the problem of insiders unwilling to rock the boat. But it does not go far enough.

Much of the federal bureaucracy has problems similar to those plaguing the Secret Service. Sending someone from another agency there may merely replace someone knowledgeable about it with someone else who is not – but who has the same sort of “insular” mindset.

Far better would be a new director from the private sector with no allegiance to the live-and-let-live philosophy of the government bureaucracy.

Members of Congress and President Barack Obama should consider that approach.

Secret Service must change its ways

Unless the Secret Service is shaken up at the very top, the agency charged with protecting the president and other top officials will not correct problems that threaten its mission, an investigation has concluded.

After scandal after scandal – including lapses in which the president was put at risk – a group of former government officials was asked to examine the Secret Service and propose solutions. Recently, their report was released.

Reform will not occur unless a new director from outside the agency is placed in charge of the Secret Service, those who studied it emphasize. They referred to the agency as “insular.”

In other words, the Secret Service is a bureaucracy where inefficiency has become acceptable.

The outside director proposal certainly touches on the problem of insiders unwilling to rock the boat. But it does not go far enough.

Much of the federal bureaucracy has problems similar to those plaguing the Secret Service. Sending someone from another agency there may merely replace someone knowledgeable about it with someone else who is not – but who has the same sort of “insular” mindset.

Far better would be a new director from the private sector with no allegiance to the live-and-let-live philosophy of the government bureaucracy.

Members of Congress and President Barack Obama should consider that approach.

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