Secret Service now more mistake than mystique

• Details about the wild scamper of an armed%2C fence-hopping intruder into the White House are stupefying
• Revelations of a 2011 shooting incident indicate a shocking passivity on the part of Secret Service officials
• The Secret Service is not just another basement-level bureacracy. This has to change

The mystique of the Secret Service — the elite agency charged, among other important tasks, with protecting the lives of the president and his family — seems a little overstated right now.

We're seeing just another lame federal bureaucracy. Far more mistake than mystique. Another pampered, overindulged cadre of Washingtonians who seem to have forgotten job one, which, in the case of the Secret Service, is protecting the lives of very important people.

Details about the White House scamper of knife-wielding Omar Gonzalez are stupefying. Not only did this armed intruder manage to scale a fence undetected, race up the lengthy front lawn and enter the White House unchallenged and unopposed, he conducted his own White House tour.

According to the Washington Post, Gonzalez barreled — yes, barreled — past the impassive guard at the door, marched past a staircase leading up to the First Family's private quarters, then ran nearly the entire length of the 80-foot long East Room before being tackled by an off-duty Secret Service agent.

Certainly, mistakes happen. But the Gonzalez incident comes on the heels of numerous security lapses that raise serious questions about the competency of the Secret Service.

The worst of those lapses occurred in November 2011, when a gunman stopped his black Honda in front of the White House and fired at least seven rounds into the first family's upstairs living quarters.

Disturbing as that shooting incident was, the aftermath proved far worse.

Almost immediately after the shooting, a Secret Service supervisor inexplicably issued a "stand down" order, attributing the shots to a car backfiring nearby. Later, the agency would contend the incident was a rolling shootout between rival gangs. It would take four days before the service discovered that shots had hit the White House, and then only because a housekeeper discovered broken shards of glass and chunks of cement shot out from the White House facade.

As usual, the cover-up of the 2011 incident proved worse than the incident itself. Despite numerous eyewitness reports that the shooter had aimed and fired an AK-47-like weapon at the building, Secret Service officials somehow concluded nothing had occurred that threatened the official residence. Agents who clearly knew otherwise said they were cowed by their superiors into shutting up "for fear of being criticized."

Effectively the same thing occurred after Gonzalez's recent gallop through the White House. Early on, Secret Service brass insisted, falsely, that the intruder had been stopped near the doorway.

Need we even bring up that humiliating 2012 incident in Cartagena, Colombia, when drunken off-duty Secret Service agents dragged hookers to their hotel while there in advance of a presidential visit?

It is one thing for some humdrum, basement-level bureaucracy to fall into a stupor on the job. For the Secret Service to take these kind of Three Stooges-class pratfalls is inexcusable.

The consequences are of such behavior are unthinkable. This has to change.