It seems obvious that Omar J. Gonzalez, the 42-year-old veteran who hopped the White House fence on Friday evening and actually made it into the building with a small folding knife, is lucky to be alive and in custody. But let’s review a few of the many ways he could have been felled.
He could have been shot down by a Secret Service counter-sniper’s bullet, fired from the obvious perches on top of the White House or the less visible hide-sites dotting the surrounding buildings. Or he could have been shot by a member of the counter-assault team, agents in suits and sunglasses who carry SR-16 carbine rifles in specially designed cases. He could have been knocked down and mauled by one of the property’s specially trained Belgian Malinois guard dogs. An overly excited member of the Uniformed Secret Service’s Emergency Response Team (E.R.T.) could have fired at him. Or he could have simply been shot by a member of the uniformed Secret Service, like Officer Daniel Hochman, who first saw Gonzalez’s mad dash across the lawn on Friday evening and yelled at him to stop.
“A lot of people want to judge the Secret Service for not shooting, but [a] number of things have to be considered in this situation, including whether or not the principal is in the residence and if the individual poses a lethal threat,” a senior official familiar with Secret Service training and operational procedures told VF Daily. “These decisions are quick, in the space of a few seconds, and our officers concluded the man was mentally ill and saw that he wasn’t armed. Given what’s emerged about [Gonzalez] since the arrest, maybe we’ll look back and say the Secret Service played a role in saving his life.”
Gonzalez was clearly troubled. The Associated Press reported that 800 rounds of ammunition were found in his car, along with two hatchets and a machete, and that Gonzales was briefly questioned on August 25, though not arrested, for walking past the White House with a hatchet. His public defender, Margarita O’Donnell, said her client was a veteran of three tours in Iraq, where he’d served as a cavalry scout. The Los Angeles Times reported that a family member said Gonzalez had been honorably discharged from the Army and suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and had paranoid thoughts. He reportedly told an agent that the Earth’s atmosphere was collapsing and he needed to get word to the president.
Most troublingly, Virginia State Police arrested Gonzalez in July after leading officers on a high-speed pursuit. According to police, Gonzalez had a number of weapons in the car, including four pistols and a sawed-off shotgun, as well as a map of Washington, D.C., with directions to the White House drawn in. He was charged with reckless driving, eluding police, and a weapons charge related to the shotgun. The same senior official familiar with Secret Service procedures told VF Daily that because of the weapons charge, Gonzalez’s case was filtered first through the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which then passed it onto the Secret Service. The Secret Service interviewed Gonzalez in early August and deemed him no threat to anyone under its protection, the official said. The Associated Press reported as such Tuesday afternoon.
So, yes, he was clearly troubled, but on Friday night, he was also lucky. Of all law-enforcement agencies in the United States, members of the Secret Service are among the most experienced at dealing with mentally ill individuals—because they have to as a routine part of the job. Mentally ill individuals come up to the gates demanding to speak to the president on a near daily basis.
While the agency faces a new round of scrutiny—and has been invited to explain to the House Oversight Committee how a man it twice questioned made it past the threshold of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue—it’s worth examining how its agents are trained to interact with the mentally ill. The Secret Service’s intelligence division analyzes and investigates every threat against the president’s life, whether it is a crank call, an unhinged letter, or a casual comment posted on Facebook or Twitter.
The Secret Service devotes significant time and effort in preparing agents on how to interact with mentally ill individuals and de-escalate potentially lethal situations. Agent training in Beltsville, Maryland, features classes in psychology and role playing various scenarios agents might encounter in the course of their duties. These lessons are derived from an exhaustive longitudinal study of assassins and near-assassins completed in 1998. The study focused on the thoughts and behavior of suspects before their attacks and near misses. It found that more than one-third of those assassins and near assassins appeared to hold delusional ideas (the atmosphere collapsing, covert spy satellites beaming signals directly into the brain, or a nonexistent relationship), three-fifths had been evaluated or treated for mental illness, and two-fifths had been hospitalized for psychiatric reasons.
People who make threats considered credible and serious are placed on the intelligence division’s watch list, administered by the National Threat Assessment Center (N.T.A.C.).
According to George Rush’s 1988 book Confessions of an Ex-Secret Service Agent, the men and women considered the biggest threats to the president are informally known as “quarterlies” because they’re visited by Secret Service agents at least four times a year and watched by law enforcement anytime the president is visiting town. These “quarterly” visits bring Secret Service agents to psychiatric hospitals or prison wards on a regular basis for follow-up interviews.
Marty Venker, a former Secret Service agent in the 1970s and 1980s, recalled in the book how he became “something of a celebrity” among the quarterlies. Rush wrote that “the inmates would start applauding” when Venker walked into the locked psychiatric ward in Danville, Illinois.
Rush quotes Venker as saying: “I think they had fun when I was there. I think I made them feel important. The President had sent his personal representative. My folder said right there: ‘The White House.’ Their letter had gotten results! After a while I started to wonder if these guys, who’d usually been abandoned by their families, if they were just telling me this stuff so I’d keep visiting them.”
It is unclear whether Gonzalez wanted to hurt the president or just talk to him, or if he just wanted to bring attention to what he believed was the atmosphere’s impending collapse. What is clear is that the Secret Service, in the wake of separate prostitution and alcohol scandals in recent years, will have some work to do to repair its image and make nice with its critics in Congress: the last major review of White House security reported to the public was after two 1994 high-profile breaches of White House security.
In the first, a man who had spent the evening drinking and smoking crack crashed a Cessna into the South Lawn, skidding into a magnolia tree near the South Portico steps and coming to rest in the southwest corner of the building. The joke around Washington at the time was that the airplane was piloted by the director of Central Intelligence, James Woolsey, who didn’t get much face time with the president.
In the second, a disgruntled Army veteran with a dishonorable discharge ran along the White House fence and shot multiple rounds from a Chinese-made SKS assault rifle before tourists tackled him.
The 1994 report, which included input from the Secret Service, C.I.A., F.B.I., A.T.F., D.C. Police, Park Service and Capitol Police, Department of State and Department of Defense, ran more than 500 pages with an additional 260 pages of appendices and notes. Only two copies were ever printed and very few people read them: it was classified Top Secret and locked away in a secure room. After Friday’s events, an update may be in the works. Ad hoc security changes were already evident Monday night, when a makeshift fence went up along the north side of the White House, effectively keeping pedestrians an additional distance from the original fence.
In 2013 the National Sheriff’s Association reported that at least half of those shot and killed by police nationwide were found to be suffering from mental-health problems. If Gonzalez tangled with any other law-enforcement organization in the United States, he might have joined those ranks. Instead, the Army combat veteran with three tours in Iraq and a loose grip on reality is being held without bail pending trial.
