The intruder, identified as Jonathan Tran, was able to jump over three different fences, including at least one between the Treasury Department and the east area of the White House complex shortly before midnight March 10.
Tran was able to scale that particular area of the fence without setting off alarms because they had been removed, leading to confusion among officers about his whereabouts and whether an intruder was inside the White House complex, the sources told the Examiner.
The initial fence Tran jumped did trip alarms in that area of the fence-line, but squirrels or even birds sometimes also set off the sensitive sensors, which could have lead to uncertainty about whether someone had jumped the fence or not.
Secret Service personnel removed the alarm sensors along an area of fence line when the agency raised its height in response to previous fence-jumping incidents as a way to make it harder to scale, the sources told the Examiner. Ironically, the very effort to prevent fence jumping appears to have permitted a particularly egregious intrusion.
One source said superiors in the Uniformed Division told Secret Service personnel to remove the sensors and piece them together for use elsewhere. They were never replaced.
Sensors might need to be replaced because they are overly sensitive and always going off or if they are malfunctioning, a knowledgeable source said. Another said that area was particularly prone to false alarms because of birds landing on the fence-line and tripping the sensors.
There are at least 10 to 12 officers and agents, including supervisors from the Presidential Protective Division, monitoring these sensors at any given time. They do so from the Joint Operations Command Center or JOCC, which is located outside of the White House complex.
Some agents and officers also are questioning why Secret Service never released the K-9 unit to try to find an intruder after the alarms on the first fence the intruder scaled went off.
Article continues. Someone is a little confused as to mission - or maybe not.