Officials: Fence Jumper Made It Into East Room Of White House

Washington (CNN) — The man who jumped the White House fence ear­li­er this month and breached the man­sion’s doors actu­al­ly made it far­ther than orig­i­nal­ly thought, offi­cials said Monday.

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Omar Gonzalez, a 42-year-old Iraq war vet­er­an who had a knife in his pock­et, over­came one Secret Service offi­cer and ran into the East Room of the White House, where he was then sub­dued, a fed­er­al law enforce­ment said. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, who was pro­vid­ed the infor­ma­tion by whistle­blow­ers dur­ing his con­gres­sion­al inves­ti­ga­tion into the inci­dent, also con­firmed the details of what now appears to be a wild chase through the main floor of the White House, first report­ed by theWashington Post. The Secret Service had pre­vi­ous­ly stat­ed that Gonzalez was stopped after enter­ing the front door of the North Portico.

Gonzalez ran through much of the main floor, past a stair­way that leads up to the first fam­i­ly’s res­i­dence, and was ulti­mate­ly stopped at the far south­ern end of the East Room. He also reached the door­way to the Green Room, an area that looks out on the South Lawn. No shots were fired inside the White House, the fed­er­al law offi­cial said. Official: Secret Service twice inter­viewed, released would-be White House intrud­er The Secret Service has not yet com­ment­ed on the new details. “I could not be more proud of the indi­vid­ual agents, but I wor­ry that Director (Julia) Pierson and the lead­er­ship there at the Secret Service is fail­ing them,” Chaffetz said Monday on “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer.” Pierson will face tough ques­tions at an already-sched­uled hear­ing on Tuesday before the House Oversight Committee.

A Republican from Utah who sits on the com­mit­tee, said he wants to know why an audi­ble alarm in the White House had been mut­ed after ush­ers said it was mak­ing too many nois­es. And short­ly after the inci­dent ear­li­er this month, the Secret Service issued a state­ment say­ing offi­cers “showed tremen­dous restraint and dis­ci­pline in deal­ing with” Gonzalez. Chaffetz said he has a prob­lem with that, too. “I don’t want tremen­dous restraint,” he said. “I want to see over­whelm­ing force to deter some­body. When you have the sit­u­a­tion where you have the appar­ent lax secu­ri­ty, you’re unfor­tu­nate­ly going to invite more attacks. And that’s the con­cern.” Pierson sent a let­ter to com­mit­tee chair­man Darrell Issa last Friday rais­ing con­cerns about an hold­ing open dis­cus­sion on secu­ri­ty issues and urged the chair­man to allow some of her tes­ti­mo­ny to take place in a clas­si­fied set­ting. “Simply put, pub­licly air­ing the very secu­ri­ty mea­sures employed by the Secret Service and the var­i­ous chal­lenges we con­front at the White House com­plex will arm those who desire to cause injury — or worse — to the President and First Family with crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion, and doing so would be beyond reck­less,” Pierson wrote.

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CNN has learned from a Democratic source on the Oversight Committee that Issa has agreed to Pierson’s request, and will hold a sep­a­rate, clas­si­fied ses­sion on Tuesday. The top Democrat on the com­mit­tee, Rep. Elijah Cummings, D‑Maryland, praised the deci­sion to pro­tect the agen­cy’s mis­sion. “This is not a Democratic issue or a Republican issue, but an American issue, and the last thing we should do is give peo­ple like Gonzalez a road map for how to attack the President or oth­er offi­cials,” Cummings said in a writ­ten state­ment to CNN. http://​www​.cnn​.com/​2​0​1​4​/​0​9​/​2​9​/​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​s​/​w​h​-​f​e​n​c​e​-​j​u​m​p​e​r​/​i​n​d​e​x​.​h​t​m​l​?​h​p​t​=​h​p​_c3