MR. KOJO NNAMDIFrom WAMU 88.5 at American University in Washington, welcome to "The Kojo Nnamdi Show," connecting your neighborhood with the world. Later in the broadcast, the Nats and the Orioles are both headed to the playoffs. We'll look at our local baseball history. But, first, earlier this month Washington and the rest of the nation were stunned when a man hopped the White House fence and made it inside the unlocked front door. In fact, The Washington Post reported yesterday that the intruder made it much farther into the White House than previously disclosed by the Secret Service.

MR. KOJO NNAMDIIn a recent article, the Post revealed other serious fumbles, including a 2011 incident in which an attacker took multiple shots at the private residence of the president with a semi-automatic weapon. And it took four days for the Secret Service to even realize the White House had been hit by bullets. Joining us to discuss this is Carol Leonnig. She's a Washington Post reporter who has been breaking these stories. She joins us from studios at The Washington Post. Carol Leonnig, thank you for joining us.

MS. CAROL LEONNIGGlad to be here, Kojo.

NNAMDIYou, too, can join the conversation by calling 800-433-8850. Were you surprised by recent fumbles by the Secret Service in protecting the president and the White House? 800-433-8850. Or you can send email to kojo@wamu.org. Carol Leonnig, first there are new revelations about what happened when that intruder made it into the White House on September 19. What actually happened and how does it differ from what we were initially told?

LEONNIGWell, first off, the Secret Service never really gave a full accounting of what happened on the night of this event, Friday, September 19. I remember because I was on my anniversary dinner. But anyway, around 7:20, this person jumped over the fence, sprinted and got in the front door. The Secret Service officialdom confirmed that that was true, that he got in the front door. And then the Service said that he was tackled immediately upon entering in that main door. It was bad enough that he made it through so many layers of security that are set up to trap somebody and tackle them before they make it anywhere near the building and that had previously worked.

LEONNIGI've got to say, it worked many, many, many times. There were a lot of fence jumpers. But what we revealed the other day was that actually a lot more happened inside the building. He buffaloed past an officer who was posted inside the door as an extra layer of security. She seemed to have been caught unaware that somebody was going to burst through and was coming in her direction.

NNAMDIIt has been reported, quote-unquote, "that he overpowered her." You said buffaloed past. Exactly what happened there?

LEONNIGWell, we don't know if this officer was tossed to the ground. All we know is that through his strength and momentum he was able to...

NNAMDIGet past her.

LEONNIG...get free -- get free of her attempt to collar him…

NNAMDIOkay.

LEONNIG...and then made it through the main foyer of the building, cut left, right past the steps to the Obama's family residence, by the way -- it's like basically a flight of stairs up, not very far -- and then into the ornate and gorgeous East Room that many people are familiar with in Washington, and then was finally tackled at the entrance to the Green Room. So he got his footprints on a lot of the main floor.

NNAMDIThere are supposed to be multiple layers of security at the White House. How did this happen?

LEONNIGSo on the outside of the building, Kojo, on the north lawn, fence jumpers have almost become like a joke, in a sense.

NNAMDISixteen in five years.

LEONNIGYeah. Quite a bit. A joke in the sense that, you know, the Secret Service is such an elite law enforcement agency, and here they are very recently, you know, trying to get a baby back to her parents because this little toddler got through the fence line and wiggled through. So fence jumpers for attention or fence jumpers like the baby who was kind of an accident, have been quite frequent. And there's a special alarm set up when anybody crosses that threshold. Kind of like a pet alarm, you know? Don't cross this line.

NNAMDIMm-hmm.

LEONNIGAnd that, along with uniformed division officers who are on the north lawn ready to collar somebody, they're supposed to be able to grab him. A K-9 dog that's trained to be like a, you know, to be like a dog missile that knocks the person down. If an officer can't reach the intruder, that dog is supposed to be able to stop that person. That dog wasn't released and we're learning more about that, which I'll talk about later. An ERT, you know, an Emergency Response Team, kind of a SWAT team, they weren't able to catch him and get to him before he got up onto the North Portico and through the front door.

LEONNIGFinally, there's supposed to be a post-stander, an officer who's standing right at the front door during the daytime. That person was not in front of the door, but off to the side with their gun drawn and watched as the intruder got through. And the door is supposed to be locked when an intruder -- I'm sorry, when an intruder is on the premises, but the door was never locked.

NNAMDIThe director of the Secret Service, Julia Pearson, is appearing before the members of the House Committee of Oversight and Government Reform. Today, she told Committee members, it will never happen again. But some House members expressed concerns that this indicates more systematic problems at the agency. Do you think these details show a broader, systematic, if you will, issue?

LEONNIGWell, you know, Kojo, it's this along with a host of other things. On Sunday, we reported a particularly worrisome incident in which the president's house was shot at by a man who thought he, himself, was Jesus and thought the president was the devil. And his job was to stop him. That shooting was discounted and dismissed by the Secret Service leadership that night, back in 2011, as, you know, as gunfire that must have been two cars shooting at each other. It couldn't have been aimed at the White House.

NNAMDICould you give us a brief timeline about what happened that night, to remind our listeners?

LEONNIGI'd be happy to. So Friday -- sleepy Friday, November 11, 2011, right before a Veterans Day holiday weekend, the president and his wife have headed out to California for a series of things -- a basketball game that was a big deal on a warship carrier, and also an economic summit in Hawaii. Their daughters, however, were at home -- or left at home and so was Michelle's mother, Marian Robinson, the girl's grandmother. Right around 8:50 p.m., shots rang out. Officers who are close to the building feel pretty sure that shots are coming in their direction. And one of them, in particular, hears the sound of debris falling over her head from the Truman Balcony. She's stationed on the South Portico, the south side.

LEONNIGAnd these -- this gunfire is coming from Constitution Avenue. But within about two hours, the leadership of the Secret Service, the watch commander on duty, I believe Captain David Simmons, concludes that, after consulting with his bosses that, you know, it looks like two gangsters who may have shot at each other. A witness said they saw gunfire going in the direction of another car. And so they're going to let the U.S. Park Police investigate this weird, mysterious shooting on the National Mall, because they don't see any evidence that it's connected to the White House.

NNAMDIWhen did...

LEONNIGBut there was -- there was plenty of evidence. Four days later, a housekeeper found bullet hole, glass shattered, chunk of concrete on the Truman Balcony while cleaning it up. And at the end of the day, the FBI had found $97,000 worth of damage and seven spots on the residence that gunfire had struck.

NNAMDIIt's seems amazing, especially given that there were witnesses, including one who tweeted about a guy firing five shots at the White House. What mistakes were made that night and in the following days? And do we know why?

LEONNIGWell, I've asked some people who used to work at the Service a little bit about their analysis of this. And here's what they've said. One, that because it was a sleepy Friday, because the uniformed division is so overworked, because their staffing is so severely depleted -- you know, they're about 100 officers short of what they should have, they're always working nights and off-duty when they should be taking their days off -- that this team was like, okay, we think that this probably wasn't aimed at the White House. In addition, it is a miracle shot. Anybody who can shoot from Constitution Avenue and hit the house seven times -- it's three-quarters of a mile -- you can sort of see why there would be doubt about whether or not it was aimed that way.

LEONNIGBut the key failures these folks have said to me are, you look for what there could be before you decide. And you talk to your own people who are on the ground. And the officers, who had sort of the most information about the possibility that this gunfire was aimed at the White House, don't appear to have been formally interviewed until after the bullets were found by the housekeeper.

NNAMDIWhat struck me was the revelation that there was little in the way of camera surveillance on the perimeter at that time. A 7-Eleven convenience store would have had more surveillance than the White House at that time. Has that been rectified?

LEONNIGIt has. It has. I don't think this is something the Service ever thought would be useful to them, you know? It hadn't envisioned that Constitution Avenue would be an attack point. Because, you know, frankly, this weapon that Oscar Ortega used -- it's range is, you know, maybe a half or three-quarters of the distance he actually shot it. So, however, in the wake of this and in the wake of the president and the first lady being furious at the handling of it, cameras were installed on this perimeter.

NNAMDITell us about the man who shot at the White House that night. Who was he? What was he trying to do?

LEONNIGOscar Ortega was a 21-year-old who had been -- who had a child, who was not married, had a girlfriend, had been going through a troubled time. Out of work. His parents were divorced and they were running two separate restaurants. He was exhibiting signs of strange behavior in the weeks and months before this shooting. He displayed some signs of paranoia. He talked about the president and the federal government installing GPS chips in children, to monitor them. And the government trying to exert control over people by not allowing them to smoke marijuana. And it all sounded a little odd to his friends. He also, of course, mentioned President Obama and how he thought he was the antichrist and that Oscar was Christ.

LEONNIGSo he started growing his beard long. He started to display himself as Jesus. And then he headed off to visit some friends in Pennsylvania. And on November 11, he was in Washington, D.C.

NNAMDIDo we know whether this president faces more threats than previous presidents?

LEONNIGYes, he does. And I want to add something about that. We've reported that his threat-assessment teams saw this uptick of the three-fold increase in threats against him. And initially those threats had a very, sort of frightening, racial tone. That racial tone has calmed down, I'm told, and is a smaller and smaller percentage of the threats against him. Keep in mind, this is any threat. Somebody is in a bar fight and says they want to hurt Obama. This is a guy who, in an email to his boss, says Obama should be stopped. You know, it's pretty small stuff. But in these threats, that race portion is smaller and smaller. And it's more about getting government off our back, in terms of the threats against him.

LEONNIGYou might remember that President Obama, when he was a candidate, was historically one of the very first candidates to be given Secret Service protection.

NNAMDIThis is true. We're talking with Carol Leonnig. She's a Washington Post reporter. The head of the Secret Service, Julia Pearson, is still being grilled by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. They will then adjourn for executive session for the more sensitive issues. You should know, Carol Leonnig, that it's being reported that several House members mentioned both of your Washington Post articles -- the four-day delay in noticing that the house had been hit by bullets, for example. And you should know that we just got a tweet from Leslie, who writes, "Overheard in the press area of the Secret Service hearing, we should have a drinking game for every time they mention the Washington Post. Apparently they mention the Washington Post there quite a lot because you have been on this story. What do you think is likely to come out of this committee's hearings and executive session?

LEONNIGI think -- although of course I don't know, I think that the members of congress will ask far more detailed questions about how this could've happened and other security measures that Pierson has taken in the wake of this jumper to, you know, sort of short up security. Those are things of course she doesn't want to telegraph to the world. I think she'll also try to assure them that these steps are going to deliver on her public promise today that she's not going to let this happen again.

LEONNIGBut, you know, one thing that I'm hearing from people is that the answer so far to shoring up security from this leadership team and from this director has been to put more demands on the already heavily demanded upon service. The uniform division is down 100 people roughly. The Secret Service agents are being asked to protect scads more people than they were ever asked to protect. You know, I want to give a shout out to the amazing work that the Secret Service agents and officers do when it seems like their chores are getting longer and longer and their hours, but their actual resources and colleagues are not increasing at all.

NNAMDIShe says that before this incident she had requested of this very committee to improve the level of personnel, higher educational standards and the ability to hire and fire. She said when she came in there were 70 vacant supervisory positions. She's filled them but I suspect that what will be the object of most of this debate is her assertion that this was an operational incident, a tactical concern. It was not a side effect of larger cultural or morale problems at the agency. I suspect a lot of this debate will be whether there are in fact larger cultural problems at the agency.

LEONNIGYou know, I think you're absolutely right about that being a big question that will continue. You saw a bipartisan group of lawmakers with one overarching and shared concern. And that is, why is it that the secret service is learning about problems -- or the director's learning about problems from post reports about her staff's concerns? Why is it that recently her staff went to members of congress to air their concerns?

LEONNIGWhy is it that an officer on duty the night of that 2011 shooting did not want to counter her bosses and mention to them again that debris seemed to have fallen from the house on the night of the shooting? Why did she say she was afraid of being criticized? You know, Elijah Cummings said that's his biggest concern. Why does it appear the staff don't want to tell the bosses what's going on?

NNAMDICongressman Elijah Cummings of Maryland. Carol Leonnig, thank you so much for joining us.

LEONNIGGlad to be here, Kojo. Thanks for the good questions.

NNAMDICarol Leonnig is a Washington Post reporter. We're going to be taking a short break. When we come back, the Nats and the Orioles both headed to the playoffs. We're going to be looking at our local baseball history. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.