How the Secret Service's problems became a secret in Washington

In April 2003 then-U.S. Secret Service Director W. Ralph Basham submitted 11,451 words of written public testimony to the House Appropriations Committee, the powerful congressional panel charged with controlling the federal government’s wallet. That chapter-size report to Congress outlined the agency’s financial needs, as well as details on how that money would be spent.

One month later, he went before the Senate Appropriations Committee to again detail the operational needs of the government body charged with protecting the president and major public officials.

Those dual appearances more than a decade ago would be the last time a Secret Service director would testify in an open session before the most influential committees of Congress.

Though they are not formal oversight committees, appropriations committees have provided critical monitoring and oversight of government agencies during the annual budgeting process, as agency directors and Cabinet secretaries are called on to explain what they are doing and justify any requests for more money.

“We come before you today during what is truly a momentous period for the Secret Service. For the first time in the 138 years of our existence, the Secret Service is no longer a part of the Department of the Treasury,” Basham told Congress back in 2003. “On March 1, 2003, pursuant to the Homeland Security Act of 2002, our agency and all of its functions and assets were transferred to the new Department of Homeland Security.”

That switch of jurisdiction, from Treasury to the bureaucratic behemoth of Homeland Security, would throw a cloak of secrecy over the Secret Service’s financial needs, performance and areas in need of improvement. Henceforth, public information about what was happening at the Secret Service would be much harder to find, bursting into view only when there was a failure or an embarrassing scandal.

Once characterized by public conversations between the director of the agency and elected members of Congress, over the past decade the dialogue of the Secret Service and Congress has mostly happened either at a staff level or behind closed doors.

There has not been significant change in the funding given the agency in recent years — no major top-line increases or cuts, despite fiscal belt-tightening across the government.

According to figures provided by the Senate Appropriations Committee, over the past five fiscal years, the Secret Service has received a constant level of funding from Congress. Between fiscal years 2010 and 2015, Congress appropriated $1.4 billion to just over $1.6 billion each year. But it’s not entirely clear how those funds are directed within the agency, and congressional staffers reached for this story did not have publicly available breakdowns of money directed toward the Secret Service’s role fighting counterfeiting, as opposed to protecting Washington’s most powerful and visible politicians.

Back when the director appeared in public congressional hearings, he would testify how much money went toward maintaining security personnel vs. how much funding was needed to oversee its “investigative program,” which covers such areas as counterfeiting, computer crime, identity theft and global financial crimes. The director even went so far as to detail to Congress how the agency planned to diversify its staff to include more female and minority agents.

These days the Senate Appropriations Committee, according to a panel aide, hears from the agency mostly at a staff level, while an aide for House Appropriations confirmed that members heard from the Secret Service for this fiscal year in a closed-door briefing that was not made public “due to security sensitivities.”

In public hearings with secretaries of Homeland Security, the issues facing the Secret Service have been treated as a tiny part of a giant policy portfolio, and the secretaries spent very little time discussing the service in these on-the-record meetings with appropriations members.

Asked about why the operations of the Secret Service are now too “sensitive” to reveal publicly when they were not in 2003, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security declined to comment.

The lack of open, high-level Secret Service relationships on the Hill was apparent earlier this week, when embattled director Julia Pierson resigned after stumbling through a brutal, hours-long hearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. And while the bipartisan uproar over recent security breaches — from a fence jumper who entered the White House to a unvetted security contractor who carried a gun into an elevator with the president in Atlanta — could lead to further charged oversight hearings, there are no indications that the Appropriations Committees will restore the tradition of public Secret Service budget requests.

The Secret Service may be getting a change in leadership in acting director Joseph Clancy (or his permanent, confirmed replacement), but so long as the agency doesn’t have to openly discuss its budget before Congress, the public will be largely left in the dark as to whether reforms are being made and how much they may cost.