U.S. House panel seeks update on plans to upgrade White House fence

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top two members of a U.S. House of Representatives committee said on Monday they had written to Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson asking for a briefing on his agency's plans to enhance the fence around the White House. Republican Jason Chaffetz and Democrat Elijah Cummings, the ranking members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said in a statement that the request followed a recommendation last week by a review panel charged with looking into problems with the U.S. Secret Service. The panel said in a summary of its report released on Thursday the fence "needs to be changed as soon as possible to provide better protection." Johnson appointed a four-member independent panel in October after a Sept. 19 intrusion by an Iraq war veteran who scaled the White House fence, sprinted across the lawn and got deep inside the mansion before an off-duty agent stopped him. The congressmen noted that acting Secret Service Director Joseph Clancy had previously testified that the agency was already “looking for ways and options” to improve the fence. The panel recommended that the fence be at least 4 or 5 feet (120 or 150 cm) higher and curved outward at the top to give agents more time to assess the risk of a jumper. It also said the Secret Service, which is charged with guarding the U.S. president and other senior government officials, needs an outsider to overhaul the insular agency, beef up staffing and improve training. The last Secret Service director, Julia Pierson, was a 30-year veteran who was tasked with cleaning up the agency's culture after a 2012 presidential trip to Colombia in which up to a dozen agents were found to have hired prostitutes. Pierson resigned under fierce criticism on Oct. 1, less than two weeks after the Sept. 19 White House intrusion. That fence-jumper breach came a day after the disclosure that an armed private security contractor rode on an elevator with President Barack Obama in Atlanta in a breach of protocol earlier in September. The security lapses, along with a 2011 incident in which seven gunshots were fired at the White House, had raised concerns across Washington that Obama was not as well protected as he should be in an age of global tumult. (Reporting by Eric Walsh; Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu, Roberta Rampton and David Lawder; Editing by Eric Beech)