More Secret Service Failures: Obama Allowed To Meet With Terrorist

Washington, DC, October 2 – The agency charged with protecting the president continued to suffer a public relations black eye this week after it emerged that President Obama was allowed to meet with a known terrorist.

On September 24 the president held a bilateral meeting with Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, a group notorious for massacres of civilians and for its violent rhetoric. Even worse, say observers, Abbas was allowed to sit next to Obama, adding to a string of recent Secret Service errors that called into question the agency’s procedures and priorities.

Obama and his staff hosted Abbas and his delegation at a “bilateral meeting” to discuss prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace, regardless of Abbas’s role in decades of funding and supporting attacks on Israeli civilians as a political weapon. Abbas continues to preside over groups sworn to violent conflict with Israel, such as the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and various other armed factions of his Fatah party. Some of those factions enthusiastically participated in launching rockets at Israeli communities over the summer, and Abbas himself has accorded honor to Palestinians imprisoned or killed as a result of efforts to kill and maim Israelis.

Earlier this week a knife-wielding man scaled the fence surrounding the White House and penetrated far into the building before being stopped; the next day the president was allowed in an elevator with a convicted violent criminal. But the meeting with a known terrorist casts an unprecedentedly indicting light on the Secret Service, and foments doubt over its ability or commitment to perform its duties, which also include fighting counterfeiters and assorted other criminal matters.

Scandal first hit the agency after reports emerged that it funded prostitutes for its agents in South America, and officials vowed reform. However, those efforts appear to have achieved little, as it has failed in its primary duty, the protection of the Chief executive and head of state.

“It’s mind-boggling on several fronts,” says commentator Ernest Blowharde. “It’s one thing to be caught with your pants down – that happens to presidents themselves. It’s a foul-up of an entirely different order when you simply can’t do the most basic part of your job – keeping dangerous people away from the president.” He remains doubtful that the Secret Service has internalized the lessons of its previous failures.

There has always been tension between sitting presidents and their security details. says historian Gloria Facepalm. “Politicians usually want to feel close to their constituents, to maintain a friendly dynamic,” she explains. “People bent on harming the president will try to exploit that, and it’s the Secret Service who has to strike a balance between protecting POTUS and allowing him to do his political work. But the scale of this failure just floors me. I mean, the guy planned massacres that killed dozens of people. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?”