FOX "Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace" - Transcript: The Secret Service and Islamic State Strategy

Interview

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WALLACE: We're going to pick up on that. I want to bring in Senator Ayotte. The same questions, bucking (ph) both of us, the rank and file, but also about the top management who ends up running things. Is the agency capable at this time of protecting the president?

SEN. KELLY AYOTTE, R-N.H.: Well, we appreciate the agents themselves and their brave service. I think there is clearly a leadership problem. It goes beyond the head of the agency. It goes to the culture of the agency, the command structure, and if you look at these incidents, Chris, there seems to be a training issue. Also there needs to be a review of the rules of engagement, and then there was astonishing lack of attention to detail that seems to need to be the focus. I think this needs a fresh view like the V.A. and an independent review.

WALLACE: Dan, you talked about a cabal at the top, you talked about a mutiny of agents. What are you talking about?

BONGINO: There's a small group of upper level management that grew up together, let's say, within the Secret Service, and the problem is they are married to the way things used to be done, Chris. Well, the threat footprint has changed. The world has evolved. It's almost become that they've used the Secret Service's small group, and there are good managers there, these small groups, as almost like a job search service for their secondary careers. And the problem with that is the rank-and-file agents feel like the allegiance of the management is not to them, but to, say, someone, maybe the DHS secretary who later on they can go into business with together. It's created significant problems and a distrust. And in our business, trust is all that matters.

WALLACE: I want to pick up on that for you, Dan, and I'm going to bring the Senator Ayotte into it. Because a number of people we talked to this week, say that one of the key turning points was for the agency, was in 2003 when the Secret Service was moved from an elite agency inside the Treasury Department to the Department of Homeland Security where it's just one in a number of fiefdoms. And I guess the question is, how big a problem is that, the fact that it's now in a different agency, and one of a number of agencies within this kind of in undefined department and also the fact that its responsibility is split, not only protection, but also investigating cybercrime and financial fraud and a bunch of other things.

BONGINO: Well, two points to that. Your first question the DHS bureaucracy has suffocated the Secret Service. They were largely left alone in the Treasury Department, the joke the agents used to say among themselves were that we were a big fish in a small pond in Treasury, now we are a guppy in an ocean. Secondly, the dual mission. The dual mission is a vestigial relict from their founding. It pains me to say it. I loved federal investigations of financial crimes the agents do as well, but Chris, there's just not enough money in a growingly sparse taxpayer environment for them to handle these dual missions. Listen, we're in an error-free environment with protection. You cannot screw up once. There's just not enough money, or time or resource to handle this dual mission anymore.

WALLACE: But Senator Ayotte, the Secretary of Homeland Security, Jeh Johnson, the man in charge of this big department, including the Secret Service, was on special report on Friday, and here's what he had to say on this very issue.

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JEH JOHNSON, SECRETARY OF HOMELAND SECURITY: I think that it makes a tremendous amount of sense for the Secret Service to be under the umbrella of a department that has a homeland security counter- terrorism law enforcement mission.

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WALLACE: Senator, is Secretary Johnson wrong?

AYOTTE: Well, he's not wrong given the threats that we face around the world and that some of those, obviously, could be directed at our president as the commander-in-chief. However, I do think that as we evaluate this, we need to look at whether that bureaucracy is hampering the primary purpose of the Secret Service. So, I think that's something the Homeland Security Committee should absolutely evaluate to determine whether or not there is enough focus, going back to the issues that I mentioned originally, where is the training? Where is the command structure? The culture within the agency? And I think that that will have to be evaluated, but clearly they have to defend the president in a context of the threats we face around the world. That's what's so troubling about what happened here. Because this is obviously an obvious scenario of a fence jumping. What about a more sophisticated scenario?

WALLACE: Do you have, as someone who is the head of -- rather, on the committee that oversees Secret Service, you don't get to confirm the appointee, that is a decision by the president. Do you have an idea for a replacement as the head of Secret Service?

AYOTTE: I don't at this point, but I do think it needs to be a fresh view of what's happening at the Secret Service, not someone who is ingrained in the culture there existing now. As Dan mentioned, in terms of the hierarchy, so I hope that is what the president will consider, just like he did with the VA.

WALLACE: We also, you talk about culture, we also had this remarkable scene Wednesday, where White House spokesman Josh Earnest expressed full confidence in Secret Service Director Julia Pierson in the morning and then just hours later, hours later saying that he (INAUDIBLE) she was out. Take a look.

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JOSH EARNEST, WHITE HOUSE SPOKESMAN: She's more than qualified to do her job. She is somebody who has a very difficult responsibility.

Over the last several days we've seen recent and accumulating reports raising questions about the performance of the agency, and the president concluded that new leadership of that agency was required.

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WALLACE: Again, that is a difference between Thursday morning and Thursday afternoon -- or rather, Wednesday. Dan, is there a basic lack of accountability inside the Secret Service?

BONGINO: There is with the upper-level management. The ombudsman program, for example, Chris, to give you a tangible example, where the agents -- supposedly can go to air grievances related to the security footprint. The program is a disaster. What would happen is, you would see people in that program and information would slip out, so you really weren't an anonymous whistleblower. They could really use an outside independent ombudsman, and it could -- they should take the inspections program out from within the Secret Service and make it independent, kind of like an Internal Affairs Bureau, so the agents feel like they have a voice when they see an obvious security failure.

WALLACE: Senator Ayotte, you are also a member of the Senate Armed Service Committee, and I want to switch subjects on you. Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has a new book out, in which he blasts President Obama for failing to push Iraq to keep a residual force of U.S. troops there after 2011. Panetta writes this, those on our side -- talking about the Pentagon -- those on our side viewed the White House as so eager to rid itself of Iraq that it was willing to withdraw rather than lock in arrangements that would preserve our influence and interests. Now, President Obama says that this was Iraq's decision, not his. What do you make of Panetta's remarks, and how big a role if you believe what he says, did that play in the fact that we're now facing this threat from ISIS?

AYOTTE: Well, I think that Secretary Panetta, absolutely, I have respect for him, and the military commanders clearly wanted to leave a residual force there. That the president's claim that this was all in the Iraqis does not withstand scrutiny. And I think what we have here, Chris, as a problem where the president's foreign policy is being trapped by his campaign rhetoric. And I'm very fearful that as we look at the current military strategy that it is surrounding the November elections and that he won't have the resolve to follow through with what needs to be done in a sustained effort to destroy ISIS, and we're about to repeat the same thing with regard to Afghanistan, which Secretary Panetta also mentions in his book as well.

WALLACE: I just want to follow up, we have a couple of minutes up. Are you suggesting that after the November election and acting tough and talking tough, that he is going to pull back from confronting ISIS?

AYOTTE: I'm very concerned about that, Chris, and his resolve in this regard. And I think that's something that as a member of the Armed Services Committee, we've got to stay focused on. And if you look at the pattern here -- I mean look at what happened in Libya. We engaged in airstrikes, and then none of the follow-on in terms of securing the weapons, and obviously what happened with our embassy. I think we need to ensure that this isn't just surrounding what we're doing now. He has made clear this is going to take a sustained effort. And he has to be prepared to have the resolve to engage in that sustained effort to destroy ISIS. Otherwise, we're going to be in a situation where we have a safe haven again where attacks can be launched against us.

WALLACE: Senator Ayotte, Dan Bongino, thank you both, thanks for coming in today and talking with us.

AYOTTE: Thank you.

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