With the recent failure of protection by the secret service and the ousting of the Director of the Secret Service along with six of its assistant directors many question why Alvin Smith, Deputy Director of the Secret Service, has not been forced to retire as well. Alvin Smith has been working with the agency for over 26 years and has been clearly present in the management of the day to day workings of the agencies in the past years. This includes the past hiccups such as the drone able to penetrate the airspace of the white house, the allowing of a man wielding a knife to be able to charge into the white house and run throughout the first floor before being stopped, and the ordering of agents to leave their posts to help a senior agent in an argument with a neighbor, not to mention the many times of agents being to drunk to maintain composer at their posts. According to a couple of ex- agents of the secret service he posed the largest danger in management of the secret service and not the solution as he is informing the public. However others including congressmen and current agents say he has a proven record as a strong leader and with the ousting of him they would no longer have anybody with his amount of experience in the job and lead to a collapse in the agency.
In addition much controversy comes up with his political connections and how it relates to the securing of his job, most specifically his wife who is President Bill Clinton's cousin, whom the president along with Hillary Clinton both attended.
Do you feel that Smith has retained his job so a man with experience can keep order in the agency or because he had the right political connection to allow him to keep his job?
Can this same kind of problem with senior heads' failure to adequately manage departments and agencies be seen in other bureaucracies? If so what could some negative implications be.
Is there a need to reform our executive branch to further limit mis-management and the possibilities of this sudo-spoils system?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/some-in-congress-still-unhappy-with-changes-at-top-level-of-secret-service/2015/01/29/fa6a57ae-9d93-11e4-bcfb-059ec7a93ddc_story.html?hpid=z1
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