Have '2nd-term blues' hit the Secret Service?

CARMEL VALLEY, Calif. — Leon Panetta, who as White House chief of staff helped oversee President Clinton's security, says missteps by the Secret Service "have raised questions in my mind and questions in the minds of the American people" about whether President Obama and his family are being kept safe.

In an interview with USA TODAY, he says the agency seems to have fallen into a pattern of complacency.

"It's part of what I've termed 'second-term blues,' where people get into these jobs; they begin to take them for granted; they think that because nothing's happened that they can get a little lazy in the way they operate," he says. "You cannot allow that to happen."

A string of recent disclosures has detailed security lapses that allowed a man to climb the White House fence and run inside and an armed man with a criminal history to ride in an elevator with the president during a visit to Atlanta. In 2011, it turns out, agents on duty didn't initially realize that shots had been fired and hit the White House one night.

Rebuilding confidence will require demonstrating competence, he says. "They are going to have to show through their actions, not through their little reports, not through investigations and all the little things that are part of what happens in Washington."

Panetta spoke in an interview pegged to publication of his new book, Worthy Fights: Leadership in Times of War and Peace, being published Tuesday by Penguin Press.

He recalls a similar security emergency in 1994, when he was White House chief of staff. About 2 a.m., he was jolted awake at home by a call from an agent who told him a plane "just went into the side of the White House."

"And I said, oh my God, a 747? Or what was it?" Panetta says. "He said, 'No, it was a small plane; went up against the (Andrew) Jackson magnolia tree, and we don't think a lot of damage was done.

"I said, 'Wait a minute, was this a terrorist attack? Was the plane full of dynamite?'

"And there was a pause and the agent said, 'Well, according to CNN News' — I said, 'Excuse me?'" His voice rises in outrage even now.

"I said, 'I want you to go out there and I want you to check it.' And I got in my clothes and went down to the White House to find out what happened."

As it turned out, a Maryland truck driver had stolen a two-seat Cessna propeller plane and flown it towards the White House, raising questions about why nothing had been done to stop him before he crashed into the tree, killing himself.

Clinton and his family happened to be staying across the street, in Blair House, that night because of work being done on the White House ventilation system.