Magaw named deputy director at Secret Service

WASHINGTON — As the U.S. Secret Service continues a restructuring of its troubled top ranks, a career agent with family ties to the organization was named deputy director Friday.

Craig Magaw, who started as a uniform officer and most recently served as director of the agency's Office of Strategic Intelligence and Information, was promoted to the job as second in command to newly installed Director Joseph Clancy, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and Clancy announced in a joint statement.

In addition to Magaw's appointment, Johnson and Clancy announced the creation of a new chief operating officer, responsible for directing the agency's business, planning and program activities. The position was recommended by a DHS advisory panel following a series of security breaches and agent misconduct, which prompted the October resignation of then-director Julia Pierson.

The agency also struggled earlier month to address yet another alleged incident of misconduct when two senior agents, returning from an evening party, abruptly drove into the perimeter of an ongoing bomb investigation at the White House complex.

The DHS' inspector general is reviewing the incident and questions about whether the agents were impaired in any way at the time of the March 4 incident.

Magaw, who served in a number of roles at the agency including stints as head of the Orlando, Fla., field office and as a member of the Presidential Protective Division, also is the son of a former agency director, John Magaw.

John Magaw briefly directed the agency in 1992 and 1993, before his appointment as director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in the aftermath of the botched raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas.

"Throughout his career, Craig has had a stellar reputation, well respected within the Secret Service and with our many external partners," Clancy said in a statement.

Referring to the most recent misconduct investigation, Johnson said there is "more to be done to promote operational excellence and public trust in the Secret Service.''

"However,'' the secretary said, "change does not happen overnight.''

Earlier this week, Clancy confronted a wave of criticism from members of Congress who continued to question the agency's leadership in wake of the March 4 incident.

In response to Magaw's Friday appointment, some members suggested that Johnson and Clancy had not heeded another key recommendation of the advisory panel: to seek leadership from outside the agency.

"Cultures do not change easily,'' said Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, the ranking Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee. "And it is all the more difficult to begin reforms when there are no new voices to bring fresh ideas to the table.''

Thompson urged that the selection of the newly-created chief operating officer come from outside the agency.