Secret Service agents are apparently above the law

Congratulations, one of the few previously respected organizations in DC is now the subject of ridicule.

 Washington Post

"Two Secret Service agents suspected of being under the influence while striking a White House security barricade drove through an active bomb investigation and directly beside the suspicious package, according to current and former government officials familiar with the incident.

These and other new details about the March 4 incident emerged Thursday from interviews and from police records obtained by The Washington Post.

The revelations spurred fresh questions Thursday from lawmakers about whether the newly appointed director of the Secret Service, Joseph P. Clancy, is capable of turning around the troubled agency.

Among lawmakers’ questions was whether Clancy, a 27-year Secret Service veteran appointed to his job last month after a string of embarrassing agency missteps, has been aggressive enough in his handling of last week’s incident.

Clancy placed the two senior agents involved in the incident in new “non-supervisory, non-operational” jobs pending an investigation — a less stringent approach than the service has taken in the past, when staffers suspected of misconduct were put on administrative leave or pressed to resign or accept demotion. Also, Clancy did not take action against a senior supervisor on duty that night who, according to officials briefed on the incident, ordered Secret Service officers to let the agents go home without giving them sobriety tests."

Yet another mentally ill citizen "invited" to the White House

That's where he parked? Yeah, he's mentally ill.

CBS-DC

"A man was arrested [on Wednesday, November 19, 2014] near the White House by Secret Service after a .30-30 rifle and ammunition was found in his car.

R.J. Renae Kapheim, a 41-year-old from Davenport, Iowa, approached a Secret Service checkpoint at 15th and E Street just before 1 p.m. and said that someone in Iowa told him to drive to the White House.

He then took Secret Service agents to his car where they found the .30-30 rifle, ammunition and a 6-inch knife in the trunk of his 2013 Volkswagen Passat.

Kapheim arrested on a charge of having an unregistered firearm, which is illegal in D.C."

Here's the fellow's LinkedIn profile:

https://www.linkedin.com/pub/r-j-renae-kapheim/48/571/65

I'm guessing the diagnosis as Bipolar Disorder I, Most Recent Episode Manic.

"My son was a mentally ill White House intruder"

Scotty Baker, with his mother, mental health advocate Dottie Pacharis, in 2006, one year before he died by suicide.

Washington Post

"My adult son suffered from severe bipolar disorder. During his first manic episode in January 1994, while he lived in northern Virginia, he became psychotic, paranoid, and lost touch with reality. He developed an unhealthy fixation for the president and made many attempts to get into the White House for what he actually thought were scheduled meetings with President Bill Clinton.

But he was in denial that anything was wrong with him. It took the assault of a police officer to get him committed. He spent his 27^th birthday in a padded cell in the psychiatric ward at a Virginia hospital. He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and transferred to a mental hospital where, after six weeks of involuntary commitment and forced meds, he recovered and resumed his life. Six years later, when he stopped taking his meds, he suffered a second psychotic break, this time fixating on President George W. Bush. He claimed he was in possession of very important information for both these presidents and he needed to share it. As seems to be the case with the two alleged White House fence-jumpers this month, Dominic Adesayana and Omar Gonzalez, his sickness propelled him there.

After 9/11, my son told his family he had obtained a top secret security clearance at the White House, that the FBI had issued him a special gun permit, and that he was exercising his constitutional right to purchase a gun. Several days later, he showed up at the White House and told the Secret Service he was there for his scheduled appointment with Bush. I became very concerned for his and everyone else’s safety. What would Secret Service do if they ever encountered him? Were they trained to distinguish between a terrorist and a mentally ill person?

...

Most people who try to enter the White House without permission, [a Secret Service agent] told me, suffer from mental illness. Nevertheless, it is the job of the Secret Service to protect the president, and his colleagues were sworn to do so at all costs, he said. He told me the agents would first shoot my son with rubber bullets. If that didn’t stop him, they would use a Taser on him. If that didn’t take him down, they would be forced to shoot him in one or both of his legs to immobilize him.

I was flummoxed by how familiar the Secret Service was with this sort of threat. How very sad that in this country we allow individuals with serious mental illness to commit crimes before we treat them. Mr. Gonzales, an Army veteran, who is charged with recently scaling the White House fence with a knife in his possession, suffered from post-traumatic stress, according to his family."

Mentally ill visitors to the White House

On September 11, 2014 this fellow jumped the White House fence, holding a Pikachu doll and dressed in Pokémon garb. Good thing the Secret Service got the machine guns and killer dogs out. How long until they kill one of these mentally ill people? On October 24, 2014, Dominic Adesanya was bitten multiple times by these dogs; he was unarmed and apparently is a paranoid schizophrenic. For psychiatric reasons, he was found incompetent to stand trial.

"[In 1835,] Richard Lawrence, an unemployed housepainter who earlier that year had twice visited the White House asking to speak to President Andrew Jackson. On his second visit, he was admitted, met Jackson, and asked him for $1,000. The president said he was busy and Lawrence was sent away. A week later, Lawrence approached Jackson as he was leaving a funeral and fired two pistols at him. Both guns misfired, and the enraged Jackson charged the gunman and began beating him with his cane. Lawrence later told police that the president had killed his father. He also claimed to be King Richard III. At his trial, it took the jury five minutes to find Lawrence not guilty by reason of insanity, and he spent the next 20 years at various asylums before he was eventually transferred to the newly opened Government Hospital for the Insane, now known as St Elizabeth's.

Over the next century and a half, St. Elizabeth’s became a temporary home for thousands of disturbed people who travelled from all over the country to deliver a warning, offer policy advice, or seek redress of grievance with the president, or another high official, in person. To security personnel and psychiatrists alike, they’re known as White House cases. Although they include would-be assassins such as Lawrence and John Hinckley, who shot President Reagan in 1981, the vast majority aren’t armed or violent. In a 1943 study of White House cases, Dr. Jay Hoffman noted, “It is the rule that these patients are, with certain notable exceptions, quiet, pleasant, congenial, cooperative and well-behaved. They accept their enforced hospitalization with a remarkable degree of passivity and frequently without even verbal complaint.”

Typical cases have remained strikingly similar over the years. “People usually go to the White House to tell the president what God is telling them or to warn of some impending disaster,” says psychiatrist David Shore, who worked at St. Elizabeth’s in the 1970s and 80s. “In some cases, they think that they have come up with a great invention or performed some great deed and expect to be rewarded.”

Most are schizophrenic. Some are experiencing a temporary psychotic episode. A few are on drugs. The basic motivation—to accomplish great things or avert great danger by going right to the top—seems to have remained the same throughout the decades, although over the years, specific concerns have shifted. Case studies by a number of researchers provide snapshots both of the historical period in which they occurred, and of the delusions associated with them. Many of Hoffman’s patients came to Washington to complain about pensions owed them from service in the First World War, to advise the president on how to steer the country out of the Depression, or to warn him about Nazi plots. After John F. Kennedy took office, women arrived claiming that they were his wife, and after he was shot, men came announcing that they were Jackie Kennedy’s husband. In a 1965 paper, Dr. Joseph Sebastiani reported that a 44-year-old woman came to the White House in 1963 because “she hoped the president would stop the police persecution that had caused her ears to flop and her body to go out of shape.” After news of President Reagan’s polyp surgery in 1987, one man came to offer him a nutritional cure-all, dressed as Hitler." 

White House Shooter Oscar Ortega-Hernandez

Oscar R. Ortega-Hernandez:
Can you tell if someone is schizophrenic just by looking at a photo of them?

 

Washington Post

"An Idaho man pleaded guilty [on September 17, 2013] to opening fire on the White House in November 2011.

No one was injured, but two members of President Obama’s family were there when Oscar R. Ortega-Hernandez began shooting, according to court documents filed Wednesday. Ortega-Hernandez admitted firing eight rounds from a semiautomatic assault rifle into the second and third floors of the White House.

The 22-year-old had been scheduled to go to trial in federal court in Washington on charges that included attempted assassination of the president. Instead, he pleaded guilty to using a firearm during a crime of violence and to damaging the White House and putting “lives in jeopardy.”

He faces up to 27 ¹ / ₂ years in prison, according to federal sentencing guidelines. [He got 25 years, and he has to pay $94,000 in restitution to repair the damage to the White House.]

... 

In the months leading up to the White House shooting, Ortega-Hernandez had become agitated [and paranoid], authorities said. He told friends that the federal government was seeking to control Americans by implanting global positioning chips in children, according to the plea agreement. [He was also worried that the government was using fluoride and aspartame for the purposes of mind control.]

Acquaintances told authorities that Ortega-Hernandez had told them that he “needed to kill” the president and that Obama was “the antichrist.”  

In October 2011, he recorded two videos of himself in which he called for a revolution, according to the statement of offense signed by Ortega-Hernandez. He then drove 2,200 miles from his home in Idaho Falls to Washington. 

On the evening of Nov. 11, he stopped his 1998 Honda Accord on Constitution Avenue NW shortly after passing the entrance to the Ellipse. He began firing a semiautomatic rifle equipped with a telescopic sight.

Driving away moments later, Ortega-Hernandez lost control of the car and crashed near the ramp to the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Bridge. He fled on foot and was arrested at a hotel in western Pennsylvania after a five-day manhunt."

 NYT

"Family members and others said that while Mr. Ortega was behaving increasingly strangely — he read a 45-minute speech at his 21st birthday party in October that veered from supporting marijuana legalization to detailing the threat of secret societies to expressing frustration with American foreign policy in oil-producing countries — he never seemed violent.

They said that he could not have truly wanted to kill the president, but that he may have wanted a larger audience. He read his speech to anyone who would listen. In September, Mr. Ortega made a video in which he asked Oprah Winfrey to let him appear on television with her.

“You see, Oprah, there is still so much more that God needs me to express to the world,” he says. “It’s not just a coincidence that I look like Jesus. I am the modern-day Jesus Christ that you all have been waiting for.”

Mr. Ortega’s behavior and the age at which it appears to have begun to suggest that he has “a textbook case” of schizophrenia, said Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, who researches the disease and is the founder of the Treatment Advocacy Center in Arlington, Va.

Dr. Torrey recalled working at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, a psychiatric treatment center, in the 1970s and 1980s.

“These folks often end up in Washington as what we used to call ‘White House cases,’ ” he said. “A White House case classically is someone who comes to the guard at the White House and says they have a special message for the president, or they try to go over the wall. We’ve seen dozens. They almost always have paranoid schizophrenia, and they almost always respond to medication.” Among the patients being treated there is John W. Hinckley Jr., who shot President Ronald Reagan in 1981.

Mr. Ortega, he acknowledged, is accused of going much further than pestering a guard or climbing a wall.

“I can guarantee you that in his mind, it all makes perfect sense,” Dr. Torrey said. “If he’s Christ, Obama’s the Antichrist.”"

How did this guy not get a Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity acquittal? He should be in a forensic mental facility, not a federal prison.

Omar Gonzalez to undergo Competency to Stand Trial Evaluation, over his attorney's objections

 

 

Washington Post

Omar J. Gonzalez, 42, a U.S. Army veteran who has said he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, will remain in jail without bond, U.S. Magistrate Judge Deborah A. Robinson of the District ordered.

Gonzalez did not speak during the 20-minute court appearance.

A federal grand jury charged Gonzalez on Tuesday with one federal felony count of entering a restricted building or grounds while carrying a deadly weapon — a knife — as well as D.C. charges of carrying a dangerous weapon outside a home or business and unlawful possession of ammunition.

The federal charge carries a prison sentence of as much as 10 years and the D.C. counts up to five years and one year in prison, respectively.

Over vehement protests by Gonzalez’s defense attorney, Assistant Federal Public Defender David Bos of the District, Robinson ordered that Gonzalez undergo a mental competency screening Oct. 17 by the D.C. Department of Mental Health.

“The court is within its discretion to order a [psychiatric] screening,” Robinson said.

Bos said that his client was competent to stand trial, and that he would immediately seek to stay the judge’s order, calling it “wrong on the facts and wrong on the law.”

Bos said there was no basis to conclude that Gonzalez is unable to understand the proceedings against him or to assist in his defense. Bos has opposed similar efforts in the past as a “fishing expedition” by the government to gain access to a defendant and obtain information it would not otherwise have, including in preparation for a potential insanity defense. 

At the time of his arrest, Secret Service said, Gonzalez told an agent that he was concerned that the “atmosphere was collapsing” and that he needed to inform the president to alert the public.

Mentally Ill Iraq War veteran, 1 : U.S. Secret Service, 0

 

 

Washington Post 

The man who jumped the White House fence this month and sprinted through the front door made it much farther into the building than previously known, overpowering one Secret Service officer and running through much of the main floor, according to three people familiar with the incident.

An alarm box near the front entrance of the White House designed to alert guards to an intruder had been muted at what officers believed was a request of the usher’s office, said a Secret Service official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The officer posted inside the front door appeared to be delayed in learning that the intruder, Omar Gonzalez, was about to burst through. Officers are trained that, upon learning of an intruder on the grounds — often through the alarm boxes posted around the property — they must immediately lock the front door.

After barreling past the guard immediately inside the door, Gonzalez, who was carrying a knife, dashed past the stairway leading a half-flight up to the first family’s living quarters. He then ran into the 80-foot-long East Room, an ornate space often used for receptions or presidential addresses.

Gonzalez was tackled by a counterassault agent at the far southern end of the East Room. The intruder reached the doorway to the Green Room, a parlor overlooking the South Lawn with artwork and antique furniture, according to three people familiar with the incident.

Secret Service officials had earlier said he was quickly detained at the main entry. [Which is to say, They lied.] Agency spokesman Edwin Donovan said the office is not commenting during the ongoing investigation of the incident.

Breaches of the White House fence have become more common, but most jumpers are tackled by Secret Service officers guarding the complex before they get even a third of the way across the lawn. Gonzalez is the first person known to have jumped the fence and made it inside the executive mansion. 



 

 

 



Update on Omar Gonzales, White House fence jumper and Iraq War veteran

 

WSJ

Mr. Gonzalez's friends and family described him as a dedicated soldier who returned home so paranoid about an unnamed "they" that he kept rifles and shotguns behind the doors and patrolled the perimeter of his home near Fort Hood, Texas. 

"He's a standup guy—he's a hero," said Jerry Murphy, the son of Mr. Gonzalez's former wife. "He sacrificed his mind and his body for his country." 

Mr. Murphy and his mother, Samantha Bell, said a military psychiatrist treated Mr. Gonzalez for post-traumatic stress disorder and paranoid schizophrenia before his medical retirement from the military in 2012. Citing privacy laws, a military spokesman declined to provide details about any medical treatment. 

The Department of Veterans Affairs provides Mr. Gonzalez with $1,652 in monthly disability payments. "However, at this time, it does not appear the veteran sought treatment in any VA health-care facility," a VA spokeswoman said. 

Mr. Gonzalez served his first Iraq tour from October 2006 to January 2008, when he was based in Baghdad and manned a machine gun atop Humvees and Bradley fighting vehicles. On his second tour, he was stationed in Mosul. Known to his comrades as "Gonzo," he encountered firefights, roadside bombs and close-quarters combat, according other soldiers in B Troop, 4th Squadron, 9th Cavalry Regiment. 

At times, insurgents would throw handmade teapot grenades at the scouts' passing vehicles, the soldiers recalled. "We saw a lot of dead bodies, a lot of shooting, a lot of people killed," said Sgt. 1st Class Michael Lashua, who shared a vehicle with Mr. Gonzalez in Iraq. 

When Mr. Gonzalez returned to Fort Hood, Ms. Bell said he wouldn't discuss his experiences, except to say they were "very bad" and imply they involved children in some way. 

Mr. Gonzalez took to walking around the house with a pistol on his hip, peeking out through the blinds. He worried "they" were pumping poison in through the vents, said Ms. Bell, who left him in 2010. He patrolled the yard looking for footprints, compulsively checked the locks and kept weapons behind the living-room and bedroom doors. "He wasn't violent—he was a great guy," she said. "It was just those bizarre behaviors. I couldn't deal with it anymore." 

One time he closed the blinds while Ms. Bell was running on a treadmill in the same room. "'I'm closing the blinds because they're looking in,'" she remembered him saying. "He always said 'they' but would never tell me who." A fellow soldier who knew Mr. Gonzalez well recalled that he was unable to sleep well and was troubled by nightmares. "He wouldn't hurt anybody ever," the soldier said.

Mr. Gonzalez was medically retired from the military because of a disability related to severe plantar fasciitis, his former wife said.

Among the awards he received were three Army Commendation medals, one Army Achievement Medal and an Army Good Conduct Medal, according to his records.

"Omar has an illness," said Ms. Bell. "I would love for that to be treated. I don't want him to be punished."

Secret Service agents reported that after his apprehension inside the White House, Mr. Gonzalez said he was "concerned that the atmosphere was collapsing" and that he needed to get unspecified information to the president.

At Monday's hearing, Magistrate Judge John Facciola asked Mr. Gonzalez's public defender, David Bos, if his client appeared to suffer from any mental disease or deficiency. Mr. Bos said there was no basis for a court-ordered competency evaluation. "Sadly, many of my clients suffer from mental illnesses—including PTSD—but are still competent to stand trial," he said in an email after the hearing.

Well, his public defender thinks he's Competent to Stand Trial. That's great. I hope this doesn't turn into another Ralph Tortorici tragedy.

Another VA Scandal brewing in the White House fence jumper?

NBC News

The ex-wife of the man accused of scaling a security fence and charging the White House with knife says that he suffers from mental illness as a result of a "terrible" incident during a tour of duty in Iraq and needs treatment, not jail.

"I wish there was something I could have done to help him, he's not a bad guy," Samantha Murphy Bell, told Indianapolis NBC affiliate WTHR in a telephone interview on Monday. "He didn't go to the White House to hurt Obama."

Bell said she met her ex-husband, Omar Gonzalez, 42, in 2005 or 2006, and they were married in 2006. They separated in 2010 and were officially divorced in July of this year.

She said that life with Gonzalez — who is charged with unlawfully entering a restricted building or grounds while carrying a deadly or dangerous weapon — was fine until a second tour of duty where something bad happened in Iraq.

The Army says Gonzalez first enlisted from July 1997 to September 2003, then reenlisted in July 2005 and served until his retirement in late 2012, serving in Iraq from October 2006 to January 2008.

"It was his second tour and I noticed that he was doing a lot of things that were making me uncomfortable — I knew he would never harm me (but) I know whatever happened in Iraq, it affected him," said Bell.

She said it was difficult if not impossible to talk to Gonzalez about the traumatic incident that had scarred his psyche, but once she asked, how bad it was and, "he said, 'It was terrible.’ he said, ‘Sam, the only thing I could tell you is it involved little children.'"

Bell said that Gonzalez started walking around their home with a .45-caliber pistol on his hip at all times. "It never left him, and he had a gun or a shotgun behind every door," said Bell, who claimed that her ex had been diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder, schizophrenia and post-traumatic stress disorder.

"He needs to get treatment," she said. "I think he needs to get proper help — throwing him in a jail is not helping him."

According to the affidavit from when Gonzalez was first detained after busting onto White House property on Friday, he told a Secret Service agent that "the atmosphere was collapsing and needed to get the information to the president of the United States so that he could get the word out to the people."

On Monday Gonzalez was ordered held without bail until Oct. 1. It was also revealed that he had been detained near the White House with weapons at least two other times in the past three months.

Poor guy. The march to keep the atmosphere from collapsing was in New York, not DC.

I doubt the schizophrenia diagnosis (onset is too late in life), but I wouldn't be surprised if he had been prescribed anti-psychotics such as Seroquel. A Google search would have shown him and his ex- that those meds are used to treat schizophrenia (as well as to help combat vets sleep).

Don't be too quick to dismiss the story about an incident involving "little children" as a product of mental illness.

It would be an egregious injustice to prosecute this guy. I guess we should be thankful that they didn't kill him, as cops in DC are wont to do to the mentally ill.