President Barack Obama has appointed U.S. Secret Service veteran Joseph Clancy as the agency's new director, NBC News confirmed on Wednesday.
Clancy, a retired special agent, served as the interim director of the Secret Service since October, when Julia Pierson resigned from the position on Oct. 1 following a string of embarrassing missteps by the agency. Prior to the temporary role, Clancy was the executive director of cable security at Comcast Corp., which owns NBCUniversal.
In 1984, Clancy joined the Secret Service in the Philadelphia Field Office, according to his government biography. He was later appointed special agent in charge of the Presidential Protective Division in 2009.
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In September, a man scaled the 8-foot-tall White House fence and briefly entered the building. A week before, a different intruder jumped over the fence along the lawn, and yet another man tried to drive through a barricade onto the grounds. Also under Pierson’s watch, Obama rode an elevator in Atlanta with an armed security contractor who had a record of assault convictions.
Pierson had joined the Secret Service in March 2013 in the wake of revelations that agents solicited prostitutes in Colombia ahead of a presidential visit to the country. A Justice Department investigation found that two Drug Enforcement Administration agents arranged an encounter between a prostitute and a Secret Service officer.