US Secret Service to build fake White House

The US Secret Service, charged with protecting the president, is planning to build an $8 million replica of the White House in Beltsville, Maryland, to help protect the real one in Washington, DC. 

The director of the scandal-plagued Secret Service told a House of Representatives panel reviewing 2016 funding on Tuesday that the agency would use the fake White House to train agents and officers to prevent incidents like last year's mansion intrusion by an armed Iraq war veteran.  

James Clancy told the House Appropriations Committee that his agency's budget "includes $8 million for the design and initial construction of a White House mock-up" in Beltsville.

He said the agency's current training facility in Maryland has "no structures, vehicle gates, lighting, or other aides to enhance the training simulations."

“Right now we train on a parking lot basically,” Clancy said. “We put up a makeshift fence and walk off the distance between the fence to the White House and the actual house itself.”

“We don’t have on that parking lot, we don’t have the bushes, we don’t have the fountains, we don’t get a realistic look at the White House,” he added.

He said the training facility in Maryland will provide for a "more realistic environment conducive to scenario-based training exercises."

The Secret Service has been under fire in recent years for a series of security lapses and breaches in behavioral protocol including agents drinking while on or ahead of presidential trips.

Clancy admitted to the committee that his staff coped with job demands by drinking.

“There's an element within our agency that does cope with stresses... by using alcohol," he said.

In last September, Iraq war veteran Omar Gonzalez jumped over the White House fence and entered the executive mansion with a knife, and ran through several rooms before he was finally apprehended.

Last month, President Barack Obama appointed Clancy, who was serving as the acting head of the Secret Service, as the permanent director of the agency, after a critical report into the incident.

The Secret Service has been rocked by a series of high profile security lapses and damaging revelations over the past several months, leading to a shake-up in the troubled agency's leadership.

According to a report by the Washington post, it took the Secret Service five days to discover that a man had shot seven bullets at the White House in 2011.

Another security lapse occurred on September 16, when an armed security contractor with a criminal record was allowed to accompany Obama in an elevator during his trip to Atlanta.

On March 4, two drunken Secret Service agents drove a government car through police tape and barricades while under influence.

The agents, one a top member of Obama's protective detail and the other a senior supervisor in the Washington field office, were returning from a late-night party at a Chinatown bar about eight blocks from the White House.

They drove their government car through an area which was being investigated by police over a suspicious package.