US Secret Service chief quits over security breaches
Protection agency head makes 'painful' decision after series of embarrassing security blunders
The director of the US Secret Service, Julia Pierson, has abruptly resigned in the face of multiple revelations of security breaches, bumbling in her agency and rapidly eroding confidence that US President Barack Obama and his family were being kept safe.
Once highly respected for its professionalism, the Secret Service, which protects the president, his family, the vice-president and former presidents, has been trying to rehabilitate its image since a 2012 prostitution scandal erupted during a presidential visit to Colombia.
That trust was shaken by a series of failures in the agency's critical job of protecting the president, including a breach on September 19, when a knife-carrying man climbed over the White House fence and made it deep into the executive mansion before being stopped.
Obama had "concluded new leadership of that agency was required", said White House spokesman Josh Earnest on Wednesday.
A White House official said the final straw was the revelation that Obama was never briefed about an incident in which he rode in a lift with an armed security contractor during a visit to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta just days before the White House breach.