EARN IT

Secret Service Requests Fake White House

$8 million replica for training purposes.

Newly installed Secret Service Director Joseph Clancy went before a House Appropriations panel on Tuesday and asked for an $8 million replica of the White House for training purposes. Secret Service agents have come under fire recently for a series of embarrassing blunders, including a recent incident in which two agents drove their car into a White House barricade after a night out drinking. “Right now we train on a parking lot, basically,” Clancy said. “We put up makeshift fences and walk off the distance between the fence at the White House and the actual house itself. We don’t have the bushes, we don’t have the fountains. We don’t get a realistic look at the White House…So we think it’s important to have a true replica.” Members of the House committee, to put it mildly, were skeptical. Kentucky Rep. Harold Rogers told Clancy, “We’ve got to have some changes and you’ve got to be the one to make those changes. I don’t sense at this moment that you have the determination to make that happen.”