WASHINGTON - Julia Pierson, the director of the Secret Service, is resigning in the wake of several security breaches.
The resignation came less than a day after lawmakers from both parties assailed Pierson's leadership and said they feared for the lives of the president and others in the protection of the agency.
On Wednesday morning, Pierson met with Jeh C. Johnson, the secretary of Homeland Security, the department that oversees the Secret Service. In a statement, Johnson said that he had accepted Pierson's resignation, and that he had appointed Joseph Clancy, a former agent in charge of the Presidential Protective Division, to become the agency's acting director.
Clancy was in charge of the presidential detail the night in November 2009 when Michaele and Tareq Salahi, then a married couple, managed to get past Secret Service checkpoints for President Barack Obama's first state dinner without being on the guest list.
Johnson also said that he was directing his deputy at the Department of Homeland Security to oversee an internal review of the Sept. 19 incident in which an intruder jumped over the fence around the White House and penetrated deep inside the mansion.
And bowing to growing demands for an outside inquiry by Democratic and Republican members of Congress, Johnson said that he would appoint a "distinguished panel of independent experts" to report recommendations to him by Dec. 15.
"I will also request that the panel advise me about whether it believes, given the series of recent events, there should be a review of broader issues concerning the Secret Service," Johnson said in the statement. "The security of the White House compound should be the panel's primary and immediate priority."
It is unclear whether the creation of that panel will be enough to satisfy critics of Pierson and the agency, who said over the last 24 hours that they had lost confidence in the agency's ability to protect the president and his family.
In a brief interview with Del Quentin Wilber, a reporter for Bloomberg News, Pierson said that she resigned because "Congress has lost confidence in my ability to run the agency," according to a Twitter message from Wilber shortly after the resignation was announced.
Wilber also wrote that Pierson said: "I can be pretty stoic about all this, but not really. It's painful to leave."
Josh Earnest, the president's press secretary, had forcefully defended Pierson on Wednesday, saying that Obama remained fully confident in her leadership and in the ability of the agency to protect him.
But shortly after her resignation was announced, Earnest said that the president had agreed that a change was necessary.
"Director Pierson offered her resignation today because she believes it is in the best interest of the agency to which she had devoted her career," Earnest said. He added that Obama agreed, saying, "The president concluded that new leadership of that agency was required."
Pierson, a 30-year veteran of the Secret Service, was supposed to have been the one to repair the agency's reputation after scandals involving drinking and prostitution during overseas trips.
But her tenure has been rocked by more serious allegations that her agents and officers have not been performing their primary job competently. Under intense questioning on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, Pierson admitted that those charged with securing the White House had failed to follow numerous security protocols, allowing a man armed with a knife to penetrate deep inside the mansion.
Through the last two weeks, Obama's aides had repeatedly declared that he retained full confidence in the agency and in Pierson's ability to lead it. But the disclosures in the past few days - including revelations that the Secret Service had not been fully forthcoming about the details of the incidents - appear to have been too much.
On Wednesday, Democratic and Republican lawmakers heaped new criticism on Pierson, raising new questions about her ability to lead the agency and protect Obama.
Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, the senior Democrat on the House oversight committee, initially said Wednesday that Pierson should no longer serve as the director of the Secret Service because he did not have confidence in her abilities and did not trust her to protect the president.
"I've come to the conclusion that my confidence and my trust in this director, Pierson, has eroded," he said in an interview on "Morning Joe" on MSNBC. "And I do not feel comfortable with her in that position."
Later, Cummings rolled backed his demand, saying in a Twitter post that he has "not decided about Pierson," but adding that he is "not comfortable about the safety of the president of the United States of America."
Cummings' doubts were echoed by Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat in the House, who told reporters that "if Mr. Cummings thinks that she should go, I subscribe to his recommendation."
Pelosi also broke with the White House and joined Republican calls for an independent inquiry into the Secret Service. She said that the agency's internal review of its recent security breaches would not be enough to restore confidence.
Pelosi and other lawmakers cited the recent intruder who jumped the fence at the White House and made it deep into the mansion before being stopped. She also noted new disclosures Tuesday about an incident in which a man with a gun was allowed to ride in an elevator with Obama when he was at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
"The protection of the president has to be precise, it has to be flawless and there has to be accountability when that is not the case," Pelosi told reporters. "It is inexcusable that someone would jump over the fence and enter the White House, inexcusable that someone would be on the elevator with the president of the United States, with or without a weapon."
On Wednesday, the intruder who jumped the White House fence, Omar J. Gonzalez, pleaded not guilty to charges of unlawfully entering a restricted government building while carrying a weapon, carrying a dangerous weapon in public and unlawfully possessing ammunition.
Gonzalez walked into the U.S. District Court here with his hands behind his back but not cuffed, wearing an orange jumpsuit. He listened intently as his lawyer entered his plea and waived Gonzalez's right to a detention hearing. Judge Deborah A. Robinson ruled that Gonzalez would be detained until another hearing on Oct. 21.