The 11 Worst White House Security Breaches of All Time
Friday is hardly the first time an intruder has managed to gain access.
— -- After Omar Gonzalez of Texas scaled the north fence and entered the White House Friday, the Secret Service immediately began clamping down on security protocols.
But this is hardly the first time an intruder has managed to gain access to the White House grounds, one of the most historic and seemingly secure places in the world.
Here’s a look back at some of the most egregious breaches at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue:
1. July 1976: Chester Plummer
After reportedly menacing a Secret Security agent, he was shot in the chest and died 90 minutes later.
2. October 1978: Anthony Henry
When officers approached, Henry adopted a karate stance and whipped a knife out of the bible he was carrying. He slashed one officer in the face and another in the arm before being wrestled to the ground.
4. January 1985: Robert Latta
“I just walked in with the band,” he told the Associated Press. “I was just going in to see the ceremony.”
5. September 1994: Frank Eugene Corder
6. October 1994: Francisco Martin Duran
Duran later claimed he was attempting to save the world from an alien “mist.” He was convicted of attempted assassination and sentenced to 40 years in prison.
7. February 2001: Robert Pickett
Pickett, 47, was eventually sent to a Bureau of Prisons psychiatric hospital for treatment.
8. January 2005: Lowell Timmers
"I want my son, and I'm not leaving until my son-in-law is out of jail," Timmers reportedly told authorities during the ensuing four-and-a-half hour standoff.
He eventually surrendered peacefully, and later pled guilty to making a false explosive threat. He told the court, however, that he couldn’t “rule out” the possibility that he would do it again, but “the odds of that happening are 800 million billion [sic] to one.”
9. November 2009: Tareq and Michaele Salahi
The pair, who publicly maintained they had been invited to the event, pled the fifth at a congressional hearing examining the breach.
10. November 2011: Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez
President Obama, whom Ortega, 23, reportedly called “the anti-Christ,” was away at the time.
Ortega fled the scene and was apprehended in a hotel room in Pennsylvania five days later. He eventually pled guilty to firing an assault weapon at the White House and was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Authorities agreed to drop an assassination charge as part of a plea deal.
11. June 2013: Joseph Clifford Reel
In a manifesto posted online, Reel slammed the Obama administration, saying “Every once in a while, bad people take over. .?.?. And every once in a while, regular people have to get up and say, ‘No.’?”
Reel, who claimed he had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to nearly three years in prison.
But not all the security snafus at the White House have been so serious. In perhaps the most adorable security breach to date, a 2-year-old squeezed through the bars of the north fence last month, spurring a lockdown and delaying the president’s impending address to the nation.
"We were going to wait until he learned to talk to question him,” a Secret Service spokesman said,” but in lieu of that he got a timeout and was sent on way with parents.”
ABC's Kirsten Appleton and Veronica Stracqualursi contributed to this report.
