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  • White House national security adviser met with top Chinese official in highest US-China engagement since spy balloon incident | CNN Politics

    White House national security adviser met with top Chinese official in highest US-China engagement since spy balloon incident | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    National security adviser Jake Sullivan met with top Chinese official Wang Yi in Vienna for “candid” and “constructive” talks, the White House announced Thursday.

    The previously undisclosed meeting is among the highest-level engagements between US and Chinese officials since the spy balloon incident earlier this year, which caused Secretary of State Antony Blinken to postpone a planned trip to Beijing, and it comes amid what has been an incredibly tumultuous year in relations between the two nations.

    “This meeting was part of ongoing efforts to maintain open lines of communication and responsibly manage competition,” a White House readout of Wednesday and Thursday’s meeting said.

    “The two sides had candid, substantive, and constructive discussions on key issues in the U.S.-China bilateral relationship, global and regional security issues, Russia’s war against Ukraine, and cross-Strait issues, among other topics,” the readout said.

    A US senior administration official said the meeting was an attempt to put communications back on track after the spy balloon incident.

    “I think both sides recognized that that unfortunate incident led to a bit of a pause in engagement. We’re seeking now to move beyond that and reestablish just a standard normal channel of communications,” the official said on a call with reporters after the meeting.

    “We made clear where we stand in terms of the breach of sovereignty, we’ve been clear on that from the very get go. But again, trying to look forward from here on,” the official added, noting they focused on “how do we manage the other issues that are ongoing right now and manage the tension in the relationship that exists.”

    The official said that Chinese officials saw the importance of engaging with the US to try to manage the relationship, which the official said was a “departure” from the Chinese statements out of previous US-China engagements.

    “I think both sides thought it would be useful try to do another conversation of this national security adviser director level,” they said. The last time that officials met at that level was last June.

    “I think both sides see the value in sort of this low profile channel to handle some of the more complex issues in the bilateral relationships,” the official added.

    The meeting came together “fairly quickly,” the official said, and lasted eight hours over the course of two days in Vienna. It was one of the more constructive meetings they had participated in, the official told reporters.

    Sullivan told Wang that the US and China are competitors but that the US “does not seek conflict or confrontation.”

    He raised the cases of three wrongfully detained American citizens – Mark Swidan, Kai Li, and David Lin. The two sides also discussed the issue of counternarcotics.

    The official said they did not get into specifics about rescheduling Blinken’s trip to Beijing, but they “do anticipate there’ll be engagements … in both directions over the coming months.”

    They also did not get into specifics about scheduling for a call between Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping, “but I think both sides recognize the importance of leader level communication,” the official said.

    Blinken was due to travel to China in early February, but the trip was postponed in response to the Chinese surveillance balloon traversing the United States.

    The top US diplomat said that balloon’s presence over the US “created the conditions that undermine the purpose of the trip.”

    In February, weeks after the balloon incident, Blinken met with Wang on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference.

    In that meeting, Blinken “directly spoke to the unacceptable violation of US sovereignty and international law” and said incidents like the balloon, which hovered over US airspace for days before the US shot it down off the coast of South Carolina, “must never occur again,” former State Department spokesperson Ned Price said in a statement.

    Blinken, who a senior State Department official characterized as “very direct and candid throughout,” began the hour long meeting by stating “how unacceptable and irresponsible” it was that China had flown the balloon into US airspace. The secretary later expressed disappointment that Beijing had not engaged in military-to-military dialogue when the Chinese balloon incident occurred, the senior official told reporters.

    “He stated, candidly stated, our disappointment that in this recent period that our Chinese military counterparts had refused to pick up the phone. We think that’s unfortunate. And that is not the way that our two sides ought to be conducting business,” the official said.

    In an event in early May, US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns said the US was “ready to talk” to China, and expressed hope that Beijing would “meet us halfway on this.”

    He said the US was ready for “a more broad-based engagement at the cabinet level,” adding, “we have never supported an icing of this relationship.”

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  • Nevada firefighters came to the rescue of a bear that got stuck in a tree | CNN

    Nevada firefighters came to the rescue of a bear that got stuck in a tree | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A team of firefighters and wildlife officials in Nevada accomplished a “bear-y” important rescue mission Wednesday.

    A bear was “spooked up a tree in front of a home” Wednesday morning in Reno, according to a Facebook post from the Nevada Department of Wildlife.

    “Between the busy roads, people, and all the attractants that can cause a bear to lose its natural fear of humans, a neighborhood is not a safe place for a bear!” wrote the department.

    The department’s game wardens and biologists helped remove the bear from the tree, the Facebook post says. They teamed up with firefighters from the Reno Fire Department to tranquilize the bear and safely catch it in a tarp.

    Photos posted by both agencies show officials in a suburban neighborhood patiently waiting at the base of a tree with a red tarp. The images show the bear clinging to branches before falling seemingly head-first onto the tarp.

    The Nevada Department of Wildlife said officials would release the bear in its natural habitat Thursday. The agency didn’t immediately respond to an inquiry by CNN about the animal’s release.

    Black bears are the only species of bear that live in Nevada, according to the department’s website. The agency advises Nevadans to use bear-resistant garbage containers to avoid attracting animals and critters, lock windows and doors and keep food out of vehicles.

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  • White House Security Breaches Fast Facts | CNN Politics

    White House Security Breaches Fast Facts | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Here’s a selected list of White House intrusions and security breaches.

    The White House grounds include 18 acres of land. That and the adjacent 52-acre Ellipse to the south belong to President’s Park, a national park.

    The Secret Service is in charge of White House security.

    According to the White House Historical Society, US President Thomas Jefferson was the first to put a fence around the White House. Over the years, the fence has been updated and fortified, with the wrought-iron fences of the 19th century having been replaced in the 1930s by a steel fence with tall bronze spears atop it. Most of the fence is currently about six feet six inches tall, and is undergoing an eight-phase replacement with an approximately 13 foot tall fence which began in July 2019.

    Security became especially tighter during World War II. After a truck-bomb attack on the US Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983, low concrete walls were put up around the White House. Bollards – sturdy, vertical posts that can stop vehicles – were added a few years later.

    “Security incidents occur frequently,” according to a 2015 House of Representatives report. Data from the Secret Service included in the report show that there were 104 security breaches or attempted breaches between April 2005 and April 15, 2015.

    April 13, 1912 – On his second attempt to enter the White House to see President William Howard Taft, Michael Winter makes it several feet inside the front door before being noticed.

    September 26, 1963 – Doyle Allen Hicks rams his pickup truck through the gates and drives up to within 25 feet of the North Portico main entrance. When stopped, he tells guards that he must see the president, because communists are taking over his state, North Carolina.

    February 17, 1974 – Robert K. Preston, an Army private, steals a helicopter from Fort Meade, Maryland. He hovers over the Washington Monument and White House grounds before leading two state police helicopters on an aerial chase around Maryland and Washington, DC. After more than an hour, Preston heads back to the White House, according to a state police officer. Officers shoot at the helicopter, forcing Preston to land. He reportedly was upset about flunking out of flight school.

    February 22, 1974 – Samuel Joseph Byck tries to hijack a Delta passenger jet at Baltimore-Washington International Airport, with the plan to crash it into the White House. He forces his way on to the plane, killing an airport policeman and the copilot. Byck is killed by police before takeoff.

    December 25, 1974 – Marshall Fields crashes his automobile through the Northwest Gate and drives it close to the North Portico. He threatens to blow himself up with explosives he has strapped to his body, which later turn out to be flares. After four hours of negotiation, Fields surrenders to officials.

    November 26, 1975 – Gerald Gainous Jr. makes his way over the fence, hides for two hours on the grounds undetected and is able to get within five feet of Susan Ford, President Gerald Ford’s daughter. Gainous jumps the fence three more times within the next year.

    July 25, 1976 – Chester Plummer Jr. climbs over the White House fence carrying a metal pipe and starts running toward the White House. A guard chases him, yelling at him to stop. When he doesn’t, the guard shoots and kills him. Plummer’s motive is not discovered.

    October 1978 – A barefoot man wearing a karate uniform and carrying a Bible with a knife hidden inside, scales the White House fence. He slashes two officers before White House guards are able to subdue him. The suspect, Anthony Henry, reportedly wanted to convince President Jimmy Carter to remove the phrase “In God We Trust” from US currency.

    January 20, 1985 – Robert Latta, a meter-reader from Denver, follows the Marine Band into the White House before President Ronald Reagan’s second inauguration ceremony. Latta wanders around the mansion for about 15 minutes before being arrested in the dining room.

    September 12, 1994 – A man flying a stolen Cessna plane enters the prohibited airspace around the White House and crashes on the lawn just south of the Executive Mansion. The pilot, identified as Frank Eugene Corder, dies in the crash.

    October 29, 1994 – Francisco Martin Duran, armed with a semiautomatic rifle, fires at least 29 rounds at the White House from the sidewalk on Pennsylvania Avenue. Duran is later convicted of attempting to kill President Bill Clinton.

    May 23, 1995 – Leland W. Modjeski is shot by the Secret Service after climbing over a security fence and running toward the White House with a handgun that was later determined to be unloaded.

    February 7, 2001 – Robert Pickett, an accountant who was fired from the IRS in the 1980s, fires shots outside the White House. Secret Service agents shoot him in the leg after a standoff lasting more than 10 minutes at the White House fence. President George W. Bush was not endangered, White House officials say later.

    January 18, 2005 – Lowell Timmers, of Cedar Springs, Michigan, threatens to blow up his van in front on the White House, two days before Bush’s second inauguration, saying he has an explosive substance in the vehicle. The FBI, Secret Service and other authorities evacuate nearby buildings and shut down several blocks. Four hours pass before Timmers, who had demanded that his son-in-law be released from jail, surrenders.

    April 9, 2006 – Brian Lee Patterson from New Mexico jumps the White House fence and makes it well inside the grounds before being stopped. It is the fourth time he has jumped the fence.

    November 24, 2009 – A publicity-seeking Virginia couple, Michaele and Tareq Salahi, sneak into a White House dinner. The uninvited guests finesse their way through a security checkpoint staffed by uniformed Secret Service officers, according to congressional testimony by the agency’s director Mark Sullivan. Sullivan apologizes for the breach, saying agents violated protocol by allowing the Salahis to enter without verifying that they were on the guest list.

    November 11, 2011 – A gunman fires an assault rifle at the White House, hitting the residential wing of the building at least seven times. Secret Service supervisors fail to recognize the danger, dismissing the gunfire as a gang-related shootout rather than an attack on the White House, according to the Washington Post. Four days later, a housekeeper and a White House usher spot bullet holes in the residence. Five days after the shooting, the gunman, Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez is arrested at a Pennsylvania hotel. In 2014, Ortega-Hernandez is sentenced to 25 years in federal prison.

    October 3, 2013 – An unarmed woman is shot and killed by a Secret Service agent and a Capitol police officer after she drives toward a security checkpoint near the White House, hits a barricade and speeds away. The woman is a 34-year-old mother battling postpartum depression, according to her sister. Her one-year-old daughter, seated in the back of the car during the chase, is unharmed.

    September 11, 2014 – A man wearing Pokemon gear and carrying a plush doll of the character Pikachu makes it over the White House fence and onto the north lawn, where he is apprehended. He is later identified as Jeffrey Grossman.

    September 19, 2014 – After jumping the White House fence, 42-year-old Omar Gonzalez, of Copperas Cove, Texas, gets through the North Portico doors with a three-and-a-half-inch folding knife in his pants pocket, according to the Secret Service. In early accounts of the incident, the Secret Service claims the intruder didn’t get past the portico doors. Days later, the Washington Post reveals the man had actually made his way past the front entrance, through the main hall and into the East Room, where he was apprehended.

    October 22, 2014 – Dominic Adesanya, 23, of Bel Air, Maryland, jumps the White House fence and barely makes it onto the lawn before he is subdued as he fights off two police dogs, according to the Secret Service. Adesanya, who suffers from mental health problems, had been arrested in a previous White House breach, his father later says.

    January 26, 2015 – The Secret Service locks down the White House shortly after 3 a.m. after an officer spots a drone flying above the White House grounds before crashing on the southeast side of the complex. An employee of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, a government entity with mapping and national security duties, later calls the Secret Service and admits that he was operating the drone for fun.

    April 19, 2015 – Jerome R. Hunt, of Hayward, California, climbs the fence on the south side of the White House complex while carrying a suspicious package, later deemed harmless, and is cornered by security dogs.

    November 26, 2015 – The Secret Service stops a man draped in an American flag after he jumps a White House fence during a Thanksgiving celebration at the executive mansion.

    April 1, 2016 – A man tosses a backpack over the north fence and then jumps over, himself, and is immediately arrested. His name is not released to the public.

    March 10, 2017 – A man carrying a backpack with mace and a letter for President Donald Trump makes it onto the grounds and roams for more than 15 minutes before he is discovered and arrested by a Secret Service officer near the south entrance. The suspect, identified in court records as Jonathan T. Tran, 26, of California, tells the agency’s officers that he was there to see the president.

    March 21, 2017 – Marci Anderson Wahl of Everett, Washington, jumps a fence on the south side but gets stuck. Officers find her hanging by her shoelaces, which were “caught on top of the fence,” according to a police report. Wahl is arrested two more times within the next week, near the Treasury Building and in Lafayette Park.

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  • Secret Service implements tougher penalties after probe finds agents were on phones and missed intruder at national security adviser’s home | CNN Politics

    Secret Service implements tougher penalties after probe finds agents were on phones and missed intruder at national security adviser’s home | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The US Secret Service implemented tougher disciplinary measures after preliminary findings from an internal investigation found agents missed an intruder at national security adviser Jake Sullivan’s home in part because they were using their personal phones, people briefed on the matter said.

    Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle in recent days ordered increased penalties for employees who violate policies on duty, including the use of personal devices while on the job.

    The moves are partly in response to initial findings of an internal investigation following the April incident at Sullivan’s home, when agents on his protective detail failed to see an intruder enter and exit, the sources said.

    A law enforcement official familiar with the internal investigation said the agents on duty that night and their supervisors, are likely to be subject to disciplinary action, including an evaluation of whether they can maintain their federal security clearance, a requirement for their positions.

    The incident at Sullivan’s home occurred in the early morning hours in late April. Sullivan confronted the intruder inside the home and later told investigators that he believed the person was intoxicated and entered the home by mistake. Sullivan and his family were unharmed.

    The internal investigation found the agents were distracted and on their personal phones while on duty and never saw the unidentified intruder, who was later seen on surveillance video entering and exiting the property, a person briefed on the matter said.

    Cheatle this week ordered that disciplinary penalties be increased to up to 21-day suspensions, and up to removal for infractions that lead to operational failure. Those include for the use of personal phones or the use of alcohol while on assignments.

    “The Director of the Secret Service Kimberly Cheatle issued a clear directive, emphasizing the importance of conduct and behavior in upholding our mission’s excellence,” said agency spokesman Anthony Guglielmi.

    “We have zero tolerance for anything that jeopardizes operational success,” he continued. “While human errors may occur, what sets us apart is our unwavering commitment to maintaining very high professional standards and ethics. This includes enhanced penalties for incidents involving alcohol and a strict policy regarding personal cell phone use while on duty.”

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