The director of the Secret Service is being called before U.S. lawmakers today to explain a series of security lapses culminating with a fence jumper getting deep into the White House before being captured.

Lawmakers will question Secret Service Director Julia Pierson following revelations yesterday that a White House intruder got further inside the executive mansion than previously revealed. Pierson is scheduled to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Chairman Darrell Issa, a California Republican, has called the Sept. 19 intrusion “the latest in a string of high-profile incidents.”

“There are multiple rings of security around the White House. Every single one of them seems to have failed,” U.S. Representative Jason Chaffetz, Republican of Utah and a member of the committee, said today on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program.

The Secret Service is pressing the committee to close most of the hearing to the public, a Republican staff member familiar with the negotiations said. Only about seven of the 40 committee members are expected to attend, as most are at home campaigning for re-election, the person said.

Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan didn’t reply to a phone call and e-mail seeking comment.

The intruder, identified as Army veteran Omar Gonzalez, jumped the fence, ran across the lawn and went through the metal North Portico doors, then raced into the East Room, the White House’s largest room and a venue for formal events and dinners, according to the Washington Post, citing three unidentified people familiar with the incident.

Stopped at Doorway

The security breach ended when Gonzalez was stopped near the doorway from the East Room to the Green Room, a smaller space near the Rose Garden, the Post said. According to court documents, he was carrying a folding knife with a 3.5-inch serrated blade.

The Secret Service said at the time that Gonzalez was captured inside the North Portico doors.

Chaffetz, chairman of the House Oversight Subcommittee on National Security, confirmed the Post account and in an interview last night on CNN said he has questions about the Secret Service’s leadership and training of its personnel.

“I want to see overwhelming force; repel anybody who is trying to get into the White House,” he said.

White House spokesman Eric Schultz declined to comment on the report of how far Gonzalez got because the incident is still under review.

Gonzalez Encounters

Chaffetz, on MSNBC, said his larger concern is when the U.S. Secret Service, after Sept. 11, 2001, was removed from the Treasury Department and placed under the Department of Homeland Security, with the director becoming a political appointee.

“I worry that it became much more of a political office,” he said.

Lawmakers at today’s hearing may also raise concerns about how the Secret Service handled two previous encounters with Gonzalez, including one in which an agency officer questioned him on Aug. 25 after he was spotted strolling near the White House with a hatchet in his pants.

A month earlier he had been pulled over in Wythe County, Virginia, about 300 miles from Washington, and charged with possession of a sawed-off shotgun. Officers found other weapons in his vehicle, along with a map with a line drawn to the White House.

Gonzalez, of Copperas Cove, Texas, was charged in federal court with entering a restricted building while carrying a weapon, punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

‘Atmosphere Collapsing’

He told Secret Service agents he was “concerned that the atmosphere was collapsing” and wanted to alert the president, according to an affidavit filed with the court.

In prepared remarks for today’s hearing, Representative Gerald Connolly, a Virginia Democrat, called the Sept. 19 breach “neither a fluke event nor an isolated incident. Rather, it was a comprehensive, cascading failure that featured breakdowns in physical security, critical tactical errors, flawed investigative efforts, and haphazard post-incident communication.”

The Washington Post previously reported that the Secret Service failed to initially identify and investigate another serious security breach in 2011 in which a man fired shots from a rifle at the White House, hitting the building at least seven times. It wasn’t until four days afterward that the Secret Service realized shots had hit the White House after a housekeeper noticed broken glass and a chunk of cement on the floor, the newspaper reported.

The president and first lady Michelle Obama were furious about the Secret Service response, according to the Post.

President’s Confidence

White House press secretary Josh Earnest said today that while they were concerned, “the president and first lady also have confidence in the men and women of the Secret Service to do a very important job.”

Pierson is reviewing the agency’s security stance, Earnest said.

Pierson was appointed head of the Secret Service in March 2013, taking over an agency that had been tarnished by a scandal in which its agents allegedly patronized prostitutes in Colombia while preparing for a presidential visit there.

A year after she was sworn in, three agents were returned to the U.S. from Amsterdam on the eve of a presidential visit after one was found passed out in front of his hotel room after a night of drinking.

The agency has a budget of more than $1.7 billion and employs about 7,000 people, according to its website.