“At all times there is supposed to be someone at the outside and the inside of the door,” the official said. “The intruder was running so fast that he gets right past the woman who didn’t lock the door. She tries to catch him, and eventually she and another officer tackle the man to the ground, but by that time he was pretty far in.” 
 
 It has been unheard of in recent decades for an intruder to force his way into the White House, even if only a few steps inside what is supposed to be one of the most secure buildings in the world. Officials in Washington were stunned that Mr. Gonzalez was able to pass by the staircase that leads to the White House family quarters and get as far as the East Room, the ballroom where the cellist Pablo Casals played for President John F. Kennedy and where President Obama announced the death of Osama bin Laden. 
 
 Mr. Chaffetz said that Mr. Gonzalez ran from the north front of the White House into the Entrance Hall and then into the 80-foot-long East Room, where he was finally stopped by Secret Service officers at a Green Room entrance near the south side of the mansion. The Obama family was not home at the time. 
 
 In addition, Mr. Chaffetz said a system designed to alert agents that a breach of security was in progress apparently did not work as intended, allowing Mr. Gonzalez to surprise the officer at the door. Mr. Chaffetz said that he was told the “crash box” had been silenced or muted at the request of White House ushers, who had complained the boxes were too noisy. 
 
 “It’s an astounding set of facts,” said Representative Gerald E. Connolly of Virginia, a Democratic member of the committee. “It just boggles the imagination and is deeply destabilizing in terms of public confidence in the Secret Service and how it is carrying out its mission.” 
 
 The new details are strikingly different from what Secret Service officials first said happened on Sept. 19, the day Mr. Gonzalez breached the building. In a statement on Sept. 20, the agency said Mr. Gonzalez “was physically apprehended after entering the White House North Portico doors” — leaving the impression that Secret Service officers tackled Mr. Gonzalez just steps after he opened the door and walked through. Secret Service officials said nothing in their public comments to suggest otherwise. 
 
 In its initial briefings, the Secret Service did not inform the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the agency, that the intruder had made it so far inside the White House, according to an official familiar with the conversations. But the official said that until a final investigation was complete, the department could not confirm or deny the new account. 
 
 Major Security Breaches at the Obama White House New revelations about recent security lapses at the White House have led lawmakers to question the competence of the president's Secret Service. Intruder enters the White House Armed with a knife, Omar J. Gonzalez managed to jump the fence of the White House, sprint 70 yards, enter the unlocked front door, overpower a Secret Service agent and run into the ceremonial East Room. He was eventually tackled as he tried to enter the Green Room, a parlor used for receptions and teas. Related article » Bullets hit the residence Secret Service was slow to identify and respond to an incident in which a man with a semiautomatic weapon fired shots into the south side of the White House, smashing a window in the first family's residence and causing over $100,000 in damage. Related article » State dinner crashed Michaele and Tareq Salahi, then a married couple aspiring to be featured on “The Real Housewives of D.C.,” managed to get past Secret Service checkpoints for President Obama's first state dinner without being on the guest list. The couple was photographed meeting the president and Vice President Joseph R. Biden, among others. Related article » 
 
 White House officials also did nothing in the last week to correct the impression that Mr. Gonzalez had been stopped just inside the front door of the building. Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, was asked repeatedly about the incident in the days after it happened and did not disclose the extent of the breach. 
 
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 Asked about the new disclosures on Monday, Mr. Earnest referred to comments he made to reporters earlier in the day. Mr. Earnest said that the president retained “full confidence” in Ms. Pierson but that the incident was “an issue that the president is obviously concerned about.” 
 
 It is unclear when Mr. Obama learned of how far Mr. Gonzalez had penetrated the White House. West Wing officials previously said Ms. Pierson briefed Mr. Obama about the incident during an Oval Office meeting last week, but they would not say what details she disclosed at the time. 
 
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 On Tuesday, Ms. Pierson will appear before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and will hear from lawmakers in both parties who said they would demand explanations for other breaches as well, including recent revelations about a slow and incomplete response by the Secret Service to the incident in 2011, when a man fired seven shots into the south side of the White House. 
 
 “Have there been some other serious breaches?” Mr. Chaffetz said. “Absolutely.” He said the 2011 incident was “about as bungled as could possibly be,” but he said lawmakers on the committee have received numerous reports about security breaches that have not yet been made public. 
 
 The Washington Post reported that Mr. Obama and Michelle Obama were furious that they had not been made aware of the 2011 incident until days after it happened. 
 
 Representative Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, the senior Democrat on the committee, said he would insist that Ms. Pierson explain why Secret Service officials in charge of protection around the grounds of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue appear not to have listened to agents on the ground that night in 2011 who believed shots had been fired at the White House. “I want to know what culture allows that to happen in an organization that is supposed to be the most elite protective agency in the world,” Mr. Cummings said. ||||| Security is heightened around the White House following Friday’s breach. Omar Jose Gonzalez, 42, appeared before a judge on one charge of unlawfully entering a restricted building or grounds while carrying a deadly or dangerous weapon. 
 
 Sept. 22, 2014 Security is heightened around the White House following Friday’s breach. Omar Jose Gonzalez, 42, appeared before a judge on one charge of unlawfully entering a restricted building or grounds while carrying a deadly or dangerous weapon. Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post 
 
 The Secret Service is under scrutiny after a man scaled the White House fence and made it all the way into the East Room. 
 
 Here are images showing how security has changed over the years at the White House. 
 
 Here are images showing how security has changed over the years at the White House. 
 
 The man who jumped the White House fence this month and sprinted through the front door made it much farther into the building than previously known, overpowering one Secret Service officer and running through much of the main floor, according to three people familiar with the incident. 
 
 An alarm box near the front entrance of the White House designed to alert guards to an intruder had been muted at what officers believed was a request of the usher’s office, said a Secret Service official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. 
 
 The officer posted inside the front door appeared to be delayed in learning that the intruder, Omar Gonzalez, was about to burst through. Officers are trained that, upon learning of an intruder on the grounds — often through the alarm boxes posted around the property — they must immediately lock the front door. 
 
 After barreling past the guard immediately inside the door, Gonzalez, who was carrying a knife, dashed past the stairway leading a half-flight up to the first family’s living quarters. He then ran into the 80-foot-long East Room, an ornate space often used for receptions or presidential addresses. 
 
 Gonzalez was tackled by a counterassault agent at the far southern end of the East Room. The intruder reached the doorway to the Green Room, a parlor overlooking the South Lawn with artwork and antique furniture, according to three people familiar with the incident. 
 
 Secret Service officials had earlier said he was quickly detained at the main entry. Agency spokesman Edwin Donovan said the office is not commenting during the ongoing investigation of the incident. 
 
 Breaches of the White House fence have become more common, but most jumpers are tackled by Secret Service officers guarding the complex before they get even a third of the way across the lawn. Gonzalez is the first person known to have jumped the fence and made it inside the executive mansion. 
 
 Secret Service Director Julia Pierson has said the breach was “unacceptable” to her, and on Friday she briefed President Obama on her plans to shore up security. 
 
 Pierson is expected to face tough questions about the Gonzalez incident Tuesday at a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The hearing is likely to cover a number of security lapses by the agency, including new revelations published over the weekend by The Washington Post about the failure to identify and properly investigate a 2011 shooting attack on the White House. 
 
 The more detailed account of this month’s security breach comes from people who provided information about the incident to The Post and whistleblowers who contacted Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), chairman of the oversight panel’s subcommittee on national security. 
 
 Chaffetz said he plans to ask Pierson how an alarm meant to alert officers to intruders could be silenced or turned down. The congressman said two people inside the agency told him that boxes were silenced because the White House usher staff, whose office is near the front door, complained that they were noisy. A Secret Service official told The Post that the usher’s office was concerned the boxes were frequently malfunctioning and unnecessarily sounding off. 
 
 The alarm boxes, which officers call “crash boxes,” are key pieces of the agency’s first-alert system, according to former agents and officials. If officers spot an intruder, they are trained to hit the large red button on the nearest box — sending an alert to every post on the complex about the location of an incursion and piping sound from that location to other boxes around the property. 
 
 There were some heated moments Tuesday when Secret Service Director Julia Pierson testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee about two security breaches at the White House, one in 2011 and one less than two weeks ago. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post) 
 
 “If true, the fact that crash boxes were muted to avoid being ‘disruptive’ is not due to a lack of resources or an insufficient number of checkpoints or barriers,” Chaffetz said. 
 
 He called the incident a “failure of leadership” by the Secret Service. 
 
 “The agency needs a solution that goes deeper than more fences and more people,” Chaffetz said. “It must examine what message is being sent to the men and women who protect the president when their leader sacrifices security to appease superficial concerns of White House ushers.” 
 
 The new revelations follow accounts provided to The Post last week detailing how Gonzalez’s ability to enter the White House reflected a failure of multiple levels of security at the compound. The agency relies on these successive layers as a fail-safe for protecting the president and the White House complex. 
 
 In this incident, a plainclothes surveillance team was on duty that night outside the fence, meant to spot jumpers and give early warning before they made it over. But that team did not notice Gonzalez. There was an officer in a guard booth on the North Lawn. When that officer could not reach Gonzalez, there was supposed to be an attack dog, a specialized SWAT team and a guard at the front door — all at the ready. 
 
 The dog was not released, a decision now under review. Some people familiar with the incident say the handler probably felt he could not release the dog, because so many officers were in pursuit of Gonzalez and the dog may have attacked them instead. 
 
 Since the incident, the Secret Service has added an additional layer of temporary fencing while the agency reviews its procedures. 
 
 Alice Crites contributed to this report.
– The fence-jumper who bolted across the White House lawn with a knife this month made it further than previously admitted—inside the building and within a stone's throw of the First Family's living quarters, the Washington Post reports. Insiders say former Army soldier Omar Gonzalez overpowered a Secret Service officer and ran inside, passing a stairway that leads up a half-flight to the Obamas' home. Gonzalez then ran into the East Room, which is used for presidential addresses or receptions, and got taken down by a counter-assault agent. The Secret Service had said that Gonzalez was apprehended at the main entry. Why the security lapse? Apparently the White House usher's office had asked that the alarm box near the front entrance be muted, because the boxes were noisy, malfunctioning, and regularly going off. So the Secret Service officer inside the front door had no time to prepare for Gonzalez and was overpowered. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican, says he plans to grill Secret Service Director Julia Pierson about the incident at a House committee meeting tomorrow. "Have there been some other serious breaches? Absolutely," Chaffetz tells the New York Times—and not all are publicly known, he adds. It's more bad news for the Secret Service, which apparently bungled its reaction to a White House shooter in 2011.