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Secret Service Took a Year to Replace Broken Alarm at Bush 41's Home, Report Finds

The agency was warned in 2010 that the system was out of date and likely to fail but rejected requests to replace it, the report found.
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/ Source: NBC News

The Secret Service took more than a year to replace a broken alarm system at the Houston home of former President George H.W. Bush, a government report revealed Thursday.

The agency was warned in 2010 that the system was out of date and likely to fail but rejected requests to replace it, the report found.

The 20-year-old system then stopped working in September 2013 and was not replaced until 13 months later. During that span, the Secret Service did add an agent to the property, but some inside the agency told The Washington Post that the additional agent was not a sufficient replacement.

The report, by the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general, said: "According to most Secret Service officials we interviewed, posting a person to monitor the [home] provided an acceptable level of security. However, one official believed that the alarm problem represented a medium risk and expressed concern that a roving post was an inadequate substitute."

A Secret Service spokesman told NBC News that the agency has taken steps to fully address the situation.

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— Peter Alexander