The Secret Service, who (despite their very best efforts) have yet to actually succeed in killing the President, are sleepy. So sleepy, in fact, that the Inspector General is issuing an alert after finding two distinct Secret Service members fast asleep at their posts.

According to The Washington Post, this sort of formal alert “indicates investigators have found a problem so urgent or sweeping that its requires swift attention from senior management.” “Swift” being a fairly relative term, of course.

Because after someone managed to jump the White House fence back in September of 2014, the Department of Homeland Security waited until this August to complete a routine check of the various Secret Service facilities. While on their (presumably unannounced) visit, auditors found two different officers at two totally different posts “asleep while on duty.”

From The Washington Post:

[Secret Service leaders] say the evidence suggests that an overtaxing work schedule was not the reason for the two employees’ lack of alertness. In one case, the officer told investigators that cold medicine he took that day had made him drowsy, two government officials said. The other officer ostensibly had a very full work schedule on paper, but a large chunk of that was sitting and sleeping while flying back in a military transport plane from President Obama’s trip to Kenya.

Still, Secret Service Director Joseph Clancy is promising to improve staffing numbers to cut back on hours, which could mean increasing the number of agents by 85 and the number of officers by 200.

In the meantime, President Obama—you’re probably safer alone.


Contact the author at ashley@gawker.com.