Security guard fired after taking photo of Obama wants name cleared

November 4, 2014
Mariah Timms
News Writer
Nation

When former Secret Service director Julia Pierson testified before a House oversight committee in September, the story of the day Kenneth Tate met the President hit he big time, but the Associated Press has since reported that he may have been wrongly maligned. The Spotlight reported at the time of the hearing that the talks revealed an older incident in which “an armed man who had not been properly screened was allowed in an elevator with the president at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta.” The man in the elevator was Kenneth Tate. The Washington Post reported at the time that Tate had been convicted of crimes, before later correcting the claim. AP has since investigated to discover that Tate has never been convicted of any crimes, and was fully screened and licensed to carry a concealed weapon issued to him daily by his employer. Tate insists that although he never hid the fact that he was armed, the Secret Service simply never asked. Later in the day, Tate moved close to the presidential motorcade with his phone out in order to take a photo of the even for this elderly mother. A Secret Service agent allegedly waved him away, later commenting that “someone was going to lose their job” over a civilian being allowed that close to the motorcade. As Tate later commented, “I didn’t know it was going to be me.”