U.S. Secret Service Circles The Wagons
One week ago, the U.S. was ravaged by an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump. Unfortunately, Israel knows too well the devastation that can be wrought by such attacks given the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, which brought the then-Oslo Accords and peace process to an abrupt halt. Unlike Rabin who succumbed to his wounds, Trump was miraculously saved by the apparent last-moment turn of his head leaving the assassin’s bullet only to graze his right ear.
As I discuss what’s happened, let me start with a caveat: I worked for a few years at the U.S. Secret Service in their technology area almost two decades ago. When I worked there, it was the most wonderful job experience I had ever had and I was proud to be part of such a dedicated and premier team of law enforcement professionals. Back then, I knew every day that I was part of something special and that they were of the best in the world at what they did.
However, last week was a devastating disappointment for me (and presumably for the vast majority of our country) when a 20-year-old, high school graduate attempted to assassinate the former (and likely future) president, Donald Trump. I was shocked not only by the obvious failures of today’s Secret Service but even more so by the reaction of their leadership.
The many blunders in protecting Trump from an assassin getting clear shots at him from just 400 feet away on an exposed roof are being called “the worst security failure by the US Secret Service in four decades,” and it is being investigated by everyone from the DHS Office of the Inspector General to the House Oversight Committee. The failures, and this is not a comprehensive list, included the following:
- From weeks’ prior alert of Iranian threats to Trump’s life to a supposed increase in protective security for him that never fully materialized.
- From the shooter’s parents calling the police hours before to warn that their son was missing to the shooter being identified an hour earlier as a person of interest.
- From the Secret Service spotting the shooter on the roof 20 minutes before the shooting started to citizens alerting law enforcement to the shooter on the roof only to see their retreat when the shooter pointed the rifle at them.
- From the shooter getting off at least six shots before being neutralized by one of the four counter-sniper teams to an apparent lack of tactical precautions like bulletproof glass surrounding Trump when he was speaking and there being either no or ineffective use of drone surveillance overhead.
- From the seemingly delayed reaction and evacuation to the protective detail to not keeping him low and his head out of a shooter’s sight, and who can forget the agent who couldn’t properly holster her sidearm?
The result of this series of protective mishaps resulted in a bullet hitting Trump’s ear and just literally missing killing him by a fraction (just three months out from the U.S. presidential election), and one innocent civilian killed and two more wounded. I was left wondering if this is what an untrained high school “kid” could do, what would’ve happened if this had been a real professional hit job by Russia, Iran, or North Korea?
Moreover despite all these failures and probably many more that will come out in the ensuing investigations, one of the most glaring failures has been of the leadership of the U.S. Secret Service. Much of this has taken the form of circling the wagons—not to do their primary mission of safeguarding their protectees—but rather to protect their own hurt egos and deflect responsibility and learning from what happened:
- Rather than acknowledging mistakes were made and committing to examining and learning from them, the Secret Service immediately and arrogantly said that they were not going to make any change to protection plans for the Republican National Convention.
- Instead of taking responsibility for the protective mission that is theirs, the Secret Service, with a $3.3 billion budget and almost 8,400 positions went back and forth insinuating mistakes or gaps and attributing blame to local law enforcement and then later backtracking on this.
- Looking for an out, the Secret Service Director went so far as to blame the sloped roof, calling it out as a “safety factor” in their decision not to put agents there to protect against a sniper against the former president.
- In place of addressing issues with the Secret Service’s aggressive DEI initiatives which arbitrarily insisted on 30% female recruits by 2030 and misidentifying it as their “mission imperative” and “ultimate goal,” they focused on inclusion over merit thereby potentially putting their protectees’ lives in danger.
- The Director of the Secret Service has refused accountability and to resign for the glaring protective failures and instead through her spokesperson has used partisan politics blasting the rightwing for “insulting” and “disgusting” questioning of the female agents’ response in the shooting.
I won’t get into all the conspiracy theories out there on the shooting of Trump, but let’s just say knowing and respecting the many fine dedicated men and women of the Secret Service who put their lives on the line every day for our nation, I do not believe that this was fundamentally an issue of broad incompetence, which therefore leaves some element of malice by a failed and incoherent leadership, the details of which may never come to light.
Aside from Trump who was almost assassinated, and the innocent civilians killed and wounded, and our heart and prayers go out to all of them, I cannot help but wonder what damage all this has done to the trust and respectability of our nation in the eyes of our allies and the fear and deterrence before the ongoing threats from our adversaries.