The Secret Service's Performance Was Worse Than We Suspected

Happy Preekend!

Susan Crabtree at RealClearPolitics:

Inflexible Secret Service protocols, overworked special agents, and a decision against deploying more counter snipers to President Trump's rally in Pennsylvania all contributed to creating the opening for a gunman to wound Trump, kill a bystander, and seriously injure two others, according to several sources in the Secret Service community.

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Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi denied that Secret Services resources were diverted to the first lady's event from Trump's but declined to provide answers to several emailed questions about that charge and several other questions being raised about potential security lapses on Saturday.

"[T]his is very wrong," Guglielmi tweeted. "We did not divert resources from FPOTUS Trump, & protection models don't work that way."

Another factor, according to these sources within the Secret Service community, was that the agency was relying heavily on supplemental special agents (not Trump's regular team of special agents) and local law enforcement because many special agents in Trump's regular protective detail were overburdened and needed to take time off after working several consecutive seven-day weeks.

The site agent, who is in charge of putting all security measures for a particular event in place, was a relatively new agent from the Pittsburgh field office with limited experience, a Secret Service source told RCP.

"Trump has a permanent detail, however, it's much smaller in the number of bodies than the president's," the source explained. "His detail has been worked so hard with all the travel that they're working seven days a week with shift changes, so headquarters sends in temporary agents to supplement. Not a good scenario."

Apparently Trump is assigned no more Secret Service agents than ex-presidents like Clinton and Obama are -- despite the fact that he is the leading candidate to become president again, and has more threats against him than anyone else in the world.

This is not unusual for a former president to experience, but the threats against Trump, the only former president in modern political history to run again and one who has faced prosecutions and comparisons to Hitler from Democrats, are obviously greater than most ex-commanders in chief whose profiles have tended to decline after leaving public office.

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Trump allies, including his former acting DHS Director Chad Wolf, are also questioning whether the Secret Service is using similar resources that it would use for past presidents Obama or Bill Clinton, instead of a more robust protective detail.

"At the end of the day, this is a complete security failure," Wolf told Fox News Sunday afternoon. "Is it because of a lack of resources? They are using what they normally would for a former president, but President Trump is not a normal former president."

Secret Service officials in charge of the event provided only two counter-sniper officers when such an exposed outside rally would normally call for the use of two to three two-man teams, the source continued.

The Secret Service won't say if their sniper was greenlighted to take out the assassin, or who made that decision.

Which tells me that they did not greenlight the sniper, and they want to hide who was responsible for this. As usual.

"Did any member of the Secret Service or any other law enforcement member request permission to engage the shooter?" Ricketts asked in a letter obtained by RCP. "Were any such requests denied?"

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A source within the Secret Service community told RCP that the agency's rules of engagement in this situation are for a counter sniper who suspects an armed threat to radio the lead agent in charge and wait for a green light or wait until the president is fired upon to return fire.

Does that sound like BS to you? Well good, because it is:

But others suggested that that policy may apply only to the White House, and that counter snipers are allowed to fire upon armed targets threatening the president. Ricketts also demanded to know whether anyone within the Secret Service raised concerns prior to the rally about the building used by the shooter.

This rule may make sense at the White House. The White House is well-protected, and if someone is hanging out by the fence with a weapon, you can just tell the president to remain in interior rooms without windows. Or, if it's a serious threat, go to the bunker.

Point is, you don't have to kill someone who's at the White House fence. The chances they could hurt the president are very low.

But when the president is outdoors and the shooter is a Pass, Punt, and Kick away from the president? Then you do have to kill him.

But the Secret Service won't say what orders they gave. Because they were lethally-incompetent orders.

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One of the Secret Service sources told RCP that a paper trail likely exists about how many counter snipers and special agents the agency advance team, which plots out detailed security plans for events ahead of time, requested. The lead advance agent usually submits a manpower request to headquarters, which includes the number of counter snipers, post-standers, and magnetometers needed for a particular event.

"We always make sure that our requests are in writing so we would have a paper trail in case of the present scenario we have in Butler," the source said. But the same source complained that there was always "a do-more-with-less mentality."

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Warning signs about the Secret Service emerged months before the attempted assassination attempt against Trump. Earlier this year, the agency came under scrutiny for its diversity, equity, and inclusion policies after a female agent's apparent mental breakdown and physical attack on her superiors at Joint Base Andrews in April.

Crabtree also relays this: The Secret Service agents are fighting back against the claim that they were assigned to guard the roof, but abandoned their posts, because it was "too hot."

They say no one was ever assigned to guard the roof, period.

Susan Crabtree @susancrabtree

LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIALS SAY THEY DID NOT LEAVE THEIR POSTS BC IT WAS "HOT."

Local law enforcement sources dispute Sen. Hawley's charge that local police left their post at the building where shooter Thomas Crooks perched to fire off his shot. A Hawley-sourced report posted yesterday accused the local law enforcement officers of leaving their post at the AGR building because it was hot.

But local law enforcement officers say that's ridiculous -- that USSS never assigned them to the rooftop.

"The assignments received by the local Emergency Service Units (ESUs) were to be inside of the building at windows to begin with," said one officer. "The purpose of being in the building was to have a vantage point to scan for suspicious persons in the crowd. When a suspicious person was identified command was notified. That suspicious person ended up shooting Trump. No one was told they were supposed to be on the roof."

They also say their assignments are memorialized in writing so they have proof.

The House voted unanimously to impanel a task force to investigate the Secret Service's criminal incompetence.

This isn't over just because Cheatle was forced out, say Republicans.

Barely minutes elapsed between the breaking news that Secret Service Director Kim Cheatle had resigned in the aftermath of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump and a leading lawmaker promising that her departure would have no impact on investigating the incident.

"There will be more accountability to come," House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer, a Republican from Kentucky, vowed in a statement. "While Director Cheatle's resignation is a step toward accountability, we need a full review of how these security failures happened so that we can prevent them going forward."

Politically, Cheatle was a uniter, not a divider -- at least in Congress, which has thrown itself behind investigating Trump's near-murder with unusual bipartisan fervor.

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Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson and Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Tuesday jointly announced the creation of a task force to investigate the "shocking" security failures, comprising seven Republicans and six Democrats.

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Johnson told reporters Cheatle's resignation was "overdue -- she should have done this at least a week ago." And, like Comer, he suggested she might not be the last Secret Service official to be held accountable.

"There may be others in the line of authority who were also culpable in what happened and the errors and mistakes there," Johnson said. "I think our task force's work just got even more important."

Crabtree makes still more news: The "site agent" responsible for spotting likely sniper's nests and lines of fire?

An "inexperienced woman."

Susan Crabtree @susancrabtree

ON THE TOPIC OF DRONES AT TRUMP RALLIES: Sen. Josh Hawley now saying that a local law enforcement entity offered drones to Secret Service before the really, but the SECRET SERVICE declined.

As I reported in the 48 hours after the assassination attempt, the. use of drones has been controversial within the Secret Service dating back to at least 2016.

From a source within the Secret Service community: "If we need an overhead [i.e. a drone], we call GEO SPATIAL, and they send it to us," the source said. "If the location is important enough to have active drone flyovers, it's important enough to have the location posted."

Meaning, that there should have been someone assigned to the roof, and that building should have been included inside the official perimeter -- meaning it should have been manned by Secret Service counter-sniper teams, not local law enforcement.

The person making those decisions would have been the site lead, but there would have been other superiors signing off on it.

We know from my sources/reporting, the "site lead" inexperienced woman special agent from the Pittsburgh field office, but someone from the Pittsburgh field office would have had to sign off on all the security plan, including that key perimeter/AGR building decision -- Tim Burke is the SAIC in charge of the Pittsburgh field office -- but it was likely his deputy that walked the site and signed off on the plan that day, I'm told that deputy position likely would be an assistant special agent in charge of the Pittsburgh field office.

Instead of an "inexperienced woman" checking lines of fire, how about hiring a man? Not just any man -- how about a man who spent years in the military as a sniper and counter-sniper, who would therefore be able to look at a field and say, "If I were going to shoot someone, I'd hide myself right on that roof"?

Women do not serve as snipers in the military, ergo, it would be discrimination to require actual experience as a sniper or counter-sniper to serve as site agent.

So instead Buffy was tasked with giving the site a once-over and making her decisions based on "vibes."

posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 01:00 PM

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