NYT: The Secret Service is Understaffed and Unable to Protect Its Clients Because a Lot of Secret Service Veterans Are Quitting

Charlie Kirk @charliekirk11

The New York Times has a devastating article on the condition of the Secret Service under the Biden/Harris administration.

Agents are leaving in droves, especially the most talented and capable ones. Hiring standards have "slumped" -- though the Times won't say it, we know from other reports that DEI played a big role. The second-in-command of the men guarding the White House moonlighted as a real estate agent, and gave promotions to agents who became his clients.

"Nepotism, favoritism, corruption -- that is part of our culture here."

The Secret Service is supposed to be the best of the best. Under the left, they've become a joke -- just like the rest of the country.

We can imagine why older men are leaving -- forced out of the organization to make room for the Strong and Empowered round women who we saw spectacularly failing to protect Trump in the lethal Butler media-incited assassination attempt.

The New York Times doesn't mention this, of course. But yes, the Secret Service is pushing hard to get "30 by 30" -- 30% female "represenation" not in just the agency, but specifically in the gun-carrying, body-shielding protective division.

Despite not many women being in the "feeder" jobs that the Secret Service draws from -- the military, civilian law enforcement.

A lot of Office Effie's and Chairbound Charlottes are being given a gun and a pair of sunglasses and don't you worry about how that will work out, they'll make sure all of the experienced male Secret Service agents are assigned to protect Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, and of course Jill Biden.

The Times (link to archive.is):

This time, he was part of the detail providing protection for President Biden at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. Pangs of fatigue snaked up his legs from hours of standing on a concrete floor of the Moscone Center in San Francisco, about 3,000 miles from his home.

"I got to the point where I just said, 'You know, I don't think I want to do it anymore.'" Mr. Ebey put in his papers to retire in January. He was 52 years old.
For months, alarm had been spreading through the executive offices on the eighth floor of the Secret Service headquarters in Washington over the flight of experienced talent like Mr. Ebey.

The agency knew it would face an avalanche in 2024. There would be presidential campaigns. Political conventions. A NATO summit. It was looking to be one of the busiest years in the Secret Service's recent history, even as threats of violence against political leaders were rising.

The service was not ready.

"Now more than ever, it is critical that we retain employees," Kimberly A. Cheatle, the Secret Service director at the time, wrote in an agencywide email in July 2023.

But instead of growing, as the big year approached, the service shrank. At least 1,400 of its 7,800 employees left in the 2022 and 2023 fiscal years, the largest outflow from the agency in at least two decades, federal data show.

This summer, two assassination attempts against former President Donald J. Trump revealed deep problems in the Secret Service. Failures in technology meant a would-be assassin was able to use a drone for surveillance. Failures in command meant a nearby rooftop was left unprotected for him to climb. Failures in communication meant he was able to fire, even after being spotted.

But agents say one problem underlies all the others: an exodus of the best-trained people.

Their departures, partly rooted in longstanding failures by the Secret Service management, have left agents in a kind of permanent state of emergency, lacking the focus, rest and training necessary to do their jobs well, more than two dozen current and former employees told The New York Times.

Among the reasons they leave:

Crushing amounts of overtime work, often assigned at the last minute and sometimes without pay.

An initiative to rehire retired Secret Service agents, which backfired by spurring more employees to retire so they could be paid a salary and a pension at once.

Perceptions of favoritism in promotions and hiring, including an episode in which the agency's chief uniformed officer moonlighted as a real-estate agent for subordinates, who then won promotions.

...

The loss of so many valuable agents might be less of a crisis if enough people -- and the right people -- were ready and waiting to take their place. But management had not solved that problem either.

Recruiting standards slumped, longtime agents said, as the agency ushered more people in the door.

Gee, why were unqualified people suddenly being "ushered in" to the Secret Service? Previously it had brought in mostly-qualified people. What changed?

Apparently they don't have many agents assigned to Trump at all -- they just put out a call days before an event looking for "bodies."

They're putting together Trump's "protection" haphazardly, slap-dashedly, begging people to come in and work some overtime, instead of giving him a permanent team that can learn to work well with each other.

They're trying to kill him, in other words.

...

But even then, he was required to help with protective duty during busy times. He missed weeks with his family, as short-handed bosses would come to agents saying, "We're looking for bodies" to protect one leader or another, including Mr. Trump.

posted by Ace at 06:06 PM

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