The Secret Service in the Line of Fire

By Michael J. Ard and Charles Goslin

The assassination attempt targeting former President Donald J. Trump at his Butler, Pennsylvania, political rally on July 13 came within mere centimeters of succeeding. It shouldn’t have. Security at the site, quite bluntly, failed completely, as an active shooter managed to elude security and nearly kill Trump. Sadly, an innocent attendee of this event was killed, and two others were wounded before the would-be assassin was himself killed by a Secret Service sniper.

Meanwhile, similar attempts against our senior political leadership might be coming. As the Department of Justice has noted, media attention to an assassination attempt may encourage other copycat crimes. After the assassination attempt on President Reagan in 1981—the last time a protectee was almost killed—threats against U.S. Secret Service protectees increased by 150% over the prior year.

After the shooting, the initial reaction from the media was to praise the Secret Service for its rapid response to protect Trump. But the Secret Service has a “zero fail” mission. More reporting now reveals multiple mistakes by those responsible for securing the venue, the event and the “principal protectee,” which merit hard questions by Congress and the American people. Last Wednesday in a conference call, U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle frustrated several U.S. senators who thought her answers were evasive. Several investigations are about to begin: Director Cheatle will appear before the House Oversight Committee today, and the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general is starting his own investigation.

Despite its evident bravery once the shooting began, the Secret Service team’s overall performance will be harshly criticized. Whatever the conclusions of these investigations, we will hear widespread calls for a change in Secret Service leadership and for major reforms for the Service, which has been under considerable pressure in recent years. The problem goes beyond one team; significant changes in management, resources and mission focus will be necessary for the Service to reestablish public trust.

An Overextended Agency

Underlying institutional problems at the Secret Service probably contributed in part to the failure on July 13. The Service has ever-expanding mission demands and inadequate resources for its 7,600 employees. The Service’s principal focus was once protecting the president, but it is now responsible for 33 protectees. The Service is also tasked with protecting foreign dignitaries; securing major events; conducting threat investigations; investigating counterfeit currency, credit card fraud and financial crimes; and even advising school districts on antishooter measures. Agents have often complained about the Service’s dated technology and the habit of cutting corners to meet increasing demands.

In recent years, serious security breaches—such as a deranged shooter firing at the White House in 2011—and other personnel mishaps have battered the agency’s reputation. According to the Partnership of Public Service, the Secret Service has consistently ranked as one of the worst federal agencies in which to work. In consequence, the Service suffers about an 8% annual attrition rate. In her 2021 book “Zero Fail,” journalist Carol Leonnig concluded the Secret Service was “spread dangerously thin.” And it will be under even greater pressure throughout this election season.

It seems to us and the experts we’ve consulted that the July 13 Secret Service team was inadequate in size and perhaps experience for its duties. The team in Pennsylvania likely was diminished to divert resources to preparing for the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee last week. Moreover, it is unclear how the technology that the Washington, D.C., headquarters claimed it had provided the team improved security. It clearly didn’t help them spot the shooter in time.

The inadequacy of the team’s size and experience is particularly troubling given recent reporting by CNN and other media outlets that the Secret Service was formally advised, earlier in the month, of an intelligence report of an assassination threat by Iran against former President Trump. While the Secret Service claims to have “surged” resources and assets to the Trump campaign team, this alleged effort, as the Washington Post dryly noted on July 17, “did not prevent 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks from ascending a rooftop near a Trump rally and firing at the former president.”

A Series of Mistakes

One pressing question for investigators will be how well the Service surveyed the Butler fairgrounds before the event. The concept that “threat actors are attracted to vulnerability” is a respected axiom among professional security risk practitioners. The Service’s security advance teams for this event should have applied this axiom to their on-site risk assessment. A simple risk assessment of the site, in advance, would have identified the relatively close outbuildings (only 150 yards away) that offered an unobstructed and elevated line-of-sight view of the event’s main stage. These buildings probably should have been included in the inner perimeter, where they would have been under direct observation by the Secret Service. Instead, they were left to local police to manage.

Further, why weren’t physical barriers deployed to block the potential target area, or drones used to monitor the area? According to press reports, local police sniper teams occupied the building, but not the roof used by the shooter. Director Cheatle’s explanation that the slope of the roof prevented a team’s being posted there made little sense, because the Secret Service did deploy two sniper teams on similar roofs near the rally’s main stage.

Although the Secret Service is the lead agency at these events, it must rely on state and local law enforcement agencies, and even officers from other federal agencies, to provide additional manpower. While there has been a lot of finger-pointing in the aftermath, it appears there was a failure of communication between local police on the perimeter and Secret Service agents managing the event and operating in the immediate vicinity of the building that was successfully used by the shooter to target Trump.

What’s more, the Secret Service team knew Crooks was a “person of interest” an hour before the event began. Witnesses had already reported the shooter to police when he acted suspiciously at a magnetometer entry hours before the event. Police took a picture of Crooks, who reportedly was carrying a range-finding device, but then lost track of him. Later, some witnesses spotted the shooter on the roof and alerted local police on the perimeter. A police officer tried to climb onto the roof to confront Crooks but fell off after the gunman pointed his weapon at him. Why police subsequently failed to successfully confront Crooks needs to be investigated. We cannot rule out that this might be another case of outgunned police unwilling to confront a gunman with an AR-15-style weapon, as we saw at the Uvalde school shooting in 2022 and the Parkland school shooting in 2018. With all this uncertainty about a suspicious person in their midst, it is unfathomable why the Secret Service team didn’t delay the event until they found him.

The slow passage of the information to the Secret Service command center at the rally, and the delayed response by the Secret Service sniper team, allowed the shooter critical time to aim and fire at Trump and the crowd. FBI Pittsburgh special agent in charge Kevin Rojek was surprised that the shooter got off as many shots as he did. The consequence of this unacceptable delay was lethal.

Uncertain Protection Protocols

Despite initial praise for its quick reaction, the Secret Service team seemed unhurried in getting its primary protectee to safety. The No. 1 objective in the event of an active and ongoing threat directed against the principal is, in the parlance, to get that person “off the X.” This means creating distance from the threat and getting the principal out of the line of fire. It is something close protection specialists practice until it is like muscle memory.

Michael Trott, a retired CIA special agent with more than 30 years’ experience in close protection, notes that “Quick reaction time is essential in our profession ... agents should do everything they can to cover and evacuate principals when possible.” A tactical commander for the U.S. Ambassador’s security detail in Afghanistan, when observing the Secret Service’s evacuation of Trump, was appalled. As he related to one of us, “They should never have allowed the principal to stop and posture ... you grab him by the damn belt and force him in the direction you need him to go. It’s rough, it’s hard. But time is of the essence. You see what the Secret Service did with Reagan when he was shot? Shoved him headfirst into the limo. Hard.”

It is unclear if this team had worked and drilled together before the rally, but its lack of coordination was obvious. One agent can be heard asking “what are we doing” repeatedly. The team slow-walked Trump, understandably a difficult principal to manage in the best of times, off the stage, to the vehicle and out of harm’s way. But at the time, the possibility of another threat was unclear, as was the severity of Trump’s wounds. And yet, they hesitated. One agent appeared frozen. This raises questions as to how long the team had worked together, whether all members had similar executive protection training and whether there were issues within the team that hampered its effectiveness. A good relationship must be developed with the principal, so that in the event of an incident, the team knows what to do and how to communicate instructions to the principal. Clearly that relationship with Trump was never established by his Secret Service protection detail.

An Improper Threat Assessment?

Assessing the threat environment is critical before any security plan can be devised. This is the responsibility of Secret Service headquarters management. Before the shooting, Director Cheatle told the media that nationwide political polarization is considered in the Secret Service’s threat assessments, but that “there’s nothing specific and nothing credible out there right now.” The Secret Service team deployed two snipers, with more snipers provided by local police, so it seems clear potential threats were taken seriously. However, the team apparently had no specific tactical intelligence or imminent threat information before the event regarding this specific threat-actor.

The case of the deceased shooter, 20-year-old Crooks, is under an FBI investigation. Apparently, he did not act impulsively. Potential assassins don’t just “snap”; they are deliberative and prepare their attacks. The shooter likely surveilled the fairgrounds before the event, and perhaps he had even stashed his weapon or other equipment beforehand at the site. As for his motive, Crooks previously may have intended to target figures from either party, which is reminiscent of would-be assassin Arthur Bremer, who in 1972 attempted to kill President Nixon, but instead attacked Democratic presidential candidate George Wallace because he had lighter security.

Crooks’ motives are slowly emerging from the data, as investigators sift through social media, interviews with those who knew him and other material evidence. A picture of a taciturn loner who confided little about himself to others is taking shape. The Secret Service and the Department of Justice often stress that shooters act based on numerous drivers, and mental illness frequently plays a role. In the past, the DOJ estimated that approximately 75% of individuals whom Secret Service deemed a threat to their protectees were mentally ill, but in recent years that fact has been downplayed. However, in a report published last year surveying 173 attacks in public spaces, the Secret Service’s National Threat Assessment Center concluded that more than half of shooters “experienced mental health symptoms” before or during the attack.

Whenever a violent act occurs that has enormous political implications, we naturally look for a compelling reason. But we are often fooled by randomness. It’s hard to accept that this event might have been a random act, driven by the perpetrator’s own internal demons. Yet the assassination attempt on Reagan looked politically motivated until the FBI discovered that would-be assassin John Hinckley Jr. wanted to impress actress Jodie Foster. A psychological study commissioned by the Secret Service in 1984 investigated all 22 individuals who made attempts on presidents’ lives. In most cases, their own insecurities and frustrations, more than personal hatred toward their famous targets, drove the assassins. More recent studies by Dr. J. Reid Meloy seem to confirm the presence of deep-seated grievances and resentments in those willing to commit mass attacks.

As with other high-profile, random shootings in recent years, we may be left permanently in the dark on why this tragedy happened. However, one thing can be said for certain: This incident should not be treated as an unfortunate, one-off failure for an overstretched and under-resourced Secret Service. To regain the trust of Congress and the American people, and to prevent future security failures like this one, the Secret Service will require significant changes to its procedures, its training, its mission focus and certainly its leadership.