“Zero Fail.” That’s how the U.S. Secret Service describes its mission. Yet, you’d be hard-pressed to find a Secret Service agent who would claim that Saturday’s assassination attempt on presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump was anything other than a failure. But for an inch or so, the iconic agency almost lost a protectee to an assassin’s bullet. One spectator was killed and two others were injured. The nation needs answers to several questions, and the investigation to find out those answers has already begun — even as the Secret Service prepares to secure the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this week.
You’d be hard-pressed to find a Secret Service agent who would claim that Saturday’s assassination attempt was anything other than a failure.
Here are three hypothetical scenarios that most likely explain Saturday’s failure and should help guide investigators as they figure out what went wrong and led to Trump’s nearly losing his life: 1. The Secret Service left the rooftop and building from which the would-be assassin fired out of its rally security plan. 2. The Secret Service delegated responsibility to local or state law enforcement to secure that building and they failed to adequately secure it. 3. There was confusion over which agencies had which assignments. No matter what happened, though, the buck stops at the Secret Service.
Though it can’t be ruled out, it’s highly unlikely that the Secret Service left the rooftop of the building the shooter used out of its security plan. That’s because the estimated distance between that rooftop and Trump’s podium was about 150 yards, well within the accuracy range of the type of rifle reportedly used by the shooter. Further, the building’s roof provided an elevated location and therefore a tactical advantage for an attacker. The relatively short distance from the building to the podium and its elevation mean the Secret Service should have evaluated it as a risk.
The building and rooftop may have been assessed by the Secret Service but determined to be a lower risk for some reason, designated as outside the event’s perimeter and/or delegated for coverage to local or state police. If security for the building was outsourced to other departments, then the failure of those departments to prevent the shooter from entering the building and ascending to the roof proved to be fatal. However, even if we find that a local or state department didn’t carry out an assignment, in such a scenario, it still would have been the Secret Service that delegated that responsibility. There may have been a critical error in communicating who was responsible for the building and how that responsibility was to be executed. The Secret Service would have to own such a decision.
Of course, there may have been a case of mixed assignment of responsibilities. We know that at least one Secret Service sniper had a line of sight to the rooftop used by the shooter. As soon as shots rang out, Secret Service personnel “neutralized” the shooter, Anthony Guglielmi, the agency’s chief spokesperson said. Theoretically, the Secret Service could have decided it would be responsible for covering the rooftop, while the local police would be assigned to prevent anyone from reaching the rooftop. Reporting from The Associated Press adds credence to the possibility that local police were responsible for at least the entrances of the building. According to officials who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity given the ongoing investigation, an officer reportedly climbed to the roof, encountered the shooter and retreated, and the would-be assassin quickly took a shot at the former president. Mixed responsibilities for the same threat location can result in a lack of clarity. It makes for a kind of “too many cooks spoil the broth” scenario.
If security for the building was outsourced to other departments, then the failure of those departments to prevent the shooter from entering the building and ascending to the roof proved to be fatal.
Further, The Wall Street Journal has reported, and the FBI has confirmed, that suspicious devices were found in the shooter’s vehicle, rendered safe by FBI bomb technicians and transported to the FBI Laboratory in Quantico, Virginia. Was the use of bomb dogs in the parking area of the rally considered? If so, who was responsible for doing that? To use bomb-sniffing dogs or not to use bomb-sniffing dogs would have been a Secret Service decision.
There have already been multiple calls for inquiries into which, if any, of these scenarios might have played out to cause Saturday’s tragic events. The FBI is investigating the shooting, but its focus will not be on the security failure. Rather, inquiries into the Secret Service’s inability to live up to its “Zero Fail” mission will be led by Congress, the Department of Homeland Security inspector general and, according to President Joe Biden, “independent” investigators.
The answers will come. They better come quickly. If the failure on Saturday was even partly because of limited resources of the Secret Service, at a time when a significant proportion of its personnel are in Milwaukee for the RNC, then we need to figure out if the Service is stretched so thin that it can’t simultaneously address multiple major events without a risky overreliance on local police. The Secret Service protects our president and former presidents, their families, candidates and their families and many others. Importantly, that also means it helps preserve the security of America’s brand and reputation. We need to help it get whatever it needs in order to get it right.