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Commentary

‘Nothing New, Nothing Improved’: No Course Correction at Secret Service after Critical Security Failure

September 10, 2024

This Monday, Americans are closer to Election Day than to the July 13 assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump, which exposed glaring failures on the part of the U.S. Secret Service (USSS). Eight weeks later, the embattled agency has solved none of its problems — including its severe manpower shortage. Undeterred, the USSS is planning to take personnel away from urgent security duties to send them to an LGBT networking conference at Disney World. Priorities are priorities!

Not long after the now-infamous rally in Butler, Pa., Americans were shocked to learn that not all the personnel in Secret Service roles at the site were employees of the Secret Service. Instead, they learned that the USSS had filled in a skeleton crew with security personnel from other agencies, such as Department of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) personnel. Also on the scene was a nearby county’s counter-sniper unit, which is the one that actually take out the shooter.

The USSS had denied the Trump campaign’s requests to beef up security at rallies, and, Real Clear Politics national political correspondent Susan Crabtree said on Friday’s “Washington Watch,” “They did not provide [a] counter surveillance unit, which would have roamed around the rally looking for people just like [the shooter] Thomas Crooks.”

But it could have been much worse, suggested Crabtree. The day before the rally, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested and questioned a Pakistani man, who “plotted an assassination attempt with the [help of] IRGC [the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps],” she said. In fact, that allegedly unrelated incident was “the only reason there was a counter-sniper at that event” at all, Crabtree pointed out, based on her information from internal contacts. “This could have been a much bigger event, save for the counter-sniper and the local law enforcement that took shots.”

Every new revelation about the planning and execution of security at the Butler, Pa. makes the Secret Service leadership look worse and worse. Yet, of all the just criticism directed at the agency and glaring failures they committed, what “appalled” former USSS director Kim Cheatle (who resigned after disastrous testimony to Congress) more than anything was the criticism of the Secret Service’s DEI objectives.

Those DEI objectives seem to remain among the organization’s top priorities, despite Cheatle’s departure. Last Wednesday, the USSS solicited nominations for “an all-expense paid trip to an LGBTQ+ ‘Out and Equal’ Workplace Summit at Disney World.” The summit includes “leadership plenary sessions,” a “Night Out,” a gala, and plenty of socializing with fellow members of the “Out” (or is it the new “in”?) crowd from top companies and 40+ countries.

“It seems like they have a surplus of staff if they’re going to try to send them to Orlando,” said Joseph Backholm, Family Research Council senior fellow for Biblical Worldview and Strategic Engagement, and guest host of “Washington Watch,” “but in fact, they may not.”

“A large number of Secret Service employees are working so hard — many seven-day work weeks with no time off — that they’ve already hit their ‘supermax limit’ for overtime pay, meaning they can no longer receive overtime for their work,” Crabtree reported. “‘I would like to know, with the operational tempo [we’re under], how they think this is an appropriate use of manpower?’ one source in the Secret Service community asked.”

Indeed, the USSS remains woefully understaffed for the job at hand. Between protecting major candidates on the campaign trail during campaign season and its security duties at the U.N. General Assembly beginning Tuesday, the USSS is facing a deficit of 650 special agents. The U.N. General Assembly “comes every year. So, it’s not like it’s a big surprise,” argued Crabtree. “So, why do we have this email [about an LGBT+ conference] coming out? It’s just infuriating.”

Now, the U.S. Department of Defense — which is also failing to meet its recruitment and retention goals — is stepping in to save the USSS’s bacon. The U.S. military will now be providing election-year security for the U.S. presidential and vice-presidential candidates, as well as U.N. dignitaries, through Election Day.

The question is, will the reassigned personnel be adequately trained for their new role securing protectees?

According to a letter sent last week by Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), a whistleblower now alleges that the HSI agents assigned to the Trump rally were “ill-prepared for the protective mission to which they were newly assigned.”

New Secret Service officers and agents must undergo weeks of rigorous training at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) near Clinton, Md. By contrast, USSS provided HIS agents with only a two-hour webinar training that was “frequently riddled with technical mishaps.” The Secret Service instructor “couldn’t figure out how to get the audio working on the prerecorded videos” and “restarted the videos approximately six times.”

“The content was not helpful,” complained the whistleblower. This statement was dramatically confirmed by the reaction of HSI agents at the Butler rally, who “allegedly had never worked a protective detail before and did not know proper procedure,” Hawley stated.

This dramatic failure did not lead the USSS to change their training protocols, alleged the whistleblower. The webinar trainings were the same as the ones used last year, and they have not been updated since the Butler fiasco. The whistleblower described the online training as “nothing new, nothing improved since the assassination attempt on former President Trump.” This is the training the Secret Service provides to all non-Secret Service personnel assigned to assist in a Secret Service event.

In summary, the U.S. Secret Service has not retained a sufficient workforce to carry out its duties — the scheduled ones it encounters in a regular, four-year cycle. It appears to inadequately train personnel from other agencies upon whose help it is forced to rely. It works the officers and agents it does have to the bone, but that is still not enough to close the gap. Yet, somehow, it still finds spare resources to send scarce personnel to a cushy LGBT conference at Disney World.

These facts reinforce the hypothesis that, in the Biden-Harris administration, every other objective is secondary to that of advancing LGBT ideology through a “whole-of-government” approach.

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.



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