An independent panel formed to investigate the performance of the Secret Service after an assassination attempt in July against former President Donald Trump has called for extensive changes to the agency, including the installation of new leadership from the outside.
In a report issued Thursday morning, the panel praised the bravery of the individual agents who work to protect political figures in the United States. However, it blasted their leaders for creating an internal culture that has become “bureaucratic, complacent and static,” with the result that “the Secret Service does not perform at the elite levels needed to discharge its critical mission.”
Without “fundamental reform,” the panel warned, other attacks on the agency’s protectees “can and will happen again.”
In a statement, Secret Service Acting Director Ronald L. Rowe Jr. said, “We respect the work of the Independent Review Panel and will carefully examine the report and recommendations released today.”
He added that the agency has started making changes as a result of the attempted assassination.
“We have already significantly improved our readiness, operational and organizational communications and implemented enhanced protective operations for the former president and other protectees,” Rowe said.
Failure in Pennsylvania
President Joe Biden established the panel after a July 13 episode in Butler, Pennsylvania, in which a young man with a rifle was able to get within a few hundred meters of Trump while he was delivering a campaign speech. The would-be assassin fired several shots; Trump’s right ear was struck, but he was not seriously wounded. One bystander was killed, and two others were seriously wounded, before a Secret Service countersniper team killed the gunman.
In the aftermath of the incident, it became clear that there had been multiple failures leading up to the assassination attempt. The gunman was identified as a potential danger in advance of the shooting but was not prevented from accessing the roof of a building with a clear line of sight to the stage where Trump was speaking.
In the minutes leading up to the shooting, law enforcement officials in the crowd were made aware of the shooter’s presence, but because of poor coordination of communications, the information was not relayed to the members of Trump’s protective detail near the stage.
Panel’s recommendations
The panel’s findings include calls for specific changes to the way the Secret Service handles large events such as the Trump rally in Butler.
While the Secret Service has primary responsibility for the security of such events, it relies on other law enforcement agencies, including state and local police, for assistance. The report calls for having a unified command post at events like the Butler rally that would allow better communication among various agencies.
The report also calls for creating specific plans for dealing with all locations within 914 meters (1,000 yards) of an event that offer line-of-sight vision of the protectee, overhead surveillance of all outdoor events, improved communication systems and other changes.
Leadership change
In the wake of the Butler shooting, Kimberly Cheatle resigned as Secret Service director and was temporarily replaced by Rowe. However, the report issued Thursday calls for a much more extensive shakeup of the agency’s higher echelons.
Citing “an urgent need for fresh thinking informed by external experience and perspective,” the panel recommended that a new director, drawn from outside the Secret Service, be put in place and “be allowed to bring in the leadership team he or she thinks most fit.”
The new leadership would be charged with addressing multiple problems identified by the investigation, including “a troubling lack of critical thinking” within the agency and “corrosive cultural attitudes regarding resourcing and ‘doing more with less.’ “
The report also urged a refocusing of the agency on its protective duties, to the point of potentially “shedding certain peripheral responsibilities,” including complex investigations into financial fraud and counterfeiting.
‘More with less’
Ronald Kessler, an author and journalist who has written two books about the Secret Service, told VOA that the panel correctly identified a number of problems with the agency. In particular, he cited the “do more with less” ethos, which he said has been present in the agency since it was folded into the Department of Homeland Security more than 20 years ago.
Kessler said it has become a point of pride in the agency that it operates on a shoestring rather than demanding more funding and resources.
“It’s a recipe for mediocrity and just the opposite of what anybody would want in any organization,” he said.
Within the agency, Kessler said, “the way to be promoted has been, ‘You don’t make waves, you don’t ask for more money, you don’t point out problems, you don’t expose the fact that the technical systems that are just basic don’t work.’ “
Kessler praised the decision to seek outside leadership.
“In any organization, when it’s failing, you bring in outside people, whether it’s a private company or a government agency, and the people do respond,” he said.
Doubts about outside leadership
Paul Eckloff, a 23-year veteran of the agency who served as the assistant special agent in charge of the protection details of Presidents Barack Obama and Trump, said he doubted the wisdom of seeking outside leadership for an agency as unique as the Secret Service.
“The report is indicative of some fundamental misunderstandings of how the Secret Service operates, and these misunderstandings would be shared by any outside leader,” he told VOA.
“It would exacerbate problems within the rank and file, who believe that they are not well represented,” Eckloff said. “If the complaint about Secret Service leadership was that they were detached from the operators on the ground — [a job] they ostensibly have done before — imagine a leader who never held a post. How detached would they be?”
Eckloff also warned that requiring the agency to focus exclusively on its protective mission would be counterproductive. Serving on a protective detail is extremely intense work, he said, with agents often working weeks at a time without a day off.
For that reason, the agency tries to limit the time agents are assigned directly to a protective detail to periods of five to eight years, after which they rotate off and move into investigative work.
This leaves the agency with a deep pool of experienced agents who can be called upon to assist in protective details at times when the agency needs to surge its capacity, which occurs at least every four years during presidential elections.
The panel reviewed the attack from early August through early October. Members were Mark Filip, a former federal judge and former deputy attorney general; David Mitchell, a former superintendent of the Maryland State Police; Janet Napolitano, former secretary of homeland security; and Frances Townsend, a former homeland security adviser to President George W. Bush.
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