The US Secret Service takes “full responsibility” for the events that led up to the attempted assassination of Donald Trump last month, the acting director of the agency said on Friday.
In a press conference in Washington, Ronald Rowe, who replaced Kimberly Cheatle after she stood down from her position as director of the service after Trump was shot, said: “This was a failure.”
He said agents should have had better cover of the vantage points, from where a 20-year-old gunman ended up firing shots at the former president while he spoke at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, last month.
Trump is the Republican nominee for president, and a bullet grazed his ear as he was addressing the crowd, when shots rang out, killing one in the crowd and injuring others.
The gunman, Thomas Crooks, fired several shots from a rifle after positioning himself on a warehouse roof that Rowe admitted “was not far” from the stage where Trump was speaking. Crooks was killed by government counter-snipers. Rowe said agents should have had “eyes” on that position beforehand.
“We should have had better coverage on that roof line,” he said.
The agency is conducting an internal investigation and Rowe said disciplinary action would be taken if necessary, and procedures will be changed.
He said the Secret Services did not have “any idea” the shooter had a gun until shots were fired.
There was a failure in communications and surveillance of the area in the run-up to the rally, Rowe said. No one was trying to push blame on to local law enforcement, he added.
There had been speculation earlier that local police should have been able to stop the assailant and also warn the federal agents effectively before he opened fire from the roof of a warehouse with a sight line to the rally stage.
Rowe said that local law enforcement communicated to the federal agency that there was a man on the roof, but the message did not reach the Secret Service.
He added that federal agents were not present at the command post that was being run by local law enforcement.
They were the first to see a man get up on to the roof of the warehouse, which turned out to be the shooter.
The gunman had looked up online the 1963 assassination of President John F Kennedy, and had flown a drone over the rally site, before shooting Trump.
“We want to deter people from even thinking about doing something like this again,” Rowe said.
