Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle’s appearance before the House Oversight Committee on Monday to answer questions about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump was a disaster. The 27-year veteran of the agency was obstructive and defensive bordering on contemptuous in answers to questions from members of both parties. She frequently refused or failed to answer many of them.
Cheatle’s testimony came after she made an appearance on the floor of the Republican National Convention last week, where she was cornered by four Republican senators, including Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee. The senators fired angry questions at her demanding how the Secret Service, the agency she heads, had failed to protect the Republican candidate for president just days before. She did not answer their questions and stood there like a robot whose motherboard had shorted out.
At issue, of course, was the near-miss assassination attempt by a 20-year-old lone gunman on Donald Trump at an outdoor rally on July 13. By now, dozens of diagrams and aerial photographs have been published showing the line of sight the shooter had from the rooftop of a nearby agricultural building to the rally stage. The distance was estimated at 150 yards, an easy shot even for a shooter with limited rifle training. The shooter was said to be using an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle made by Defense Procurement Manufacturing Services (DPMS) bought by his father in 2013. DPMS was one of the first civilian manufacturers of rifles based on the military’s M-16 rifle. According to Everytown for Gun Safety, (EFGS) a gun control group formed after the school shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, a DPMS AR-15 rifle was used in the mass shooting in San Bernadino, CA, in 2015. Fourteen people were killed and 22 were wounded in that shooting.
DPMS was bought by Palmetto State Armory, a gun manufacturer that has specialized in mass-marketing AR-15-style rifles to the public. The company currently has a “Christmas in July” sale on its website, offering e-kits that can be used to assemble so-called “ghost guns” to get around federal firearms regulations, in addition to any number of already-manufactured models of AR-15s. In the past, the company has posted images of children holding AR-15s on its Facebook page with captions reading, “Raise them right!” and “This is what we do!” according to EFGS. Palmetto Arms AR-15s were used in mass shootings in Jacksonville, Florida, and St. Louis, Missouri. An AR-15 manufactured by the Lead Star Arms company, which is sold by Palmetto Arms, was used in the Convent School shooting in Nashville, Tennessee.
These are military-style, highly accurate rifles that can be fitted with a scope. While it is not known at this time if the shooter in Butler was using a scope, they are available for sale on many gun company websites and can be bought without a background check.
Secret Service Director Cheatle has so far provided no answers for how an untrained 20-year-old shooter got within 150 yards of a presidential candidate who was under Secret Service protection. After the shooting on July 13, it was reported that the building roof onto which the shooter was able to climb without being seen by the Secret Service was “outside the perimeter” set up by the Secret Service for the event. Why the perimeter was set up by the Secret Service so that it excluded an obvious place a shooter could use to fire a rifle from has not been explained.
Just to give you perspective, saying that the shot that grazed Trump came from “outside the perimeter” is like a military unit taking fire in combat from a sniper calling “no fair!” because they had not scouted the firing position used by the sniper.
Protecting the president or a presidential candidate should be a military-style operation. Safety perimeters should be established to take in all locations a sniper could use to the maximum effective range of a high-powered rifle. Many sniper-style rifles are effective at more than 1,000 yards, and the .50 caliber Barret sniper rifle, which is commercially available on the open civilian market, has been used effectively in combat at ranges of up to 1,800 yards, just slightly more than a mile.
There have been reports that requests by the Trump campaign for more Secret Service protection at certain events were denied by the Secret Service. In one of the few questions she answered at the congressional hearing, Cheatle denied that the Trump campaign had requested additional protection for the Butler rally.
There have also been leaks from inside the Secret Service and from former officials and officers that the agency is understaffed and underfunded. If that is indeed a problem with the agency tasked with protecting presidents and presidential candidates, there is an easy solution: Congress can pass more funding and mandate higher staffing levels and provide more money to train more Secret Service agents.
One of the problems cited after the Trump shooting by critics of the Secret Service has been the diverse responsibilities of the agency, which is not only tasked with protecting the president, vice president and candidates, but is also tasked with investigating financial crimes such as counterfeiting U.S. currency and wire fraud. Until 2003, the Secret Service was part of the Treasury Department. After 9/11, the agency was put under the control of the Department of Homeland Security. Some critics of the agency said that too much money was being spent on its investigative law enforcement responsibilities and not enough on its executive protection functions. The agency, among other tasks, is assigned to protect not just the person of the president and the vice president but the White House complex, the vice-presidential residence, the Treasury building and all foreign diplomatic missions in Washington D.C. That is a lot of land and people. In recent years, several people have been able to climb over the fence surrounding the White House and make their way closer to the building itself, in one case, all the way to the entrance under the front portico, before being discovered and arrested by the Secret Service.
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The word “incompetence” comes to mind here. Surely the attempt on former president Trump’s life is an example of Secret Service incompetence and should result in the resignation or firing of Director Cheatle. The Secret Service is the one federal agency with no margin for error in the execution of its job. The life of a president or candidate is either safe, or it’s not. In the case of former president Trump, his life was not safe. The Secret Service failed its most profound and important responsibility, to keep the former president out of harm’s way.
There has already been a flotilla of excuses and reasons about how and why the shooting in Butler happened. The Secret Service has pointed the finger at local law enforcement, which it says had responsibility over the agricultural building that was “outside the perimeter” established by the Secret Service. Local law enforcement officials have said that they reported a “suspicious person” near that building to the Secret Service well before the rally started. Civilians have reported that they told Secret Service and local law enforcement officers about the suspicious character, and they allege that they were ignored by both. There are even videos showing the shooter stretched out with his rifle atop the building.
Anyone can point a finger. The problem is that finger-pointing didn’t stop the bullets that nicked Trump’s ear and killed one person attending the rally and seriously wounded two others. If the Secret Service needs more agents in its details that protect the president, vice president, their families, and others, then they should re-train and re-assign agents from within the agency who have other tasks like financial investigations.
There is a presidential campaign in full swing. If the Secret Service cannot accomplish that job fast enough, then President Biden should authorize backup by National Guard soldiers from whatever state political rallies are to be held in. Infantry National Guard soldiers are trained in defending perimeters. They can be deployed to defend at distances unreachable by Secret Service agents at their present staffing levels. If Vice President Kamala Harris or candidate Trump wants to use an outdoor venue in an area that is too dangerous to be defended by the Secret Service as augmented by local law enforcement and whatever National Guard forces that may be assigned to the task, then the campaigns should be told that the venue will not work and to choose someplace else. Not even presidents are given free rein to do whatever they want when it comes to Secret Service protection – witness Trump’s attempt to get his Secret Service detail to drive him to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. That request, or order, or whatever, was denied.
In the meantime, the situation with the Secret Service when it comes to its protection tasks is untenable. A change is necessary, and it should begin at the top.
