You Don’t Suspend People For Catastrophic Failure – Butler And Accountability

The Secret Service has announced that it has suspended 6 agents for their failures during the assassination attempt on President Trump last year. The agents’ suspensions range from 10 to 42 days.

Many words come to mind. Absurd, ridiculous, and pathetic among them.

Let’s put it in context.

If you were conducting a course for new members of a protective detail and you wanted to run a test scenario a few days into training, just to see if your recruits had even minimal aptitude for the job, you would run a scenario like what presented itself at Butler. This would be sort of a “can you walk and chew gum at the same time” kind of thing.

You would have your “shooter” wander into the immediate vicinity of the location where the principal would be speaking and, in front of God and everybody, pull out a laser rangefinder and make a big show of measuring the distance to the stage on which the principal would be standing. Then you would have your “shooter” leave and return shortly thereafter carrying a full-size long gun and climb a ladder up onto a rooftop with a clear view of the aforementioned stage and stretch out comfortably with a view of your principal who by this point would have arrived and be standing, in broad daylight, roughly 130 yards away.

And, if the scenario actually progressed much beyond the part where the shooter showed up with a laser rangefinder before your trainees jumped into action and took him into custody you would jettison all the trainees, cancel the course and start looking for people who seemed like they might actually be able to do even a marginally competent job as members of a protective detail.

These were not trainees. This was the Secret Service. This was the unit that claims to be the most elite protective service on the planet. These were the same guys and gals we count on to protect against people like Hezbollah and the Qods Force, who will, trust me, show up with more than an AR and a smile.

The shooter, who, but for the grace of God, would have killed Trump, was a nobody. He had no training of any significance. His weapon was one that can be found in half the homes in America. He did everything wrong.

He almost succeeded.

This despite the fact that, as we now know, the Secret Service had received a warning ten days in advance that there was a threat against Donald Trump’s life.

Late last year, a Department of Homeland Security report prepared by an Independent Review Panel called for "fundamental reform" within the Secret Service and said "Butler can and will happen again."

"The Secret Service as an agency requires fundamental reform to carry out its mission. Without that reform, the Independent Review Panel believes another Butler can and will happen again," a review panel of four former law enforcement and national security officials wrote in a letter to then DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

"The Secret Service does not perform at the elite levels needed to discharge its critical mission," the panel continued. "The Secret Service has become bureaucratic, complacent, and static even though risks have multiplied and technology has evolved."

Everyone who has looked at what happened in Butler has reached the same conclusion. Maybe even more troubling, it does not appear that even the near-death of Donald Trump made much of an impact on the Secret Service. The Independent Review Panel had this to say.

"The Panel has observed that many of the Secret Service personnel involved in the events of July 13 appear to have done little in the way of self-reflection in terms of identifying areas of missteps, omissions, or opportunities for improvement. July 13 represents a historic security failure by the Secret Service, which almost led to the death of a former president and current nominee and did lead to the death of a rally attendee."

The personnel at Butler were sleepwalking through the performance of their duties, ignoring even the most obvious threat indicators, and afterward didn’t seem to think that there was much they needed to change about their jobs. It is hard to imagine that some minor suspensions will do much to instill a new attitude in men and women who seem to have been unfazed by almost losing their protectee.

We have seen this movie before. We are watching another version of it now as people talk somberly of charging John Brennan with perjury for attempting to overthrow the republic and tear up the Constitution. We are sick of it.

Enough with the long reviews and committee hearings and trivial “punishments” that mean nothing. Everybody in a position of responsibility in the Secret Service who was in Butler the day Trump almost died should lose their jobs and hang their heads in shame. We don’t want suspensions. We want accountability.