Fighting for her job: Secret Service director’s record faces growing scrutiny
By
Tom Rogan
July 17, 2024 4:03 pm
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In the aftermath of the failed assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump, questions are increasingly being asked about the colossal security failure. Trump, a former president and the 2024 presidential front-runner, was very nearly killed.
Someone, whether a police officer or a Secret Service agent, should have been guarding the building from the roof of which Thomas Matthew Crooks fired his rifle at Trump. Secret Service personnel inside that building had noticed Crooks behaving strangely before he climbed on the roof. The Secret Service command post should have at a minimum conducted a “post check” to ensure Crooks was not a threat.
Facing pressure to resign, Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle hasn’t helped her cause. She claimed the reason no officer was stationed on the roof was that it was sloped. She told ABC News, “That building in particular has a sloped roof at its highest point. And so, you know, there’s a safety factor that would be considered there that we wouldn’t want to put somebody up on a sloped roof.”
A decision was made to secure the building from the inside, Cheatle added.
This excuse does not bear a moment’s scrutiny. Even if the building was secured from the inside, roof access was not secure. That is an unquestionable security failure: Secret Service protocol is to deny prospective assassins lines of sight to a target as far as is possible and practical. The slope of the roof was very shallow, easily usable by security officers, and other Secret Service officers, including the counter-sniper team that shot and killed Crooks, were on another sloped roof nearby.
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https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/beltway-confidential/3085659/fighting-for-her-job-secret-service-directors-record-faces-growing-scrutiny/
