On Friday afternoon, Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe did a press conference in order to update the public on the Secret Service internal investigation on the July 13 assassination attempt on former President and GOP nominee Donald Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Rowe’s comments were short, summarizing the facts and investigation findings that RedState has reported extensively.
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The gist of Rowe’s introduction embodied the fact that the “threat level is evolving” and requires a “paradigm shift” in the Secret Service operations and procedures in safeguarding their protectees.
Rowe outlined these main findings:
- The command and control of the site is solely the responsibility of the Secret Service, and no one else. Secret Service has the main responsibility of building the site plan. We cannot defer this to others,” Rowe said.
- Rowe admitted that the Secret Service did not give clear guidance or direction to its law enforcement partners in Butler and that there were communication deficiencies between law enforcement partners and the rally site.
- Rowe also acknowledged the overreliance on mobile devices which resulted in information being siloed in one place as opposed to broadcast to all agents and law enforcement on site.
- Rowe discussed line-of-sight concerns and that the Secret Service personnel who were at fault for not addressing these concerns would be penalized according to federal disciplinary guidelines. Because of government restriction on personnel information, he could not go into further detail.
Rowe’s remaining remarks:
With respect to a paradigm shift. We are at a pivotal moment in the history of the Secret Service and at a pivotal moment in the history of our country. And I’ve directed that the Secret Service embark on a significant paradigm shift that will redefine how we conduct protective operations.
What occurred on Sunday demonstrates that the threat environment in which the Secret Service operates is tremendous and under constant threat. And we’ve been in this heightened and increasingly dynamic threat environment since July 13.
The reality has necessitated that we significantly increase our protective footprint, and we’ve already begun to do so following the events of July 13. This increased operational tempo requires additional resources to not only account for costs being incurred today, but ensure that we have the tools, technology, and personnel needed to meet these new requirements and execute our mission going forward. The paradigm shift will be a driving force to move the Secret Service from a state of reaction to a state of readiness. And the vision is for the Secret Service to be more agile with the ability to escalate protection to the highest level to numerous protectees for undetermined periods of time. But in order to do this, we need additional personnel, technical assets, and equipment for the sustainment of immediate and future needs.
Our personnel have been in a state of hypervigilance following July 13. We are certainly working our people hard, and I have used this term publicly: “redlining.” This cannot be about working our people harder, so with respect to changes, the workforce, the American public, they can expect changes in our processes for advances. There will be an increased use of technology, not only to assist in communications, but in situational awareness when we are doing our protective missions.
There will be organizational changes. For example, I have already directed the creation of an applied research and development section to field new technologies, leverage the research of other government agencies, and calibrate our technical security assets to stay ahead of threat vectors and technical collection impacting secret service equities.
This will be an integrative process, meaning it will be constantly evaluated, validated, updated, and evolving. We cannot be stagnant. And we must be weaned off the reliance of partners within DHS to assist us during high operational times. The Secret Service should be self-relying outside of national special security events.
However, we recognize that we will always need assistance from our partners within the Department of Homeland Security and our partners at the Department of Defense.
Rowe concluded his remarks by thanking the men and women of the Secret Service, who have worked “tirelessly” in what Rowe considered a summer of “unprecedented operational tempo.”
I want to take this moment now to also thank you—to thank our workforce. I want to conclude by thanking the men and women of the Secret Service for working tirelessly. This summer we experienced an unprecedented operational tempo for our agency.
Within a 45-day period, the Secret Service successfully implemented our operational security planning at three national special security events: The NATO Summit, The Republican National Convention, and the Democratic National Convention.
We successfully protected both the Presidential Debate in Philadelphia and multiple protectee visits commemorating the anniversary of the September 11th attacks. All of this took place while protecting major party candidates on the campaign trail. This high operational tempo continues as the Secret Service prepares for the United Nations General Assembly next week, where we expect to protect more than 140 visiting world leaders and heads of state. I am proud of all that we’ve accomplished in a very difficult and tumultuous time for the agency. And I recognize and thank the men and women of the Secret Service and their families, who continue to make great sacrifices in support of our enduring mission.
Rowe then took questions. The bulk of correspondents and attendee questions focused around the September 15 second assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump’s life. One question focused on whether the enhanced protection that was necessary after the July 13 first assassination attempt was still lacking. Rowe dismissed this, and outlined what happened on the ground at the Trump International Golf Club.
On that day, there were counter-sniper elements that were present with the former president on the golf course, in proximity. There was an entire counterassault team that was there, in proximity. There was also a jump team, in proximity. The advance agent, who was part of the first element, whose goal was to sweep ahead, did his job. That young man is a very young agent early in his career. His vigilance, his reaction, is exactly how we trained and exactly what we want our personnel to do. He identified a threat: an individual with a long gun, and he made a swift decision and took a swift action to be able to mitigate that. No shot was fired at the former president; the former president was not exposed from where he was at the golf course. And what I’ve said, and I said this Monday, that the procedures worked. The redundancies worked. So, that high-level protection is working.
Other questions also centered around what procedures were employed or will be employed to safeguard current and future Secret Service protectees. Rowe admonished:
What I’ve said, and I’ll I have to be very mindful of our techniques, our tactics, and our procedures. It is probably not good to continuously not only talk about Secret Service procedures, because we’re telegraphing to adversaries. We’re telegraphing to people who probably would intend to do harm to our protectees. What I will tell you is our model, our protective model consists of multiple layers and redundancies. The outer, the middle, the inner—those are the layers, and we have redundancies built into that.
The full press conference and Q&A is here.
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