Rich Lowry writes for the New York Post about the Secret Service’s recent failures.
If this is what the Secret Service has become, it’s a wonder that something worse than Butler, Pa., hasn’t already happened.
That event was terrible enough, with one rally-goer killed and Donald Trump coming within an inch of losing his life.
If Trump hand’t turned his head at the right moment, Butler would have become one of the most notorious locations in American history and we’d be living in a different world.
At the time, the Secret Service’s failure seemed unfathomable and none of the revelations since — set out in a report by the Senate Homeland Security Committee — make it any better.
Barney Fife was better organized and more accountable.
The Secret Service is given responsibility for avoiding a calamity that would traumatize the nation and derange its politics for years, perhaps decades, to come. Its competence is a matter of the utmost national consequence.
Yet the agency was bumbling and slow-reacting, a disaster waiting to happen.
Surely, this sort of ineptitude wouldn’t be tolerated by Taylor Swift’s security detail.
The Secret Service, which we expect to be run with a vigor and precision befitting its mission, instead operates as though it’s a typical bureaucratic outfit housed within, say, the Health Resources and Services Administration.
The Senate report relates “multiple foreseeable and preventable planning and operational failures,” as an armed man was permitted to climb atop the roof of the American Glass Research building within 200 yards of where Trump was speaking and get off eight shots.
The story of how it happened is muddled by finger-pointing and confusion over who was in charge.
Secret Service advance agents didn’t know who was responsible for final decisions, and didn’t know who determined the security perimeter for the event. State and local law enforcement were responsible for the AGR building because it was outside the perimeter.
But advance agents didn’t share planning documents with them, and didn’t ask for the operational plans of state and local law enforcement.
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Author: Mitch Kokai
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