'Without reform' to Secret Service 'another Butler can and will happen again': independent review

Four former law enforcement and national security officials made up the panel.

ByLuke Barr ABCNews logo

Thursday, October 17, 2024

New report on Trump assassination attempt says Secret Service needs fundamental reform

The report recommended bringing in new, outside leadership and refocusing on its protective mission.

There were many mistakes made on the day of the July assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump by the Secret Service, but an independent review by the Department of Homeland Security revealed systemic issues within the organization and found that without reforms to the agency, "another Butler can and will happen again."

In the aftermath of the Butler, Pennsylvania, assassination attempt, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas assigned a panel of four former law enforcement and national security officials to examine what went wrong, and how they recommend the Secret Service moves forward after the attempt on former president's life.

"The Secret Service does not perform at the elite levels needed to discharge its critical mission," the letter addressed to Secretary Mayorkas said, which was included in the report. "The Secret Service has become bureaucratic, complacent, and static even though risks have multiplied and technology has evolved."

On the independent panel are former DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, former Deputy Attorney General Mark Filip, former Maryland State Police Superintendent David Mitchell and former Deputy National Security Adviser Fran Townsend.

The scathing 35-page report from the independent panel said the findings illustrated "deeper concerns" within the U.S. Secret Service.

"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," the report said. "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 panel said that even a "superficial" level of reflection would have been meaningful.

Plaguing the Secret Service are "corrosive cultural attitudes" regarding resourcing events - a "do more with less" attitude, according to the report.

The report also found there was a troubling "lack of critical thinking" by Secret Service personnel "before, during and after" the assassination attempt.

"A prominent instance of this is the fact that personnel had been read into significant intelligence regarding a long range threat by a foreign state actor against former President Trump, but failed to ensure that the AGR building was secured despite its proximity to the rally stage and the obvious high angle line of sight issues it presented," the report found.

Other instances "revealed a surprising lack of rigor in considering the specific risks posed to particular individual protectees."

The report said, for example, Trump, though not formally the Republican nominee at the time, had essentially clinched it months before and thus the Secret Service's approach was formulaic "rather than an individualized assessment of risk."

The failure to take ownership of planning the Butler rally and the lack of cohesion with state and local law enforcement during the planning of events, a lack of experienced agents to perform "certain critical security tasks," a lack of auditing mechanisms to learn from mistakes in the field, a lack of training facilities, and a lack of agents feeling comfortable to speak up.

In particular, the operational tempo for younger agents who came up during the COVID-19 pandemic was slower than most election years, and thus those agents did not get as much experience in the field as agents would normally get.

The panel is calling for new leadership at the Secret Service - saying the agency needs a change with people from outside the agency.

"Many of the issues that the Panel has identified throughout this report, particularly regarding the Panel's "deeper concerns," are ultimately attributable, directly or indirectly, to the Service's culture," the report said. "A refreshment of leadership, with new perspectives, will contribute to the Service's resolution of those issues."

Among the other recommendations the panel made are a restructuring of the agency's protective office, new training initiatives, new communication technologies that are more reliable and an evaluation "of the Secret Service's method for how it resources protectees to ensure that it is risk-based, and not overly formulaic or reliant on a protectee's title for making resource determinations."

"The Panel also recognizes the bravery and selflessness exhibited by Secret Service agents and officers who put themselves in harm's way to protect their protectees, including in Butler after Crooks fired at former President Trump and others. However, bravery and selflessness alone, no matter how honorable, are insufficient to discharge the Secret Service's no-fail protective mission."

Specific to July 13, the panel's findings are in line with the Secret Service's mission assurance review that came out last month.

Some of the findings are an absence of law enforcement to secure the AGR building where Thomas Matthew Crooks eventually fired from, the failure to mitigate the line of site from that building, having two communications rooms, the failure of anyone to encounter Crooks despite spotting him 90 minutes before Trump took the stage, the failure to inform the former president's detail and the drone detection system not working.

The panel recommends the Service has integrated communications, a mandatory situation report when a protectee arrives, better counter-drone technologies and an advanced line of site mitigations.

A footnote in the report says the second assassination attempt against Trump didn't impact the panel's work but might've reinforced the report.

The panel recommends the Service implement the Butler reforms no later than March 31, 2025, and the broader reforms by the end of 2025.

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