WASHINGTON (September 28, 2022) Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas swears in Kimberly Cheatle, 27th Director of the U.S. Secret Service at Secret Service Headquarters in Washington, DC. (DHS photo by Sydney Phoenix)
The Secret Service, led by Director Kimberly Cheatle, has suffered what John Leake describes as a “catastrophic loss of competence.” He writes:
As I have observed in previous columns, our era in the United States is frequently beset with incidents characterized by a catastrophic loss of competence. Decades of procedural knowledge seem to vanish from one day to the next, leaving sensible people wondering how it could possibly happen.
The attempted assassination of Donald Trump this evening at the the Butler Farm Show Grounds is a perfect example of this bizarre phenomenon. The shooter climbed onto the roof—purportedly with an AR-15 style semi-automatic rifle —120 meters from Trump on the stage. From this vantage point, he had a clear line of sight for a shot that would have been easy for even a middling marksman. The following aerial photograph shows the shooter’s position relative to Trumps.
As anyone who understands the rudiments of security knows, the FIRST thing you do is secure all rooftops within sniper range. Note in the following video that a counter sniper (with the word POLICE embroidered on the back of his vest) on the roof behind Trump is scoping the would-be assassin’s position.
He appears to see the would-be assassin and start to engage (while flinching) right before the would-be assassin’s shots can be heard. Clearly the counter snipers knew that the rooftop presented a high risk position or they wouldn’t have been scoping it.
Why wasn’t this building—AGR International Inc., a manufacturing plant just north of the Butler Farm show ground—secured before Trump began speaking? It seems to me that this building would be the first thing a security detail would secure. The green pin on the roof to the east of Trump’s position marks where the counter snipers are posted. Again, why didn’t they just secure the building onto which the shooter climbed? This makes no sense.
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