On Friday afternoon, Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe held a press conference to update the public on the Secret Service’s internal investigation into the July 13 assassination attempt on former President and Republican candidate Donald Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Rowe’s comments were brief, summarizing the facts and investigation findings that RedState has reported on extensively.
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The core idea behind Rowe’s introduction was that the “threat landscape is evolving” and requires a “paradigm shift” in the Secret Service’s operations and procedures to protect its charges.
Rowe outlined the key findings:
- Control and management of the site is the sole responsibility of the Secret Service and no one else. “The Secret Service has primary responsibility for creating the site plan. We cannot delegate that to anyone else,” Rowe said.
- Rowe acknowledged that the Secret Service did not provide clear instructions or directions to its law enforcement partners in Butler and that there were communication deficiencies between the law enforcement partners and the rally site.
- Rowe also acknowledged that there is too much reliance on mobile devices, which results in information being stored in one place and not being distributed to all agents and law enforcement officers on the ground.
- Rowe spoke about line-of-sight concerns and said Secret Service employees who did not address those concerns would be disciplined under federal disciplinary guidelines. He could not elaborate because of government restrictions on sharing personnel information.
Rowe’s other comments:
As for the paradigm shift, we are at a turning point in the history of the Secret Service and a turning point in the history of our country. And I have directed that the Secret Service embark on a significant paradigm shift that will redefine the way we conduct protective operations.
What happened on Sunday demonstrates that the threat environment in which the Secret Service operates is enormous and subject to constant threats. And we have been in this heightened and increasingly vigorous threat environment since July 13th.
Reality has required that we significantly escalate our protection levels, and we have already begun to do so following the events of July 13. This increased tempo of operations requires additional resources, not only to meet the costs incurred today, but also to ensure that we have the tools, technology, and personnel we need to meet these novel requirements and execute our mission in the future. The paradigm shift will be a driving force in moving the Secret Service from a state of response to a state of readiness. And the vision is that the Secret Service will become more versatile and able to escalate protection to the highest level for numerous protected individuals for indefinite periods of time. But to do that, we need additional personnel, technology, and equipment to meet immediate and future needs.
Our personnel have been in a state of high alertness since July 13. We are certainly making our people work challenging, and I have used this term publicly: redlining. It cannot be about making our people work harder, so the workforce and the American public can expect changes in our processes to make progress. We will be making increased utilize of technology, not only to support communications, but also for situational awareness as we conduct our protection missions.
There will be organizational changes. For example, I have already ordered the creation of an Applied Research and Development Division to introduce novel technologies, leverage research from other government agencies, and align our technical security resources to stay ahead of threat vectors and technical data collections that impact intelligence assets.
This will be an integrative process that is continually evaluated, validated, updated, and evolved. We cannot stagnate. And we must move away from dependence on partners within DHS to support us in times of high stakes. The Secret Service should be able to operate independently outside of national special security events.
However, we recognize that we will always need the support of our partners at the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense.
Rowe concluded his remarks by thanking the men and women of the Secret Service who had worked “tirelessly” during a summer he described as “an unprecedented operational pace.”
I want to take this moment to thank you and our staff. Finally, I want to thank the men and women of the Secret Service for their tireless work. This summer we experienced an unprecedented pace of operations 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 several protected individuals visits to commemorate the anniversary of the September 11 attacks. All of this occurred 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 are expected to protect more than 140 heads of state and government. I am proud of all we have accomplished during a very challenging and turbulent 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 to support our ongoing mission.
Rowe then answered questions. Most of the questions from correspondents and attendees revolved around the second assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump on September 15. One question was about whether the increased security that was necessary after the first assassination attempt on July 13 was still lacking. Rowe answered that question in the negative and described what happened on the ground at the Trump International Golf Club.
That day, sniper units were near the former president on the golf course. An entire counterattack team was nearby. A jump team was nearby as well. The advance agent who was part of the first element whose job it was to advance did his job. This youthful man is a very youthful agent at the beginning of his career. His alertness, his response, is exactly what we trained and what we expect from our personnel. He recognized a threat: an individual with a long gun, and he made a quick decision and took swift action to mitigate it. No shots were fired at the former president; the former president was not at risk from his location on the golf course. And what I said and what I said this Monday is that the procedures worked. The redundancies worked. So that high-level protection is working.
Other questions also revolved around what procedures have been or will be used to protect current and future intelligence officials. Rowe warned:
What I said, and I have to be very careful about our techniques, our tactics, our procedures. It’s probably not good to talk all the time about not just the intelligence procedures, because we’re sending signals to adversaries. We’re sending signals to people who probably intend to harm our wards. What I will tell you is that our model, our protection model, has multiple layers and redundancies. The outer, the middle, the inner – those are the layers, and we’ve built redundancies into them.
The full press conference and question-and-answer session can be found here.
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