Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump is escorted to a motorcade following an assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa., on Saturday. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
I am not a security or law enforcement expert, but as a White House aide, I trained and worked closely with the Secret Service to protect President Jimmy Carter. I was shocked to see the near-fatal mistakes this elite federal protection service made at former President Donald Trump’s campaign rally.
Before beginning advance missions, Secret Service agents briefed me on the roles they play in protecting the president and the tactics they employ, from risk assessment to handling an attack or a medical emergency. The agents took us through simulation drills so that advance personnel knew how each real threat or event would be handled; nothing was left to chance.
I recall that at one outdoor rally venue, we walked threat assessment agents through the entire route the president would take to get to the stage. At one point, the lead agent at the venue walked around the outdoor stage and stood at the podium, scanning the nearby area, and said that he wanted local law enforcement to stake out every rooftop that had a line of sight to the stage to prevent an assassin from using that location to shoot the president. He also ordered local officers to prevent employees from entering nearby office buildings with windows facing the stage for a similar reason. Several hours before the president took the stage, this agent made sure that all bases were covered in the security perimeter, including rooftop guards.
Based on my experience, I cannot understand why a shooter was allowed to climb onto a rooftop and shoot Trump. This complete lack of security nearly cost the former president his life. Other errors I identified include officers allowing Trump, as he was being led off the stage, to pause and punch his fist into the crowd, which exposed his head and upper torso to a potential bullet. Officers allowed him to do the same thing when he got back into his SUV, which exposed him to further harm.
The officers taught me to always assume there is more than one attacker, even if the primary one has already been eliminated. The officers who allowed Trump to pause his evacuation and salute the crowd were negligent in their sacred duty to protect the former president at all costs. When Ronald Reagan was shot as he left the Washington Hilton Hotel, video footage shows officers pushing the president headfirst into the limousine and immediately pulling him out of harm’s way. In Trump’s case, once he was placed in his vehicle, it did not move from its stationary spot for minutes, instead quickly moving from the scene of the threat to the hospital.
An independent, high-level commission with expertise in law enforcement and military tactical leadership must swiftly investigate the security failures we witnessed and identify best practices for the Secret Service to employ.
Billerica resident Rick Pozniak, who also promoted trips for First Lady Barbara Bush, has spent decades in public affairs and crisis communications, areas he now teaches at local universities.
