Why did the Secret Service fail to protect Trump from being shot?

IT WAS A stunning lapse in security: how did a sniper mount an unsecured rooftop with a direct line of sight to Donald Trump, who was standing a mere 150m away? Based on video footage, it looks like Mr Trump was millimetres from death—saved by a lucky turn of the head an instant before Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year-old from Pennsylvania, fired at him. Crooks killed a rally-goer before being fatally shot himself.

Now the Secret Service, the agency responsible for guarding former and current presidents and their families, as well as major candidates for the presidency, is in the proverbial line of fire. “An incident like this cannot happen,” said Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of homeland security, who called it a “failure”. Lawmakers plan to grill the director of the Secret Service, Kimberly Cheatle, on July 22nd, and hold an inquiry into the “inexcusable” breach at Mr Trump’s rally. The agency will boost the former president’s detail, and assign one to Robert F. Kennedy junior, a third-party candidate whose father was assassinated while seeking the Democratic nomination in 1968. What is the Secret Service, and what explains its glaring failure?

The Secret Service took its modern form at the start of the 20th century. Before that, the idea that a president should be given a government security detail was dismissed as a trapping of royalty; a Secret Service existed, but it was in charge of confiscating counterfeit money. William McKinley’s murder in 1901—the third president killed in the space of 36 years—changed minds, and the Secret Service got its current remit. McKinley’s successor, Teddy Roosevelt, called his guards a “thorn in the flesh”, even if a “necessary” one (he survived a gunshot wound).

As presidents’ travel, gladhanding and photo ops increased, so too did the threats against them and the demands on the Secret Service. John F. Kennedy (RFK junior’s uncle) was assassinated while under its protection; Ronald Reagan was wounded. A would-be assassin shot at the White House while Bill Clinton was inside; another tossed a grenade at George W. Bush. Both were unharmed.

In the past six decades the agency’s staff has grown from 300 to 8,000, and its annual budget has risen from $5m to $3bn. And yet the Secret Service suffered some of its biggest blunders during the Obama administration. After a sniper fired at the White House in 2011, agents chalked up the noise to construction and only realised four days later what had happened, when a housekeeper alerted them to a broken window. The following year brought another scandal: at a summit in Colombia, agents guarding Mr Obama brought prostitutes back to their rooms. Ten were sacked. In 2014 a knife-wielding intruder jumped a White House fence, evaded Secret Service personnel and ran through the building. A government-appointed commission later cited a “catastrophic failure of training” and urged reforms, including that agents should spend a quarter of their work time in training (up from 3% that year). The agency agreed to that target at first, but walked back its commitment a few years later.

There were a few flagrant oversights at the Trump rally near Pittsburgh on July 13th. Crooks perched himself on a rooftop outside what the Secret Service considered the rally’s inner perimeter, meaning the task of securing that building fell to local law enforcement. Clearly that perimeter was too conservative. Agents should have been stationed on that rooftop (law-enforcement personnel were reportedly in the building, just not on the roof). Bystanders spotted Crooks and alerted police a full minute and a half before the firing started. One officer reportedly scrambled onto the roof, but dropped back when Crooks pointed his gun at him. Then Crooks turned towards Mr Trump.

The Secret Service reportedly sent fewer counter-snipers to the rally than it ordinarily would have for this type of event. Some observers speculated that resources were stretched thin by Jill Biden’s visit to Pittsburgh that same day, though the Secret Service denies this. Mr Trump’s regular security detail, reportedly overworked, was said to have been supplemented by less experienced personnel. At least one Republican congressman faulted the agency for refusing prior requests by Mr Trump’s team to boost his detail (“absolutely false”, said a spokesman for the agency). Before the shooting another Republican had accused the Secret Service of hiring diverse staff over competent ones, a remark laced with misogyny; right-wing commentators have amplified that criticism in recent days.

As recriminations flow and lawmakers demand answers, the Secret Service will have to provide some. Joe Biden has ordered an independent inquiry into the shooting while Congress has initiated a bipartisan review. It does not inspire confidence that agents themselves report performing an inadequate job. In 2015 only three in five said in a government survey that their organisation was “accomplishing its mission”. ■