How Secret Service Missed the Trump Shooter

And why we are going to be blamed for it

The near-miss attack on former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally yesterday was the U.S. government’s biggest national security failure since January 6. This is clear not just from how close the would-be assassin got to succeeding, but from the Secret Service’s obliviousness to the threat of political violence, as evidenced by a little-noticed interview last Sunday. 

“There’s nothing specific and nothing credible out there right now.” That’s what Secret Service director Kimberly A. Cheatle told ABC News on July 7, responding to a question from George Stephanopoulos about whether the “extreme political polarization” poses a threat to the agency’s protectees.

Extreme polarization, the most obvious feature of our political culture, elicited barely a perfunctory nod from Cheatle, who said simply that it was “something that we take into consideration.” 

The most heated presidential election in living memory — with Trump warning of a “Biden invasion” of immigrants and Biden delivering increasingly fiery speeches about Trump to which supporters last week chanted “Lock him up!” — and all the Secret Service can muster is that they ‘take it into consideration’? I.e., the polite way of saying “whatever”?

About the only other thing Cheatle had to say on the matter was that “we are tracking all threat streams,” referring to the Secret Service’s intelligence collection efforts. Indeed the agency does track all sorts of threat streams, including, for example, the Internet, something about which many people online seem to be aware.

Always assume federal agents don’t have a sense of humor

Those concerns aren’t paranoia; the Secret Service really does monitor social media, under its Open Source Intelligence Branch. According to Secret Service budget records from this year, “The most widely leveraged area of open source intelligence is social media, with new platforms emerging, existing platforms changing, and millions of users and data available” (emphasis added). 

Here’s just some of what the Open Source Intelligence Branch does, according to budget records:

• “processing electronic communications from the White House containing threatening or concerning language”

• “providing 24/7 situational awareness of publicly available information”

• “high-level, large-scale assessments for protected person[s]”

• “furthering investigative leads and supporting protective intelligence case management by conducting open source research”

This is part of a broader push by the U.S. intelligence community into open source intelligence collection, a dramatic shift that has received relatively little attention. In March, the U.S. intelligence community released its first-ever open source intelligence strategy. Signed by CIA Director William Burns and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, the strategy aims to make open source intelligence “the INT [intelligence] of first resort.” 

But what is the use of any of this if agencies like the Secret Service still can’t perform their most basic function: protecting a former president and presumptive nominee? The government missed something that, at least in broad contours, most ordinary people could have anticipated. That’s because all the gee-whiz technology in the world is useless if you can’t see the big picture, the vibe. And on issue after issue, Washington is missing the vibe that is obvious to everyday Americans. The majority of voters, including even Democrats, have believed since last year at least that Biden was too old to run for reelection, but it took the media until the debate to realize this. Before that, in the runup to January 6, anyone paying minimal attention to the right-wing media could have told you that Trump’s refusal to accept the election results was being echoed by many of his supporters, who were also quite publicly discussing plans to do something about it. For all of what we might think about Trump’s incitement or his role, the Capitol Police and the FBI and the Secret Service and the Pentagon and on and on just weren’t prepared.

No high-level national security official was held accountable for failing to anticipate January 6, as was the case with 9/11 as well. When it comes to national security, the house always wins. You’re already starting to see it happen with the Secret Service. Even Trump, who loves to fulminate about the “Deep State,” quickly issued a statement thanking the Secret Service “for their rapid response.” 

Behold the infallible Secret Service | Getty

Ironically, the most ardent conspiracy theorists who see the CIA’s hand behind everything, and the FBI cheerleaders who think the Bureau is going to save democracy, both share the same assumption: that the national security state is competent.

Within hours of the assassination attempt, the word “staged” became one of the top trends on X (formerly Twitter). The posts reflected the absurd view held by many users that the attack must have been staged — how else could the federal government’s most elite protective detail have missed it? Embedded in the question is the assumption that the Secret Service is infallible, a view dispelled by a cursory glance at the agency’s long list of scandals over the past few years alone.

In the coming weeks, you can expect the Secret Service director to tell Congress that all of the paperwork was in order, that you just can’t anticipate a “lone wolf” actor, that there’s only so much that can be done, and so on. Maybe she’ll even be forced to resign. But the consequences the Secret Service faces will be little compared to that of the public, whose intemperate attitudes and incivility will be designated as the real culprit. It is the public that will be met with some new crackdown by the FBI on “anti-government anti-authority violent extremism” (AGAAVE), its rapidly growing threat category.

Until people stop believing in the fairy tale that the national security state is omniscient, the house will always win.

— Edited by William M. Arkin