One of my first actions as acting director was traveling to the Butler farm show site to better understand how our protection failed. As a career law enforcement officer and a 25-year veteran with the Secret Service, I cannot defend why that roof was not better secured. Neither the Secret Service countersniper teams nor members of the former president’s security detail had any knowledge that there was a man on the roof of the AGR building with a firearm. I think this was a failure of imagination, a failure to imagine that we actually do live in a very dangerous world where people do actually want to do harm to our protectees. I think it was a failure to challenge our own assumptions, the assumptions that we know our partners are going to do everything they can.

Source: New York Times July 31, 2024 01:06 UTC