The Secret Service could have thwarted the two assassination attempts against former President Trump if it had flown a surveillance drone at the two sites – the Butler, Pennsylvania, rally and the Florida golf course – before Trump set foot in either place, according to members of Congress who have spent months investigating the security failures surrounding the two events.
Trump escaped both attempts to murder him by a combination of sheer luck and the work of well-trained Secret Service employees at the second. In Butler, despite an embarrassing level of security failures, a mere tilt of Trump’s head and a counter sniper’s ability to shoot assassin Thomas Crooks kept Trump alive.
During the September assassination attempt on the golf course, a special agent spotted the barrel of a rifle poking out of the brush and began firing on would-be assassin Ryan Routh, who fled in a car and was later apprehended by police. Still, Routh managed to get within 90 yards of Trump that day.
Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe has since acknowledged that the agency’s many mistakes at Butler, and in comments to the entire Secret Service staff in mid-August, pledged to make “technological” advancements in order to “be in a state of readiness to be able to meet the environment.”
“It’s not just about having the people,” Rowe added, according to a recording of his private remarks to his staff in the mid-August all-hands meeting. “It’s about the technical capabilities. It’s about having that command, control, total domain awareness when we go to a site, or we’re operating in a city [so] we have total, complete awareness of what’s going on, not only on the other perimeter, but right up to it.”
Since the first assassination attempt in July, Rowe has repeatedly stated in private discussions inside the agency that he has fast-tracked a drone program, several sources told RealClearPolitics. It’s clear, however, that Trump’s security detail didn’t use an aerial drone to help provide surveillance of the golf course, although they said the detail had a counter drone program in place that day.
Since at least 2016, the year the Federal Aviation Administration approved rules officially approving the commercial use of small, unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, the Secret Service has resisted implementing a fully operational aerial drone program, according to several law enforcement and military drone experts who spoke to RCP for this story but requested anonymity for fear of reprisal.
Sources familiar with the agency’s decision-making regarding drones argue that the Secret Service tends to rely on its manpower, highly trained special agents, instead of technology.
There’s also deep concern among some agency leaders that the drones could be hacked and weaponized to assassinate protectees, although the Secret Service works closely with the Cybersecurity and Security Agency to prevent hacks on highly sensitive assets.
For the last 20 years, the resistance to drones and other technological advancements has been so strong inside the agency it’s been the butt of jokes. Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service agent who now hosts a popular podcast, says agents ridicule the agency with the phrase: “The Secret Service: Yesterday’s technology tomorrow.”
Concerns about outdated thinking were a focus of Thursday’s first hearing of the House Task Force on the Assassination Attempt Against Trump. Rep. Cory Mills, a former U.S. Army paratrooper who served in the Joint Special Operations Command, pressed the panel to look at “drone capabilities” for “risk management and mitigation strategies that exist now that didn’t exist 20, 30 years ago.”
Mills and Rep. Eli Crane, a Navy SEAL counter sniper who also testified before the House panel Thursday, criticized the Secret Service for its reputation of failing “to evolve to incoming threats” and for a resistance to use the most “modern, updated and efficient” equipment.
In what Sen. Gary Peters, who chairs the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, referred to this week as a “stunning failure,” the Secret Service’s counter drone system experienced technical difficulties on July 13, leading an agent to call a tech support line, where the agent waited on hold, while 20-year-old Thomas Crooks flew his drone over the site.
“One official told us that had the Secret Service’s drone technology worked that day, they likely would have spotted the shooter’s drone and intercepted him long before he could have caused any serious harm,” the Michigan Democrat told reporters Tuesday during a briefing on the panel’s report.
Several sources in the Secret Service community point to the work of Special Agent Rashid Ellis, who they say could have been instrumental in setting up a more innovative and expanded program years before the two assassination attempts against Trump.
But Ellis’ experience, laid out in a lawsuit he filed against the agency earlier this year, reads like a case study of Secret Service leaders’ tendency to engage in petty squabbles, favoritism, and retaliation instead of keeping their focus on the big picture – its mission of protecting presidents, former........