There was a serious lapse of security in attempted Trump assassination.

0:00 Speaker 1 With us today. Is Donald mchllick, a secret Service retired and now he is the executive director of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association. Well, good morning, Donald. Tell us how many years were you in the Secret Service?

0:22 Speaker 2 John? I spent over twenty years in his Secret Service. And I’m actually not the executive director of LEO anymore, but I spent over twenty years in a secret service, worked in New York, was on a president’s detail, and spent a lot of time on campaign assignments as well.

0:42 Speaker 1 Which presidents did you handle.

0:45 Speaker 2 Well? When I got hired in nineteen ninety eight, President Clinton was in office and he and the First Lady were in New York. As everybody knows a lot also every former president at the time President Bush forty one, President spent some time with Nancy Reagan when she’d come to New York. Then when I rotated down to DC,

1:05 I got there for the last two years of President Bush forty three, in the first two years of President Obama, and then when I rotated back up to New York afterwards success in campaigns, I spent a lot of time with President Trump in twenty sixteen when he was on a campaign trail and my most important part of my

1:28 Secret Service career was September eleventh in New York City.

1:32 Speaker 1 Wow, those were interesting days September eleventh. What were you ever in my apartment? Because we did a lot with President Clinton during the late nineteen nineties.

1:46 Speaker 2 I’m sure I might have been. I’m sure we might have bumped into each other at some point as the Clintons made their rounds around Manhattan.

1:54 Speaker 1 I’m sure a lot of people have a lot of disappointments of what has happened. You weren’t the Secret Service twenty years ago, thirty years ago? How has it changed in the last twenty thirty years.

2:11 Speaker 2 Well, I retired from the Secret Service in twenty nineteen, and you know the secrets. Yeah, no, not too long ago. And the Service has gone of course over the last twenty years. And we can peg nine to eleven as one of the most pivotal dates for the Secret Service.

2:30 You know, prior to nine to eleven, the Secret Service was in the Treasury Department. It had a protective mission and had an investigative mission, and it was relatively balanced. They could have their protection mission, which had fewer protectees than they have today, and had an investigative mission of counterfeiting, financial crimes and threat cases. Post nine to eleven, that

2:53 dynamic shifted tremendously and protection became increased fonentially, not only for the president and the vice president and the former presidents, but written large of what the Secret Service did, and other people ended up getting protection that traditionally were not under Secret Service protection in the wake of nine to eleven, and that emphasis on protection and the mission of protection

3:18 has only increased substantially over the last twenty years because of the nature of the threats, the nature of the changing cyber landscape, and the nature of how you know, oceans don’t separate us anymore, and our foreign adversaries are closer than ever, and also the fact that the protectees travel more now than they’ve ever traveled before. I mean,

3:39 they took President Biden into Israel a couple of months ago in the middle of a war. It took First Lady Jill Biden into the Ukraine in the middle of a war. And of course we’ve taken Trump, Obama and Bush into Iraq and Afghanistan. So you know, the Secret Service protection mandate has increased exponentially and become sort of

4:02 front and center in everybody’s minds when they think about their Secret Service.

4:07 Speaker 1 Now, some interesting things in this situation. I understand that even though President Trump was former president in the current one of the current leaders in this race in twenty twenty four, that he had only the detail of a former president. Were you aware of that?

4:32 Speaker 2 So the way of the Secret Service staffs is, you know the president, there’s a presidential detail that covers the president his family, a vice presidential detail in this case that covers the VP and her family, and then the former presidents all have their own protective details agents assigned to that president. They’re there, they get to know the

4:53 former president, work with the former president. In the case of President Trump, because he’s a recent former, his protected detail is pretty expansive. I think it’s larger than what people think as far as staffing goes. And then everywhere he goes, he gets support that comes with these events that he does because he doesn’t just do an event

5:15 where he goes, you know, to an ice cream store. He does rout the large events. They’re very dynamic, and the Secret Service has to push resources into all these events in order to make sure the site is secure.

5:26 He’s secure, and that you know the event is the Secret Server security bubble is around this events. Of course, in a case of Butler, Pennsylvania, the Secret Service did that, but clearly there was the failure of the security plan, and the security plan is what the focus of a lot of these investigations is to determine what happened with

5:47 the security plan, where were the breakdowns? Where were the failures? The Pennsylvania State Police commission or testifying in front of the Householmeland Security Committee yesterday that they were supposed to be two police officers positioned at the building the shooter access modern that building, they got called away by a local counter sniper team apparently to go investigate this individual.

6:10 In Secret Service parlance, if you’re posted someplace, you stay there. In this case, those officers moved and want to go find the subject, who they didn’t find till he was already on top of the roof. So there are questions.

6:25 They’re also about the communication link between local law enforcement and the Secret Service, how that information is sent shared, and those are the focus of these investigations coming up in a focus of what happened in Butler, Pennsylvania.

6:43 Speaker 1 I have read that the other day the investigation was that there were different frequencies and when nearwork corresponding amongst themselves that the Secret Service wasn’t might not have been listening to them.

7:04 Speaker 2 John. So, the way the Secret Service works with any time as an event site, they set up what’s called the security room, and in the security room you have the Secret Service personnel with their radios, and then you have individuals from every other agency that’s participating at that site with their radios to be able to communicate and

7:24 deconflict information. It is true though, from the reporting, that the local law enforcement officers were sharing this suspicious individual information amongst themselves and they apparently didn’t share it with the Secret Service until it was almost too late. That’s going to be one of the focuses of the investigations, and one of the things the Secret Service has to

7:44 look at and moving forward is is how to move that that communication loop, make it more robust and make sure that local agencies are speaking the same language as the Secret Service and vice versa, so that way, if a suspicious individuals identify, that information is known and people understand as a suspicious individual because they showed up wearing

8:06 an outlandish costume or suspicious individual because they showed up and they look like they’re dressed to go take out, you know, a bank someplace. That’s the type of detail now the Secret Service has to get into in order to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again.

8:23 Speaker 1 Question, have you ever worked with the current executive director that just resigned?

8:29 Speaker 3 Jessie Oh, the director, Chiel director Chie. Yes, Yeah, I’ve worked the third my career. She was always known as a competent and capable agent. She rose up to the ranks before retiring as the director of Protective Operation that she got called back to serve as the director by President Biden. The Secret Service director’s job is one of

8:57 those jobs in the federal government that is solely presidential appointment, so the president can appoint who they want. Is no Senate confirmation with the Secret Service, jops. So she was President Biden’s pick and she’s been there for three and a half years.

9:12 Speaker 1 What else would you want to tell the American people?

9:16 Speaker 2 Well, I think the focus on this incident has to be looked at in context of the overall history and the missions of the Secret Service. Although the Secret Service has many has a couple of public failures. Those failures you know occur within the context of a history of success.

9:36 There are thousands of threat cases and threats that the Secret Service mitigates and has mitigated throughout its history. There’s also the fact that it’s the only agency in the world where when there’s a failure, it happens on a world stage and it becomes a spectacle. Because most places, if somebody screws up, they don’t know about it. The

9:58 Secret Service is one of agencies where if something happens, the world sees it and the world knows about it. And it’s because of the high esteem most people hold the Secret Service and their capabilities and their reputation as the world renowned protection experts. So right now, I think people need to remember that the men and women of

10:18 the Secret Service are working diligently amongst an increased threat dynamic. They have to deal with the DNC coming up, they are picking up a JD Vance’s family, They’re increasing protection on the VP who’s not a candidate, and they’re also going to be picking up whoever the VP decides to choose as a candidate to run with. So there’s a

10:41 lot going on, and the men and women to Secret Service and that mission have to be front and center all to the American people and to all that is going on right now.

10:53 Speaker 1 Well, thank you for your service, thank you for everything you’ve done for our country, and to continue to speak down for our country. God bless you. Last question, his President Trump had lucky to be his President Trump, lucky to be alive.

11:11 Speaker 2 President Trump is definitely lucky. And it’s unfortunate what happened. It’s dead. What happened, you know. The loss of the victims there is very sad. But we’re very lucky that the president is in one piece. And we’re very lucky that there’s lessons to learn here that the Secret servers can apply moving forward to make sure an incident like

11:33 this never happens again.

11:36 Speaker 1 Thank you so much, and we’ll catch up with you again real soon. And thank you for all from all the things you’ve done for the United States of America. Thank you so much.

11:45 Speaker 2 Thanks John, appreciate you having me on