by Susan Crabtree
A Secret Service counter sniper who called for the firing or resignations of all top agency leaders in a scathing email confirmed to colleagues Monday night that he meant to send the missive to every employee in the agency’s Uniform Division.
The sniper told his colleagues in two emails Monday night that he no longer could contain his anger after enduring a “CYA culture” for years at the agency and after two weeks of obfuscation and out-right lies by Secret Service leaders in the wake of the July 13 assassination attempt against President Trump that killed firefighter Corey Comperatore and critically injured two others.
The Secret Service sniper, whom RealClearPolitics has agreed not to name out of concern for retribution against him, at first only provided a short note of outrage in response to the department-wide announcement of the creation of a new division for “advanced research and capabilities” when it comes to using technology to help protect presidents, former presidents, their families, and other protectees.
“A day late and a dollar short…in light of recent events,” he wrote in a first email sent to all his Uniform Division colleagues.
When asked by another employee if “he meant to send this to everyone,” the frustrated sniper affirmed that it was intentional before sounding off in a lengthy follow-up email in which he pressed for agency reforms and predicted another assassination attempt before November.
The agent railed against agency “supervisors” and “leaders,” whom he accused of refusing to listen to snipers and other “technicians” on reforms and technical innovations that could improve their ability to protect presidents, former presidents, their families, and other dignitaries under their watch.
“I know many look at [counter sniper] team as ‘guys who sit on the roof’ and don’t do much,” he wrote. “But our responsibility, our MISSION, is not about protecting an EMPTY White House located at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. It’s about preventing and stopping another JFK-style assassination, in whatever city that may be. Sadly, we have fallen short for YEARS.”
“The agency needs to change, and if not now, when?” he pressed. “The next assassination in 30 days?”
Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, read from the email when questioning acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe at a Senate hearing Tuesday. She demanded to know why the “public has lost trust” in the agency’s “mission to protect” after the assassination attempt. Blackburn noted that the counter sniper who wrote the email ended it by arguing that the “motto” of the Secret Service is “CYA,” an acronym for “cover your a–.”
“And every supervisor is doing it right now,” the Secret Service sniper’s email concluded.
Rowe, during his testimony Tuesday, said he had implemented a number of changes to the agency after former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned amid bipartisan outrage after her appearance before the House Oversight Committee last week in which she alienated the committee and provided few answers to pressing questions about the agency’s failures on July 13.
Secret Service agents and officers also tell RCP that they have been given far more resources in the two and a half weeks since the Butler rally after years of being asked to do more with limited resources while senior agency officials received tens of thousands of dollars in annual “executive leadership” bonuses.
In his opening statement Tuesday, Rowe said he was “ashamed” of the Secret Service’s inability to protect the president and rallygoers at the Butler rally and could not defend “why the roof was not better secured.”
Rowe laid out some changes he is implementing, including “expeditiously” providing more Secret Service personnel and assets at campaign events, instituting multi-layered supervisory vetting and sign-offs of all security plans for events and rallies, and instituting “expanded” use of drones to help detect threats on roofs and other elevated areas. Rowe also said he has directed resources to facilitate communications between agents and officers on the ground and state and local partners to provide “enhanced radio interoperability” that the Butler rally lacked.
But Secret Service agents and officers told RCP they had been pressing for some of these technological advancements and security enhancements for years, but had been ignored by their supervisors. At the July 13 rally, Rowe conceded during the hearing that even though they had a drone in the air roughly two hours before the rally began, the agency’s counter-drone system that could have stopped the shooter before he opened fire was down for two hours because of an Internet broadband issue.
A concept obviously foreign to government workers is that employment is a contract. The employee, for wages and benefits, agrees to perform a particular task or function. In most cases, it is understood that failing to perform those tasks or functions results in termination of employment and LOSS of those wages and benefits. In the deep state perpetual government world, when employees fail to perform up to standards, the government simply hires more workers to fill the gaps. And so on and so on and so on.
The only thing that is going to get their attention and possibly change the culture is to start firing people for cause. Taxpayers demand it.
Good point.
You reminded me of when Trump was running the first time and VA workers would just sit and do nothing all day.
If a doctor needed a patient’s file, too bad.
One doctor got so fed up he found the file himself and was written up then punished for doing that.
Trump did fire a bunch of these flakes.
The VA was better off without them.
No one is put on leave, fired or held accountable in any way. There is systemic corruption in every facet of the government.