The attempted assassination of Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on July 13 was the biggest failure of the American secret services in recent decades - namely, after the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan in 1981, writes The Wall Street Journal.
Several committees of the US Congress intend to investigate the actions of the special services. The main question the entire world is asking right now is: How did a 20-year-old lone gunman manage to take up a firing position on a rooftop in close proximity to Trump's speech? The bomber wounded Trump in the ear and was then shot dead by the authorities. Trump himself admitted that the bullet would have killed him if he had not turned at the last moment.
„The reality is there is no excuse. The Secret Service did not devote sufficient resources to surveillance on an open roof 100 yards from the scene,” said former Secret Service agent Bill Pickle. He emphasized that the shooter generally should not have fired a single shot if the intelligence had provided the necessary level of security.
At the same time, the publication notes, a sniper from the Secret Service killed the criminal “a few moments” after the shooting started at the rally. Few details are known about what security measures intelligence had in place before the rally in Pennsylvania. Former Secret Service officials told reporters that the agency typically checks nearby buildings and businesses before such events and also cooperates with local law enforcement on surveillance and security outside the perimeter of the event.
The intelligence agency's work is further complicated by election season, as presidential candidates tend to have erratic schedules and may have unplanned events, leaving the Secret Service less time to prepare for them. The WSJ reports that the Trump campaign officially announced the rally in Pennsylvania on July 3, ten days before it took place.
Investigations will assess how the Secret Service interacted with local police and used technology, including drones, to identify potential threats. The intelligence agency is also likely to face questions about the extent to which it relied on local law enforcement for support and whether federal or state officials knew of the looming threat hours or minutes before the shooting.
Four sniper teams are said to have been at the Trump rally. There is still no answer as to how they did not notice the shooter, who was on the roof for minutes, adjusting his weapons to shoot at Trump.
Participants in former US President Donald Trump's campaign rally in the state of Pennsylvania saw an armed man on a roof and alerted the police about him two minutes before the shots were fired, The New York Times reported. Trump, who will be the Republican Party's nominee for president in November, was slightly wounded in the right ear and was rushed off the stage of the rally by Secret Service agents. As a result of the shooting, a person who took part in the rally died, and two more were injured.
The director of the US Secret Service, Kimberly Cheatle, said yesterday that the shooting at the Trump rally was "unacceptable" and that he will not resign from his post. "I'm the director of the Secret Service, and I have to make sure that we're doing an assessment and that we're resourcing our personnel to function as effectively as they need to,'' Cheatle told ABC News.