00:00The Secret Service now is in a shooting war and the fact that somebody with all those weapons
00:06was able to get so close and then suddenly sprang upon a checkpoint, that is not a win for the
00:12Secret Service. An assassination attempt during the annual White House Correspondents Dinner has
00:17sprung a chorus of criticism over the security at the venue, which even the alleged gunman mocked
00:22in a manifesto he sent to his family before he tried to crash through security. The gunman,
00:27Cole Thomas Allen, was able to sneak a shotgun, a handgun, and multiple knives into the building,
00:32where President Trump, most of his cabinet, and many top members of Congress were mingling with
00:37journalists. To better understand what went wrong, the New York Post spoke to a former Secret Service
00:42agent with experience securing the very same venue. Hi, I'm Timothy Miller. I'm the president of
00:48Lionheart International Services Group, a former Secret Service agent and also a former Homeland
00:55Security agent. When you look at the heroism of the Secret Service agents on the ground,
01:00immediately reacting, keeping the president and all those in the ballroom safe, it was a tremendous win,
01:07but it was also a security failure in the planning aspect. We saw this in Butler. Remember that more
01:14than 90 percent of a successful Secret Service event rests with the planning. We call it the advance work.
01:21And the fact that somebody with all those weapons was able to get so close to a room full of
01:28people that
01:28could have been hurt or killed is concerning. And it does beg the question, how do we reimagine the
01:35Secret Service given the modern threats? In times past, we wouldn't have even thought necessarily
01:40about securing the entire hotel. However, we would have thought about from the entrance,
01:47any entrance into the hotel all the way to the ballroom. Those areas should be thoroughly covered
01:53and protected. In this case, there were folks that were able to freely come and go in the lobby.
01:58That allowed this person, we're still trying to figure out what happened, but to pre-stage weapons
02:04close to the event and then suddenly spring upon a checkpoint. That is not a win for the Secret Service.
02:11The Secret Service is proactive. It wants to plan for that and stop it way before. During the planning,
02:19during the advance process, there weren't enhancements which would have expanded out the
02:26security perimeters. Same thing we saw in Butler. We saw a shooter inside of a security perimeter. So
02:38how do we expand the Secret Service's zones of protection to make sure stuff like this doesn't
02:44happen? The Secret Service now is in a shooting war. It is what it is. That's never been the case
02:51in
02:51American history. A Secret Service agent was shot. We saw President Trump shot. It's now a shooting war. There's no
02:59more theory behind this. We have to protect our president as if he is in a combat zone. That's a
03:07sad commentary on America, but that's where we are. And that means the Secret Service has to reimagine
03:14itself. We have to do things differently. Maybe it's hardened checkpoints with ballistic protection.
03:19There are a lot of things we can do. But by the way, the train is running down the track.
03:24We don't have
03:25time to figure it out. We have to make those changes quickly. The Secret Service operates on
03:29threat-based intelligence. Threat-based intelligence against this president has never been higher.
03:36And so they are actively using methods that are trying to prevent exactly what happens Sunday night.
03:43Now, the question is, why didn't it work? This is not about the Secret Service. It's about the mission
03:51of the Secret Service to protect the leaders of the free world. Hey, if our people don't feel safe
03:57going to political events, we have a problem in the U.S. If we don't think our enemies are watching,
04:04we're stupid. They watch every one of these events, and they hear people pontificate and evaluate.
04:10If we don't think that those folks that really want to hurt us and are highly trained or watching
04:17these videos and watching the commentaries, we're foolish. We also know that a lot of people crossed
04:23into the country that hate us, that have fought against us on foreign battlefields, and now they're
04:29here. So I do think it's time for Congress to step in and say, whoa, wait a minute, we've got
04:34to rethink,
04:35reimagine how we're doing protective operations. Some of the things I think that could happen quickly
04:41is bringing more special operations guys, stepping out of active roles, highly trained in the military,
04:49and bringing them into the mix. Because at the end of the day, remember, this is a shooting war now.
04:55It's not theory. It's a shooting war. They're trying to shoot and kill our leadership. We can't let that
05:02happen. We need to do whatever it takes to make sure that our leaders are safe. And that includes
05:08reimagining how the Secret Service does what it needs to do. And to his point, President Trump's
05:14point, he's the only one of us that's been shot in the head. So he understands the importance of
05:20going into safe places. Now, he's been very gracious with the Secret Service and with the police,
05:27and I respect him for that. Is the ballroom needed? Absolutely. Let me tell you, I've worked at the White
05:33House. There's no safer place. And the issue, again, goes back to the mission. If we own it in
05:39its entirety, we can protect it. That's what didn't happen at the Washington Hilton. It didn't happen
05:46in Butler. And so it's time to rethink and reimagine how we do business. Because again, we're in a
05:53shooting war now. Not theoretical, factual. The Secret Service has to win all the time. And so there
06:01wasn't one glaring thing per se. There were a common, a number of things probably I would have done
06:08differently. But I will say this, at the end of the day, the Secret Service stepped up when the
06:14emergency occurred, and they did what only they could do, which is to put down the threat and to
06:20keep everyone else safe.
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