Here I just want to highlight three self-imposed communication failures of Secret Service that turned it deaf, blind, and dumb, while Acting Director Rowe fudges to preserve “worthy of trust and confidence”:
This says almost nothing of its other failures in defining sniper views, defining sniper locations, coordinating with local LEO, executing.
----Deaf to real-time radio----
In Rowe’s testimony to Congress, he stated that SS snipers did not know that there was a man on the roof of AGR until after shots were fired. Quote:
“Based on what I know right now, neither the Secret Service counter sniper teams, nor members of the former President’s security detail, had any knowledge that there was a man on the roof of the AGR building with a firearm. It is my understanding those personnel were not aware the assailant had a firearm until they heard gunshots.”
So while SS snipers Hercules 1, when they turned northward, probably had learned there was a man on the roof of AGR 6, they still did not know he had a rifle. They may not even have known that there was a man on the roof, specifically, because as late as 6:11 (no sooner than 32 seconds before shot #1), SS snipers were begging for more specific info from PFO. Quote from Ron Johnson’s timeline:
“6:11pm—According to Acting Director Rowe, “a member of former President Trump’s protective detail contact[s] their Pittsburgh Field Office to inquire about the radio update that there was an issue local law enforcement was looking into near the perimeter.”11”
Since SS regularly relies on local LEOs to provide surveillance and info, and SS does this hundreds of times a year, it should have an extreme amount of experience in instructing local LEO how to communicate efficiently to it any information. So the fact that this was not the case on this day is shocking.
Worse, on this day in particular, SS sniper team leader was delaying and diluting information as he/she relayed it to SS snipers, as Ron Johnson’s timeline 5:45-5:53 evidences.
And the worst is this criminal and treasonous negligence of verbal communication (at a minimum) by SS, per this interview by Ron Johnson 2:06-12, that on that day local LEO did provide SS with radios but SS never used those radios!!!
So not only did SS fail to implement an efficient communication channel based on its extensive experience, and not only was it gifted one by local LEO, it also failed totally by not using these radios. It would have known at 6:11:03 from the boosted policeman that Crooks was on the roof with a rifle pointed to the Trump stage.
Rowe misled reporters when he made it seem that the SS’s alleged lack of access to this radio communication was outside its control and not its fault. Quote from this article:
"This was a Secret Service failure, and so they should not be blamed. There was somebody who did in fact radio out that they had seen the individual with a weapon.
“What I can tell you is that that piece of information, that vital piece of information, and by no fault of anyone — it was a very stressful situation. It did not make it over.”
Among the many faults of the SS, certainly one was its fault not to have used the radios provided by local LEO that the latter had been using to relay real-time information.
He again later misled about the radio communication. He claimed that SS did not have “access to certain information, not by anybody’s fault … it just so happened … there might have been radio traffic.” See 18:30-45 of this video.
----Blind to real-time drone surveillance----
The SS was also criminally negligent, if not outright sabotaging, visual communication from local LEO. Senator Josh Hawley reported a claim by a whistleblower about an offered drone. Quote:
" “According to one whistleblower, the night before the rally, U.S. Secret Service repeatedly denied offers from a local law enforcement partner to utilize drone technology to secure the rally. This means that the technology was both available to USSS and able to be deployed to secure the site. Secret Service said no,” Senator Hawley wrote.
His letter also states that, according to the whistleblower, USSS then “changed course” and “asked the local partner to deploy the drone technology to surveil the site,” but only in the aftermath of the attack."
SS planned blindness from the key portion of AGR 6 roof and all roofs behind it, by assigning Hercules 2 to look northward on a barn with view blocked by trees, and assigning Hercules 1 to look southward away from AGR.
----Dumb SS security detail----
One more self-imposed handicap, already noted, was that Secret Service command allowed Trump to continue speaking even after Hercules 1 snipers knew of the need to turn toward AGR. Apparently, Trump’s immediate security detail did not know of the threat, received by SS at 5:45 pm per Senator Johnson, of a suspect with a rangefinder.
----In sum----
- SS failed to instruct local LEO on an efficient way to communicate verbally field information to it
- Local LEO provided SS radios by which it would later transmit real-time verbal information, including at 6:08:20 that there was someone on the roof of AGR, and at 6:11:03 that someone was there armed and laying down
- Yet SS never used those radios
- Then Rowe claimed its lack of access to this information “just so happened” by “nobody’s fault”
- SS repeatedly refused on the eve offers by LEO for LEO to fly a drone, blinding itself to visual communication from local LEO
- SS apparently never updated Trump’s security detail of suspect with rangefinder, muting itself
- SS command and SS sniper team leader were being informed by local LEO of suspect, with detailed pictures and descriptions, but passing on to SS snipers only garbage information and thus handicapping them - delayed warning about Crooks by 8 minutes, sent by email rather than radio, and merely about “suspect in perimeter” rather than the full description.
