Secret Service director vows reorganization as members of Congress press him over major lapses

By REBECCA SANTANA

WASHINGTON (AP) — The acting director of the Secret Service said Thursday that the agency is “reorganizing and reimagining” its culture and how it operates following an assassination attempt against Donald Trump on the campaign trail.

Members of a bipartisan House task force investigating the attempt on Trump’s life pushed Ronald Rowe on how the agency’s staffers could have missed such blatant security vulnerabilities leading up to that day in July.

Rowe promised accountability for what he called the agency’s “abject failure” to secure the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, where a gunman opened fire from a nearby building on July 13. Trump was wounded in the ear, one rallygoer was killed, and two others were wounded.

Another assassination attempt on Trump in Florida two months later also contributed to the agency’s troubles.

The task force’s inquiry is one of a series of investigations and reports into the Pennsylvania shooting that have faulted the agency for planning and communications failures. Already, the fallout has included the resignation of the agency’s previous director and changes that increased Secret Service protections for Trump before the Republican won the November election.

During the hearing, Rowe was repeatedly asked by flabbergasted lawmakers how problems so obvious in hindsight were allowed to happen, including communications difficulties between the Secret Service and local law enforcement that help secure events and the building overlooking the rally being left unprotected.

Rep. Jason Crow, a Colorado Democrat, said it was “just wild to me” that at a time of such tech advances in communications that the Secret Service on July 13 was using text messages and emails to communicate in real time about threats.

He also questioned Rowe about the agency’s culture and why so many things went wrong that day “yet nobody said anything.”

Crow mentioned a drone operator who couldn’t get his drone to work and members of a counter-sniper team positioned where a tree blocked part of their view of an area they were scanning for threats. Neither spoke up.

“I’m struck by the lack of that culture,” said Crow, a former Army Ranger. “Why aren’t people saying something? It happened on numerous occasions.”

Rowe said the agency used to have a culture where every agent felt empowered to speak up when they felt something wasn’t right.

“I don’t know where we lost that,” he said. “We have to get back to that.”

Rowe said the agency is putting a much stronger emphasis on training — something that previous investigations noted was lacking — and on doing more regular after-action reviews of events to see what went right and where improvements can be made.

“We are reorganizing and reimaging this organization,” Rowe told lawmakers. He said the agency needs to identify possible leaders much earlier in their careers instead of just promoting people to command positions because they’ve been around for a long time.

Rep. Mark Green, a Republican from Tennessee, said the agency’s conduct during the July shooting seemed almost “lackadaisical.” He said some of the issues that went wrong that day were ”really basic things.”

“It speaks of an apathy or a complacency that is really unacceptable in an organization like the Secret Service,” Green said.

Chairman Mike Kelly, a Republican from Butler, Pennsylvania, stressed the breadth of the task force’s investigation. He said it’s conducted 46 transcribed interviews, attended over a dozen briefings with agencies and reviewed over 20,000 documents. It also visited the site of both assassination attempts and went to the FBI’s laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, to look at evidence.

This is the task force’s second public hearing and the first time that Rowe has addressed it in public. It is scheduled to release a report on its findings and recommendations by Dec. 13.

A separate independent panel investigating the first assassination attempt has said the Secret Service needs new leadership and that “another Butler can and will happen again” without major changes in how candidates are protected.

Trump has not yet named his pick to lead the agency.

Rowe said the agency’s internal investigation identified failures by multiple employees. He noted that the quality of the advance work — the people who go to a location before an event and plan how the Secret Service will protect someone — did not meet agency standards.

“It is essential that we recognize the gravity of our failure on July 13, 2024,” Rowe said. “Let me be clear, there will be accountability, and that accountability is occurring.”