The rooftop where a gunman shot former President Donald Trump during a campaign rally was identified by the U.S. Secret Service as a potential vulnerability in the days before the event, two sources familiar with the agency’s operations told NBC News.
The building, owned by a glass research company, is next to the Butler Farm Show, an outdoor venue in Butler, Pennsylvania. The Secret Service was aware of the risks associated with this, the sources said.
“Someone had to be on the roof or guard the building so no one could climb,” said one of the sources, a former senior Secret Service agent who was familiar with the planning.
Understanding how the shooter got to the roof — despite those concerns — is now a central question for investigators examining how a lone attacker managed to shoot Trump during Saturday’s campaign event.
The Secret Service worked with local authorities to maintain security at the event, including teams of snipers positioned on rooftops to identify and eliminate threats, Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said. But there were no police stationed in the building used by the alleged killer, outside the event’s security perimeter, but only about 148 meters from the stage – within range of a semi-automatic rifle like the one the shooter carried.
The Secret Service designated that roof under the jurisdiction of local law enforcement, a common practice for securing outdoor rallies, Guglielmi said.
Butler County District Attorney Richard Goldinger said his office maintains an Emergency Services Unit team that deployed four sniper teams and four “rapid response teams” to the rally. But he said Secret Service agents were responsible for off-site security.
“They had meetings the week before. The Secret Service ran the show. They were the ones who designated who did what,” Goldinger said. “In the hierarchy of command, they were at the top, they were number 1.”
Goldinger said the Emergency Services Unit commander told him he was not responsible for the security of off-site areas. “To me, everything is under the jurisdiction of the Secret Service. And they will outline from there.”
The former senior Secret Service agent also said that even if local officials “dropped the ball,” it is still the agency’s responsibility to “make sure they comply in advance or at the time.”
“Just because it’s outside the perimeter doesn’t mean it’s considered a vulnerability, and you need to mitigate it somehow,” the source added.
A hail of gunfire occurred minutes after Trump’s speech. The former president put his hand to his right ear, later saying it had been pierced by a bullet, and then fell to the ground as Secret Service agents rushed to protect him. Trump emerged with blood on his ear and face. One participant died and two others were injured.
Witnesses who heard Trump’s speech outside the event’s security perimeter recalled pointing out the shooter to authorities just minutes before the shooting began. After the shooting began, Secret Service personnel shot and killed 20-year-old gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks.
The outcry over the Secret Service’s biggest failure since the assassination of President Ronald Reagan in 1981 comes from both political parties, former agents and security experts.
“My question is, how did he get to that roof undetected?” said Anthony Cangelosi, a former Secret Service agent who worked on protective details for presidential candidates, including John Kerry in 2004.
The Secret Service’s work at campaign events like Saturday’s begins with advance planning, creating a security perimeter and positioning teams on the ground and on rooftops – often in partnership with local authorities. Ground deployments include a counterattack team and cover personnel include countersniper teams.
Guglielmi, the Secret Service spokesman, said the agency had two of its counter-assault officers at the event and filled the remainder of the platoon with at least six officers from Butler County tactical units. The Secret Service also deployed two counter-sniper teams. Two other security units needed for the event were made up of local law enforcement agencies, Guglielmi said. These details were first reported by the Washington Post.
Investigators will want to examine the Secret Service’s security plan for the rally in Pennsylvania, said Cangelosi, the former Secret Service agent. He hopes they discover one of two things: Either the officers failed to come up with an effective plan to keep potential shooters out of the building from which the bandits fired, or the officers on the ground failed to execute the plan.
“I don’t like to make assumptions, but it appears that some mistakes were made, that it was avoidable,” said Cangelosi, now a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.
While it’s common to task local law enforcement agencies with patrolling outside an event’s security perimeter, Cangelosi said, the ultimate responsibility for ensuring all vulnerabilities are covered lies with the Secret Service.
If authorities had stationed an officer in the building where the shooter fired from, Cangelosi said, it’s likely he “wouldn’t have even tried what he tried.”
“You don’t hand over the discretion of what should be done to the local police,” he said. “In other words, you have the outer perimeter, but you would like to say, ‘We need an officer on that roof.’ Not, ‘This is your responsibility, do what you think is best.’”
Jim Cavanaugh, a retired special agent in charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who worked on Secret Service details, told NBC News that although the Secret Service did a good job eliminating the shooter after the shooting began, , the failure to place officers in the building the shooter scaled was “a tremendous oversight.”
“The only way to stop this is to have a lot of people, get there first and command the high ground,” Cavanaugh said. “This is basic, and the Secret Service has been doing this successfully for years, so I’m really surprised they haven’t covered that high ground.”
The questions extended to Congress, where members demanded answers from the Secret Service and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security.
“This raises serious concerns about how a shooter was able to access a rooftop within direct range and line of sight of where President Trump was speaking,” House Homeland Security Chairman Mark Green, R-Tenn., wrote in a statement. a letter to Alejandro Mayorkas, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.
Green asked Mayorkas to provide documentation regarding the event’s security plan, screening of attendees and the level of resources provided to Trump’s Secret Service. A committee spokesperson told NBC News that Republican members would hold a briefing with Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle on Monday “to express their concerns and ask urgent questions.”
Another congressman, Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., wrote to Cheatle, asking who approved the security plan, whether an adequate threat assessment was conducted, whether participants raised alarms, and whether there were failures to follow protocols that allowed the attack happened. .
“I call on all those responsible for planning, approving and executing this failed security plan to be held accountable and testify immediately before Congress,” Gallego wrote in a letter to cheat.
Robert McDonald, a former Secret Service agent who managed Joe Biden’s protection when he was vice president, told NBC News he believes the assassination attempt will prompt soul-searching and procedural changes at the agency.
“The Secret Service will need to ask itself some tough questions here and be prepared to stand up and represent why what happened,” McDonald said.
Cangelosi, the former Secret Service agent, said investigators will also likely ask when agents identified Crooks as a potential threat, how they responded and whether it’s possible they took him down before he fired at Trump.
Secret Service snipers are trained to make quick decisions, he said. But it’s possible that if they noticed Crooks on the roof but couldn’t tell if he had a rifle, the agents waited to shoot him.
“If the shooter can’t tell if he or she has a gun, he or she won’t shoot,” Cangelosi said. “Because God forbid, it’s a child who gets excited about seeing a political candidate, right? So you want to make sure there really is a threat.”
If there had been uncertainty, Cangelosi said, it’s possible the sniper team would have sent officers to investigate and confirm. But investigating a potential threat can take minutes, he said, while a man armed with a semiautomatic rifle can fire multiple shots in a matter of seconds.
That’s why, Cangelosi said, the best defense would have been to plan ahead to keep the shooter off the roof.
“Who wants to be in that position?” he said of the shooters protecting Trump on Saturday. “You need to make a call in a split second. And imagine if you’re wrong.”
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