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Okay, I'd really like TheMotte to talk me down from crazy-town and conspiracy-ville.
Exhibit A: Secret Service was warned of an Iranian (or Iran-backed) assassination threat against Trump (Source)
Which means that the Saturday shooting represents a high-water mark in Trump's security detail.
Exhibit B: Secret Service snipers spotted Thomas Crooks in position on the roof 20 minutes before the assassination attempt. (Source) Per the article's timeline:
Which means the Secret Service knew there was an active threat, 10 minutes before they allowed Trump to take the stage. This is separate from the 2-minute 'crowd pointing at guy with gun on roof' warning where the Secret Service failed to move Trump off the stage.
Exhibit C: Secret Service has stated that 'local police' were supposed to be responsible for covering the American Glass Research (AGR) building. However, both the county (Source) and city police (Source) have denied that they were so assigned.
Apparently, there were local police -- including snipers -- inside an adjacent or conjoined building in the complex (Source), but no one's been identified as responsible for the building itself or the roof itself. I've heard unsourced rumors that a SWAT team was supposed to be assigned to the specific roof the shooter used, but instead congregated within the building due to the heat (Source) but there's been no confirmation.
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I know my Hanlon's Razor:
However, at this point I'm gaining an appreciation for Grey's Law:
If the wildest conspiracy theories and worst nightmares were true, if US Secret Service did deliberately set out to create a hole in Trump's security to allow him to be assassinated... what would they have done differently? How much more could the USSS have f***ed up their protection before we'd be comfortable drawing a line between 'smoke' and 'fire'?
And if Hanlon's Razor does bears out and it was in fact merely incompetence... then we apparently live in a world where this is the best the US Secret Service can do while on high alert, actively preparing to defend their protectee against an Iranian-backed assassination attempt. Which leads me to wonder, how vulnerable are the rest of US leadership to enemy agents?
If there are this many layers of "they dropped you on your head as a baby, didn't they?" when the Secret Service has direct warning of a major threat, what the hell kind of protection does the President have, or the Vice-President, or any of the other notable names with a USSS detail?
If the US Secret Service was 'security theater' in the same vein as the TSA, what happens when the curtain is pulled back and everyone sees that the Wizard of Oz is just a sad little man in a booth? Should we expect to see more -- and more successful -- assassination attempts with actual muscle behind them in the near future?
And why in the name of all that is holy does Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle still have a job?!
I totally agree that for practical purposes, the rally was supposed to be a high water mark of security, at least according to the standards of the time. It's not good at all.
From Exhibit B:
This is consistent with one of my speculations I mentioned a few days ago -- that the police did not have a shoot-first mentality and were expected to be point on security outside the perimeter due to outsourcing. I also talked about communication challenges. Most everything so far is still consistent with this framework, which is an incompetence one (gross incompetence to be sure, but perhaps not willful). To be fair, I say mostly consistent because:
These quotes are sending mixed messages. The first part of the quote and the last quote makes it sound like there were some communication challenges and clear confusion. Did the Secret Service know he had a gun? One sniper team clearly oriented themselves in the right direction, but I would direct you to this analysis that states the slope of the roof was such that the snipers did not have line of sight until the last second. However, the second part of the quote seems to suggest that maybe the Secret Service hesitated to take a shot, and THAT would be malicious, or incompetent enough to be malicious, and in that scenario I'd say that we are into conspiracy land as totally worth considering.
I kind of do think this is the case. It's worth noting that despite possible claims otherwise, I think candidates, even of a major party and even ones projected to win, are never going to be Secret Service protected the same as a sitting president. Or at least, are not currently protected the same. I think this is bad, and should change. Because obviously one of the two people are going to be President soon for all practical purposes, but I'm not convinced that the system is set up to reflect that properly.
However, for that matter, I'd also guess with fairly high confidence that the Vice President's protection even worse than Trump's. That might matter when it comes to questions of fairness. (If this is not the case I'd be interested to know). So if the question is "how vulnerable are the rest of US leadership to enemy agents" I'd say the answer is at least moderately vulnerable, yes! After all, in theory and in practice, most of the deterrent effect, at least for foreign nations, is supposed to be a combination of norms and most importantly the threat of traditional retaliation when it comes to assassinations. The system is not currently run that way. Cost cutting happens even at the highest levels, after all. And we are considered to be in peacetime. Obviously standards are different if we are actually at war, and funding is too. Most of the other-people protection is for regular-level crazy people and not dedicated-level crazy people, and I guess normally that is enough? Otherwise we'd see Nancy, not Paul Pelosi being attacked, or things more like that. I don't know any random crazy who would go out of their way to assassinate Vice President Kamala Harris... attention is normally drawn straight to the top.
It also depends on how specific the attack warning is. At times, the US clearly has high specificity intelligence, and the evidence is that they do usually act. Hell, we even warned Russia, practically our global enemy, that they were going to have a terror attack at specifically a concert venue, warned our own visiting citizens of such, and we were right. The reporting hasn't been super clear about how specific or "actionable" the Iranian threat was, AFAIK.
One thing is very clear however...
Biden should have fired her almost immediately, quite frankly. Absolutely crazy incompetence even in the best-case scenario. And the buck has to stop somewhere.
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