In another development on the swirling morass of information around the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, now the local SWAT team is speaking out. Monday, on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” members of that team talked about the events of that day and blamed failures in communication and planning for the campaign rally.
Team members said that the day of the rally, they had no contact with the agents on Trump’s Secret Service detail.
“We were supposed to get a face-to-face briefing with the Secret Service members whenever they arrived, and that never happened,” said Jason Woods, team leader for Beaver County’s Emergency Services Unit and SWAT sniper section.
“So I think that was probably a pivotal point, where I started thinking things were wrong because it never happened. We had no communication,” Woods said. “Not until after the shooting.”
By then, he said, “it was too late.”
So, a face-to-face briefing never happened, and the local law enforcement SWAT team – who would presumably be the second critical line of defense after the Secret Service – could not communicate effectively with the federal agency that is primarily charged with protecting the former president.
The Secret Service responded, and the response was distinctly tepid.
Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi declined to respond directly to the comments Woods and his colleagues made to ABC News. He said the agency “is committed to better understanding what happened before, during, and after the assassination attempt of former President Trump to ensure that never happens again. That includes complete cooperation with Congress, the FBI and other relevant investigations.”
If that’s not a perfect example of bureaucratic double-speak, it will do until a better one comes along.
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Granted, I’ve never been a Secret Service agent or a member of a law enforcement SWAT team, but there are a few things about this that would be obvious to any recent graduate of the Army or Marine Corps infantry schools, and that is that command and control in these kinds of situations is heavily dependent on reliable communications between all parties. What’s more, a recent Infantry School graduate would have immediately asked why the hell all those rooftops were left essentially uncovered.
Here’s what it all boils down to for the local law enforcement who were tasked with supporting the Secret Service:
To the men and woman (sic) of Beaver County SWAT, what happened is clear: There was a lack of planning and communication that caused a catastrophic failure in the protection of Donald Trump. They said they saw the problem coming, and they tried to alert the people in charge and sound the alarm.
It’s important to note that this catastrophic failure, as this piece puts it, avoided being orders of magnitude more catastrophic by literally a whisker.
As with all events like this, someone’s name has to be on the blame line. While that 20-20 hindsight allows us insights into what was done and what was screwed up by both parties, this is a blame line that belongs to the Secret Service; they are charged, by statutes, with protecting their principals, and this did not happen. The director of the Secret Service has already resigned in disgrace. But this thing is not, and must not, be left at that.
