Whose Fault Was The Attack On Trump? - Former CIA Agent Mike Baker

How big of an intelligence failure was this?

Well, it, it's, you, you have to think of it more as a logistical failure as opposed to an intelligence failure. This was a, a breakdown in, in what should be very standard security protocols. And look, the Secret Service does that very well, but clearly, right? And you always have to, you, I, I, I caveat this with one thing. You have to always wait for an investigation to, to finish, right? They're currently in the middle of their own investigation as to what the hell happened. Um, and obviously as soon as this happens, everybody on social media is an executive protection expert, right? So everybody's talking about, you know, exactly how this happened. Well, well, you know, uh, they, I, I, so I think it's important not to get out over your skis, but in a situation like this, clearly it would be insane to say that there weren't, uh, failures, there weren't breakdowns here. And even people with no experience can, can look at this and say, "I'm sorry. How, how did you not have somebody up on top of a roof that had line of sight to the stage, to the rally event?" Uh, and so typically, look, when, when something like this happens, and I, I've done countless, you know, advanced plannings and security assessments and risk and threat assessments, and, and, and typically when something happens like this, it's not one thing, right? It's, it's a, it's a series of, of mistakes or missteps that compound and then you end up with this, this goat rope that never should have happened. Um, so they're doing an investigation. Uh, Congress, of course, has called for an investigation. I wouldn't expect anything to come from that, um, because Washington DC is where all investigations go to die. And, uh, but the, uh, the, the bureaus is involved, uh, Secret Service obviously doing their own hot wash. Uh, and they sit underneath the Department of Homeland Security, you know, so if DHS does a review, fine. But there's so much video footage of this, right? And it happened in real time with so many people watching and so many different angles that I think in this case, unlike sometimes, sometimes you get investigations of a, of a, of a, of an event and you don't get much transparency, right? Because internally they're trying to figure out, okay, how do we improve this? Well, you don't wanna necessarily talk about all that activities because you're informing people who might have nefarious intent. But here, it was, it was clear for everyone to see that there was a significant number of issues and problems.

Whose responsibility, who does the buck ultimately stop with when we're talking about this? Homeland Security, Secret Service, local law enforcement?

Well, I think what you're gonna find likely is, first of all, in terms of who has primacy on the ground, it's the Secret Service, right? So they established a security perimeter, and then according to at least early reports and what, what Secret Service is saying is then they designated local law enforcement as having control outside that designated security zone, which included the building where the shooter, uh, took up position. But that's, you know, ultimately it's the Secret Service's responsibility. So they should have obviously said, "Okay, so what are you doing in relation to those buildings that have line of sight?" And if local law enforcement said, "Well, we've got a, we've got a couple of unarmed officers that are patrolling the ground" (laughs) and, you know, interacting with the attendees out on the ground, then you'd say, "Okay, well how about you give me a state trooper or one of your local officers up on that rooftop and that one over there?" Any building, right? Uh, that's got line of sight. Uh, and you post somebody up there, just cover it down. That's Secret Service's ultimate responsibility, even if, you know, theoretically, okay, on paper this area over here is under the control of local au- authorities. So there is a procedural problem, there's a command and control problem, there's a communications problem during the course of this rally. I think you'll also find there was some, uh, command and control issues in terms of the ability for the sniper or the counter-sniper team on site, and they had a couple of them up there, um, to act, right? And there was probably, I don't know this, I'm speculating, right? But I'm speculating based on experience from past events that, you know, there may have been a lag time in getting the, you know, the go/no-go figured out in terms of taking a shot on the, on the target. Uh, there may have been problems at the top of Secret Service in terms of what did they allow for as a security package for former President Trump?