There’s a scene in the George Clooney movie, “Ocean’s Eleven”. Don Cheadle is one of eleven thieves tasked with breaking into a vault. His job: to handle the explosives blowing the vault door. Cheadle blows the door, and enters the safe – then an alarm goes off. He turns to his compatriots and says: “Oh leave it out! You tossers! You had one job to do!”
One Job
It’s a tough job, being the Secret Service. There are constant threats to their “protectees”, from social media “death sentences”, “wacko” emails, phone messages and even good old snail-mail letters. And, of course, there are the ones that never make contact, never emerge until they act. The Secret Service has “one job” to do, neutralize those threats and keep the protectee safe. And they have to be right, every time. The attackers only have to “make it” once for the Secret Service to be a “failure”. And the constant pressure of the threats doesn’t change.
The “threat environment” is always bad. When I was working the Carter/Mondale Campaign back in the 1970’s, the memory of the Kennedy and King Assassinations was fresh. Those were by a single gunman, the “lone wolf”. The Service advanced teams would come into town and create a list of everyone that authored crank letters, made crazy phone calls, or somehow seemed to be a danger. The local police contacted all of those folks, most of them just crackpots, and made sure they were “controlled” while the protectee was in town.
All Hands
And when the President was in town, it was an “all hands on deck” moment for all Federal agents. Not only the Secret Service, but FBI, US Marshals, DEA, ATF and all other Federal alphabetical enforcement personnel were dragooned into service, along with all the state and local authorities. And it wasn’t just the black-suited “bodyguards”.
When candidate Jimmy Carter was in town, I was a junior staffer trying to clear a path through the crowd. As I backed up, my elbow bumped into an unshaven guy in an old army jacket behind me. It hit something hard, on the side of his chest – a shoulder holster with gun. As I turned around to see, we locked eyes. All I knew what that I was between a gun and the path of the candidate. The guy slowly raised the lapel on his threadbare coat. The Secret Service “badge of the day” was underneath – he was one of them – Whew!!!
Coordination
When a candidate comes into town, there’s a whole series of groups that need “coordination”. There’s the campaign: first the national advance team, then the actual “main” team travelling with the candidate. Then there’s the state and local campaign folks, working with the national team, figuring out where and how the event can play out. Then there’s the myriad of law enforcement agencies. All of those have to be coordinated – no surprises from any level when the candidate is actually there. Everyone with close contact has to be vetted, every transportation move thought out, motorcade routes (and alternatives) mapped, and all the “what-if” scenarios thought through.
Local hospitals are put on alert, trauma surgeons called in for duty, emergency department rooms isolated and prepped. All for maybe an hour on the ground, and at the height of a Presidential campaign, four, five or even six locations per day. That’s two Presidential candidates, two Vice Presidential candidates (just announced; Ohio’s Senator JD Vance the Republican running-mate), their wives and even adult kids. All happening at the same time, all over the country, event after event, every day now from August to November. And for the Secret Service, the end of one event is just the moment when it’s time to get in the car, or on a plane, to the next stop.
1968 -1976
Threats are magnified by the polarization of our Nation. There is MAGA, and there are the Never-Trumpers, and there the Democrats. There are few left in the middle, few who can “see both sides”. Both MAGA and Democrats are claiming the “end of democracy as we know it” if the “other side” wins. Cries for unity, by either Biden or Trump, are pretty hollow. Unity means agree with us, or YOU ARE THE PROBLEM.
America has been here before. 1968 was a year of riots: race riots as the promise of Civil Rights remained unfulfilled, and student riots against the Vietnam War. Even the Democratic Party was riven: the Democratic President, Johnson, was prosecuting the War to its fullest (and the Pentagon was lying to the public about winning). And Democratic candidates running against him wanted the United States out of the war, now. The Republican candidates were just as dedicated to the War as Johnson was.
It was also a year of political assassination – Martin Luther King Jr and Robert Kennedy. And while there were the same calls for American unity, they also had the same “price tag”: unity and agreement weren’t the same then, or now.
And in my year in Presidential politics, we were all very aware of the dangers, not just of division, but of attack. It never got so ugly with Carter and Ford that polarization was the issue. Even at the campaign level, we still communicated with the Ford Campaign to “smooth out” issues. We didn’t always agree, nor were we always happy; but we always felt like we could “call again”.
The Service
It’s going to take a while, but in the final analysis, the Secret Service will admit that they screwed up in Butler, Pennsylvania. Whether the Service had “responsibility” for the buildings outside of the “security perimeter”, or whether state or local police were delegated the role; in the end, it was the Secret Service’s fault. After all, “they had one job”. They failed to prevent the attack; they’d didn’t keep the shooter off of the building, nor did they “neutralize” him when he was in their sights, before he took his shot. As John Wayne would say; “My fault, your fault, nobody’s fault…” it was their job.
And for those of you who think Trump’s death would end MAGA’ism, I believe you’re sorely mistaken. Trump’s death would make him a martyr to his cause, one that would be a rallying point for decades to come. Smarter, more devious individuals would take up the “fallen” MAGA Flag, and use it to drive their divisive plan through. Trump doesn’t need to die, he needs to be defeated, again, once and for all. Then the United States can move past him, just as we did McCarthyism and Secession.
