ABC News: Secret Service Director Interview
This post won’t be relevant for long, but Trump was shot 3 days ago and this is the first interview of the Director of the Secret Service. Even in her own words, Kimberly Cheatle sound unfit for duty.
As the head of the agency, Cheatle said it’s her responsibility to investigate what went wrong and make sure nothing like it can happen again.
“The buck stops with me,” she said. “I am the director of the Secret Service, and I need to make sure that we are performing a review and that we are giving resources to our personnel as necessary.”
Cheatle said she would not resign from her role.
Cheatle won’t resign, so what does she think, “the buck stops with me”, means?
It’s not Cheatle’s job to investigate when something goes wrong. Her job is to make sure something like this never happens. If it does happen, it’s time to go.
Cheatle responded to reports that the suspect was seen and identified as potentially suspicious before he opened fire, saying that “a very short period of time” passed between then and the shooting.
“Seeking that person out, finding them, identifying them, and eventually neutralizing them took place in a very short period of time, and it makes it very difficult.”
This is her response in an interview that she agreed, and possibly prepared, to do. Cheatle has experience as a Secret Service agent, how can she be so inadequate? If several attendees see a shooter on the roof, get Trump off of the stage. It isn’t hard to figure that out.
“In this particular instance, we did share support for that particular site and that the Secret Service was responsible for the inner perimeter,” Cheatle said.
The Secret Service is responsible for the safety of the VIP. Cheatle is obviously not the entire problem. There is something wrong with the agency. Local law enforcement may provide assistance, but it’s the Secret Service’s responsibility.
Cheatle also said that local authorities were tasked with securing the building where the alleged shooter fired the shots before being taken out by a Secret Service sniper, and confirmed that local police were present inside the building while the shooter was on the roof.
Tasked by whom? The Secret Service assigned that task to local law enforcement, but never followed up to make sure the job was getting done. Cops were inside the building that the shooter climbed up on. They were slacking, but the Secret Service should have had an agent there to keep them on track.
That building in particular has a sloped roof, at its highest point. And so, there’s a safety factor that would be considered there that we wouldn’t want to put somebody up on a sloped roof. And so, the decision was made to secure the building, from inside” she said.
Cheatle must be a diversity hire because that is just plain stupid, but she said it out loud. The roof has a very mild slope. The counter sniper team that took out the shooter was on a sloped roof. Securing the building from the inside is ridiculous, and obviously wasn’t effective.
Cheatle should be fired for this interview. Saying so many stupid things in a row makes it clear that she doesn’t have the first idea how security works.