By: John C. Wohlstetter, Senior Fellow
Hollywood Original: 1954
On July 13, Butler, Pennsylvania eerily replayed a long-ago classic 1954 film, Suddenly, via an attempted presidential assassination, but with grim reality rather than Hollywood magic. Frank Sinatra, free off his Oscar-winning performance as Best Supporting Actor in the 1953 film From Here to Eternity, plays a psychopathic assassin hired to assassinate the president, whose train is to stop in a small town named Suddenly. He and his accomplices seize a house on a hill overlooking the train station. Taken hostage are a pacifist widow, her son and her ex-Secret Service grandpa. At the last minute, the plot is foiled, partly through the efforts of a hero local cop played by Sterling Hayden. A TV repairman, fixing the set, sees a chance to help disrupt the plot by hooking up an iron table on which the rifle is mounted to the TV’s 5,000 volts. Then the ex-Secret Service agent clandestinely spills water onto the floor. A henchman sighting through the rifle is electrocuted. Then Sinatra takes over the rifle, but the train passes through without stopping; he is then shot dead by the widow and the cop.
A visit to the film’s Trivia page reveals startling facts: (1) A real-life assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, reportedly viewed the film days before murdering JFK; (2) the film was based on a short story by Richard Sale, who took inscription from the fact that Dwight Eisenhower, during his presidency, travelled by train from the White House to Palm Springs, California, as his wife, Mamie, hated to fly; (3) two real-life presidents, Benjamin Harrison and Franklin Roosevelt, actually rode a train through the small California town where the film was made, with FDR having stopped there to speak.
Further perspective comes from Eddie Muller, Turner Classic Movies film noir expert, who in 2018 offered his Intro and Afterword takes on the film. He concludes that the film was not a major cultural influence, but simply an early entry into a film genre about psychopathic and sociopathic killers.
Real Life Replay: 2024
In stark contrast to the superb performance of the authorities in the 1954 thriller, the July 13 assassination attempt that nearly cost former (and possible future) president Trump his life was made possible by epic, astonishing failures by the Secret Service and local authorities. They were of such magnitude that Director Kimberly Cheatle was forced to resign the day after the July 22 House Oversight Committee hearing at which she gave serial evasive answers—essentially, stiffing the Committee and enraging Members of both parties.
In her July 22 testimony, Cheatle said that her agency’s mission is protecting the nation’s leaders, and called the agency’s performance “the most significant operational failure in decades,” yet still gave the agents an “A” grade for July 13. (Many Members acknowledged that those who put their bodies over Trump after the first shots were fired acted heroically.)
This birds-eye panoramic view (3:56) of the July 13 site, taken by a drone after the event space had been completely cleared, dramatically illustrates all the major factors that led to near-catastrophe for the nation.
Nine huge failures that day are clear. In summary, they center around: (a) failure to follow through on a potential threat during the hour prior to the start of the event—one cop saw the a “suspicious man” (5:19) using a range-finder 30 minutes before the shooting; (b) failure to keep Trump off the stage until a known potential threat was neutralized; (c) failure to hustle Trump away from the site when it was not known if there were additional shooters; (d) failure to secure a landmark local building whose roof gave shooters a direct easy shot for a rifleman; (e) failure of Secret Service counter-snipers to shoot the rifleman in the 11 seconds before he fired; (f) failure to use drone surveillance as part of the security plan—whereas the shooter used a drone to survey the site. Indeed, the shooter sent multiple drone flights; he began researching the event upon its announcement on July 3, and registered for the event on July 7. The shot that took down the would-be assassin was a “million-to-one” shot, as the shooter was sheltered by the roof lip, and only the top of the shooter’s forehead and eye behind the gun scope were visible.
A former Service agent stated (2:40) that there was “definitely” pre-planning by the shooter. There will be a “hard look” at technological capabilities; more resources are needed for the campaign detail. We face the highest threat level we’ve ever had, and lack resources. An ex-US Army sniper weighed in (4:50): This is a shot your boot-camp trainee makes within the first nine weeks of training, and they eventually train to hit targets at 300 to 500 yards. This was “massive negligence to the point of me speculating about what was intentional and what wasn’t.” Noting “massive DEI”—the politically incorrect anesthetic buzzwords Diversity, Equity, Inclusion in the Biden years—he said that in this instance “DEI” means “d-i-e.” At 200 yards an average grouping capability for a rifle that holds one degree of angle is 2 inches: the average human head is 6” by 8”; the shoulder width is 20 inches; and head-to-waist is 40 inches.” Within five minutes a novice could make this shot 9 out of 10 times.
At the July 22 House hearing, Rep. Pat Fallon (R-TX) recounted how he made 15 of 16 hits with an AR-15 rifle, having only fired the weapon once before:
I have never had any long-gun training in my life. I own an AR-15, and I last time I shot it, I shot it one time my whole life, was six years ago. That is, until Saturday.
We recreated the events in Savoy, Texas. We recreated what happened in Butler. I was lying prone on a sloped roof at 130 yards at 6:30 at night and fired with two different scopes.
So I shot eight rounds from both. You know what? The result was 15 out of 16 kill shots, and the one I missed would have hit the president's ear. That's a 94% success rate, and that sure was a better shot than me," he declared. "It is a miracle President Trump wasn't killed.
It was left, however improbably, to AOC to pose a vital question, namely, why the Secret Service security perimeter for the event did not encompass the effective shooting range for AR-style rifles, i.e., about 400 to 600 yards. Director Cheatle gave wandering evasive answers about the Service dealing with many types of weapons in various circumstances.
This video taken (0:15) by Rep. Eli Crane (R-AZ) shows the view from a building next to the shooter’s perch, offering agents a clear view of the roof; agents had access to this vantage point but never used it.
As we learn more daily about the shooter, two noteworthy early mistakes are a caution against prematurely trusting early reports from stressful, highly newsworthy events—the former affecting eyewitness accounts and the latter, reporters rushing to get the story out first. In this case, it turns out the the shooter was neither a member of his high school rifle club, nor was he bullied. (The school issued an online statement rebutting false reports, and said that while it will cooperate with investigations, as a result it will limit disclosure of information as to school policies, interactions with investigators and law enforcement protocols.)
On another front, we learned this week that the Service bureaucracy denied repeated Trump campaign requests for beefed-up security. The campaign asked for more agents and magnetometers at large public events, plus more snipers for outdoor events. Worse, at the event the Service claimed to have relied on local police for outer perimeter protection. But the only police officers who got close to the shooter, were, according to the New York Times, the few who went beyond the area they were supposed to protect. The the local authorities said (3:59) that they made no such commitment; they had seven officers to manage traffic, and no other responsibility.
The crown jewel of excuses for the failures was offered by Cheatle:
That building, in particular, has a sloped roof at its highest point. And, so, you know, 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, you know, the decision was made to secure the building from inside.
As for the roof slope gradient, Donald Trump Jr. said: I can assure you . . . . they’re not worried about a 5-degree pitch on a sloped roof. . . .” For his part, Trump said that Cheatle had visited with him after the attempt, about which Trump offered: “She was very nice. . . . But . . . somebody should have made sure that there was nobody on that roof.”
A retired police officer who served in the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force said (10:37) that protectors always try to be “left of bang”—stopping assailants before they fire; if they fail, the advantage shifts to the would-be assassin. Retired FBI agent Nicole Parker stated (4:52) that Secret Service resources are “stretched thin” due to increasing protection responsibilities; retired Secret Service agent Bill Gage added:
When I first joined the service in 2002, we were only protecting the president, the vice president and a few members of their family. By the time I left, we were protecting the vice president's grandkids, foreign presidents, former presidents who were taking trips overseas. As the list of protectees expanded, so did the list of threats. The Islamic State terror group rose alongside Al-Qaeda. Fears grew about home-grown terrorism. But the Service saw no significant growth in budget or personnel. . . .
Another former agent, Chuck Marino, noted (11:54) that the director had set a goal of 30 percent female agents by 2030, per DEI. Marino has worked with female agents who were as fully qualified as he was. Had Marino been on duty, Trump would have been swept off his feet and rapidly exfiltrated—a move the undersized female agents could never have accomplished—the assumption is multiple shooters and/or a possible diversionary shooter. Retired military veteran John Spears said that Trump has been assigned the B Team.
Retired Secret Service agent Mike Matranga said:
If a countersniper assesses an immediate threat to life or bodily injury during the event, that agent can shoot to kill. The policy at the Secret Service is we do not have a “green light system” where they need to seek authority. They do not need anybody’s permission to neutralize someone.
Finally, Kimberly Cheatle’s affinity for DEI, and her service on the Second Lady’s security detail, induced Jill to promote her for Secret Service Director. Alone, this would have sufficed to remove her. Upon her resignation, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC-1) called for a “reset” of the agency.
Broadly speaking, one may divide events that do not call for resignation of top management, and those that do. In the first category one may put hitherto successful pharmaceutical executives, whose companies issue vaccines that cause fatalities from a small number of customers. Probably no vaccine has ever caused zero fatalities. While monetary compensation to victims, however, small in number, must be paid, executives may be allowed by the courts to stay on and oversee remedial measures.
But: When there is an utter and complete failure of executives to fix a readily fixable problem, or when bad management exacerbates a fixable problem, and the threat of grave injury for death is readily foreseeable, termination of the responsible executives is called for—even, an essential element of addressing the problem.
Such is the case with a Secret Service management team that fails to prevent a near-assassination of high-value protectees and their families, foremost of whom are presidents, presidential candidates and former presidents, and their families. As has been universally recognized, a successful assassination was ultimately thwarted by a millimeter miss due to the former president turning his head at exactly the right instance to avoid death or serious injury. Alas, a few spectators were not so lucky.
In searching for the causes for major strategic failures, this assessment by a seasoned national security professional compares Butler, Pennsylvania to Pearl Harbor:
The keys to understanding are cognitive dissonance , confirmation bias, and normalcy bias. “Cognitive dissonance” simply means “the sudden confrontation with the unbelievable,” a conflict between new information and established expectations.
With “confirmation bias,” an individual tries to come to terms with cognitive dissonance by defaulting to the most comfortable interpretation of what he is seeing. At Pearl Harbor this meant assuming that the low flying planes were part of a drill, at Butler it likely meant initially disbelieving the evidence of one’s own eyes.
‘Normalcy Bias’ Threatens Our Security
“Normalcy bias” represents a special case of “confirmation bias.” This refers to a latency period, the period of incomprehension and inaction following the recognition of acute danger, the moment when someone “freezes.” At best, this involves delayed reaction, at worst it represents a virtually paralytic refusal to believe “this” is happening, whatever the awful “this” might be.
Bottom Line. The Secret Service needs a top-to-bottom overhaul, with the funds and other resources needed to do so. DEI must be completely eliminated, with merit the sole yardstick for all aspects of planning and operations. Many more employees besides the director must be fired.
John C. Wohlstetter, the author of Presidential Succession: Constitution, Congress, and National Security (Gold Institute Press, 2024), is a senior fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington, DC-based national security, and foreign policy think-tank.
