Well, I woke up today, and the reports on Butler fiasco just got worse and worse. The evidence for (at best) massive, unbelievable incompetence on the part of the Secret Service keeps coming in, to the point that the Director Chick, a diversity hire named Kimberly Cheatle, has found it expedient to blame local law enforcement for allowing a marksman with a high-powered rifle to gain access to a rooftop with a clear line-of-sight shot at Mr. Trump’s head:
The Secret Service said local police were supposed to secure the rooftop from which gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks attempted to assassinate former President Donald Trump.
The federal agency noted the area was outside its designated perimeter for protection.
Local Pennsylvania police officers were responsible for securing and patrolling the factory grounds of American Glass Research, situated approximately 130 yards from where Trump spoke on Saturday, Secret Service representative Anthony Guglielmi said, according to the New York Times.
The Secret Service was assigned to oversee the area where Trump’s rally was held, while local police were brought in to support those efforts and ensure security outside the rally site.
Additionally, CNN reported that one of two local counter-sniper teams was supposed to cover the building where the gunman was positioned.
Neighbors living near Butler Farm Show Grounds claimed they never received visits from any law enforcement agencies, local or federal, in the days before or during the rally despite expecting such security measures as part of the operation, according to the New York Post.
The Secret Service said that relying on local law enforcement for support is a common practice when managing event security.
OK, support by local law enforcement, that’s fine. But depending on them to make sure that a crucial rooftop is clear — that’s not their job; it’s the Secret Service’s job.
So now we have the unseemly spectacle of the director of the Secret Service blaming local law enforcement for her agency’s failure to do its job. Which means that they DELEGATED crucial parts of that job to other actors, which in turn violates the statutory definition of their task. Their job is to protect the president, not to delegate the task to someone else.
Even if the local cops messed up, the responsibility for any failure to protect may be laid solely at the feet of the United States Secret Service.
In a normal, rational political system, Ms. Cheatle’s color coordinated epaulettes would already have been ripped from her uniform, and she would have been forced into immediate retirement while being stripped of her pension. She would be lucky to avoid prosecution for dereliction of duty, or whatever the charge would be for the head of a civilian agency.
But it gets worse.
According to The Daily Mail (hat tip Conservative Tree House), there was no Secret Service sniper stationed near Thomas Crooks’ roosting spot because the slope of the roof was considered too steep:
Embattled Secret Service head Kimberly Cheatle has revealed the fateful and bizarre reason why her agency failed to put an agent on the roof gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks used to carry out an assassination attempt on Donald Trump.
Cheatle, who is facing calls to resign over the massive security failure, said Secret Service officials planning security for Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania considered the warehouse 147 yards away from where Trump spoke to be a risky position for stationing an agent.
[…]
The mistakes that led to Trump being inches away from being killed sparked calls for Cheatle to step down, but she has refused and has now given a baffling explanation as to why there wasn’t a presence on the roof that had a clear line of sight to Trump.
‘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,’ she told ABC News in an interview Tuesday.
‘And so, you know, the decision was made to secure the building, from inside.’
So the building was secured from the inside, BUT a gunman managed to bring a ladder to the back to access the roof, AND lie unnoticed for twenty minutes or so, DESPITE the extremely steep slope of the roof, until the opportune moment arrived.
And somehow all of this is the fault of the sheriff’s office.
As reported by CNN:
One former Secret Service agent took issue with Cheatle placing so much blame on the local law enforcement, telling CNN, “The Service is responsible for everything, not just the inner perimeter. They should make sure all of this is covered.”
That’s exactly correct.
But it gets worse. According to the local news website Beaver Countian (hat tip WRSA), local law enforcement did their best to warn the feds about the threat posed by a potential sniper:
Exclusive: County Officer Warned of Seeing Man With Rangefinder Before Trump Was Shot
A Beaver County police officer warned a command center of seeing a man with a rangefinder before former president Donald Trump was shot on Saturday. The officer had also warned the man was scoping out the roof of the building he was stationed in as a counter-sniper, and that the man returned with a backpack before ultimately scaling the building.
Despite all of those warnings, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park was able to continue in his plan to become Trump’s would-be assassin.
BeaverCountian.com spoke with multiple local law enforcement sources about security provided by agencies from Beaver, Butler, and Washington counties during Saturday’s rally. They claim a lack of manpower and “extremely poor planning” put the former president’s life in grave danger.
[…]
Contrary to reports in several national news outlets, officers say the building just outside of a security perimeter established by Secret Service was in fact occupied by law enforcement.
“There were three counter-snipers located in the building that the shooter eventually used to take shots at Trump,” one officer told BeaverCountian.com.
Just think: It’s only been three days. Can you imagine what we will have learned in a MONTH?
Baron Bodissey, is a fictional character referred to in many of the novels of speculative-fiction author Jack Vance. Within those novels he has the status of an authority, but he is sometimes referred to with amusement or scepticism. Like the 'mad poet' Navarth, he first appeared in the Demon Princes sequence but also is alluded to in a number of other unrelated stories. Unlike Navarth, the Baron never appears in person in these novels, but his monumental, many-volume work Life is frequently quoted. The lengthiest citations from it appear, with varying degrees of apparent relevance, as epigraphs to various chapters in the Demon Princesnovels. (Vance characteristically makes use of substantial passages from imaginary writings, interviews or judicial transcripts as chapter-heading material, especially in that series.) Otherwise, the Baron and his work are occasionally referred to in passing or quoted by characters in the tales. Fictional (and always negative) reviews of Life also appear in The Killing Machine and The Face, usually dismissing it as snobbish, elitist and pretentious; one reviewer expresses a desire to thrash the Baron within an inch of his life before buying him a drink.
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