It typically starts with a meeting with campaign staffers and usually ends without incident — a presidential candidate striding off stage and being whisked to the next stop on the campaign trail.
But the U.S. Secret Service’s advance planning for what outwardly seems like a routine political event is actually an intricate, multilayered process. It typically involves several specialized and senior agents strategizing, assessing and approving a detailed protection mission behind the scenes for days ahead of time, according to five former agents and one current one who have been directly involved in such planning.
For an outdoor campaign event, a comprehensive security plan put into place by the agency generally runs smoothly, said the former agents, some of whom spoke anonymously to discuss security practices.
But last Saturday’s campaign rally that turned deadly in Butler Township, Pennsylvania — with multiple shots fired at former President Donald Trump and into a crowd, killing one man and critically wounding two others — underscores what can go wrong despite that detailed planning, the ex-agents said.
“There is no such thing as 100% security,” said Paul Eckloff, who served as a Secret Service agent for 22 years, including on details protecting Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Trump. “There will be vulnerabilities. You try to mitigate those as much as you possibly can. You monitor the things you can, and you plan for contingencies.”
Here’s how the Secret Service typically plans security for presidential candidate campaign events — along with the evident breakdowns in the plan at the Trump rally, according to the former agents.
ADVANCE TEAM DEPLOYS
Planning usually begins with the Secret Service sending an advance team to scout the venue and meet with the candidate’s staff three to five days before an…
Read the full article here
