- [Donald Trump] Take a
look at what happened. (rifle fires)
(crowd screams). - [Narrator] It's the Secret Service's biggest crisis in decades. How did a 20-year-old gunman
climb a rooftop with a rifle and fire shots at former
President Donald Trump from less than 150 yards away? - [Speaker] Shooter's down. Are we good to move? - This is a colossal failure
for the Secret Service. - The Secret Service isn't
just responsible for the safety and security of the protectee. They're also there for the safety and the security of the people that are showing up to these events. So this is tragic all around. - [Narrator] Here's what we
know about the security gaps that led to the assassination
attempt on Trump. - [Speaker] Yeah, look, there he is. - [Narrator] In a video
taken by a bystander shortly before the shooting, the
gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks.

could be seen crawling on a roof, as people were heard pointing him out. - [Trump] See, they shouldn't be here. Dangerous people, criminals. (indistinct) We have criminals. - [Speaker] Come up here! He's on the roof! - [Narrator] And a witness told the BBC... - The police are down there, running around on the ground. We're like, Hey man, there's a guy on the roof with a rifle. - [Narrator] But those alerts, if heard by any officers, didn't seem to make it up the chain back to the command center. - That's a massive communication failure. When I was overseeing sites, we would have Secret Service agents right next to police, with police radio. If there's something that's going on, boom, everybody knows instantly. Quite frankly, if the detail had known there was an armed person climbing up on a roof, they would've evacuated the president right away.

no questions asked. - [Narrator] Beyond that, the Secret Service said it
relied on local law enforcement to secure the building
that Crooks climbed. Typically, Secret Service and local police operate
together in concentric circles. Closest to the principle, in
this case Trump, are teams of highly trained Secret Service agents. In the middle perimeter,
there's usually a mix of Secret Service and
local law enforcement who might cover portions of the motorcade and any pre-event screening. And in the outer perimeter, security largely falls
on local law enforcement. In Butler, the building the
shooter climbed was technically outside of the rally venue, and the Secret Service didn't sweep it. - It fell through the
cracks, which still falls to the Secret Service because it means nobody
checked to make sure the plan was in fact
implemented correctly. - [Narrator] According to the
Butler County Sheriff, right before the shooting, a local
officer climbed onto the

building and saw Crooks, but dropped to the ground when Crooks aimed his rifle at him. In an interview with ABC News,
the Secret Service Director, Kimberly Cheatle, said
local officials were inside the building when Crooks scaled it, but said... - The buck stops with me. I am the director of the Secret Service. - [Narrator] There are
also questions about why counters sniper teams located behind Trump didn't
take out the shooter earlier, even though they appeared to
be facing in his direction. - Once the shooting started, they had rounds on
target almost instantly. So that tells me that
that shooter had come to their attention and they
were in the decision loop. (gun firing) - [Narrator] The investigations into what went wrong will also
focus heavily on what happened before the event even took place. The Butler rally was announced by the Trump campaign
10 days ahead of time, which experts say, gave the
Secret Service plenty of time

to do site advance planning, and potentially even eliminate the line of sight from the building where the gunman was perched to Trump's stage. In this situation, you actually had an event site that was being built. So they're there to find out what the dimensions are gonna be, what the stage is gonna look like, where it's gonna be located, and then based on that information, they are then looking at potential threats, including areas of high ground and how to best mitigate those threats with the overall security plan. Former secret service agents say the buildings near Trump's stage in Butler would be a glaring risk and not something that could have been missed by advanced agents. We lost a president in 1963. How did it happen? Man up on a roof with a rifle. And guess what? The protocols that went into place from 1963 until this day is that we prioritize high places because we understand a man with a rifle, woman

with a rifle, whoever with a rifle, if they have any level of expertise, they can kill a president very quickly. - [Narrator] One thing law enforcement experts say was done correctly, despite widespread criticism on social media, was the evacuation of the former president after he was shot. - The reaction from the shift inside that inner perimeter was very quick. (indistinct) and as it's happening, if you listen closely, you can hear the instructions to former President Trump to get down, and that is so that they can cover him effectively. That was done very well. - [Trump] Lemme get my shoes. - [Speaker 1] Got you, sir, I got you. - [Trump] Lemme get my shoes. - [Speaker 2] Hold that on your head, it's bloody. - What you can't hear is what's being said to the agents through the radios from the command post.

maybe the counter-sniper team, you know, because there's other things going on, so they're gonna do what they're told. And if they're told,
Now it's safe to move, then that's what they're gonna do. - [Narrator] While
experts say it's not ideal from a security perspective that Trump stopped to pump his fist, the shift did a good job
getting him to the car, known as the spare. But the team near the spare... - They were clearly confused. You could see it, you can't hide it. They didn't know what to do. - [Narrator] President
Biden has been briefed about the assassination attempt and has pledged a quick
probe led by the FBI. - I'm instructed that this
investigation be thorough and swift, and the investigators
will have every resource they need to get this done. - [Narrator] The House
Oversight Committee is also investigating what went wrong.

and has called on Cheatle to testify. In a statement, Cheatle said,
The Secret Service is working with all involved federal,
state, and local agencies to understand what
happened, how it happened, and how we can prevent
an incident like this from ever taking place again. (engaging music)

The Secret Service Security Failures During Trump's Attempted Assassination | WSJ

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