Surprisingly, the New York Times wrote a scathing report about the Secret Service’s deplorable condition due to poor management, poor technology, excessive overtime, and other demands.
The Service has been shrinking. Federal data show that at least 1,400 of its 7,800 employees left in the 2022 and 2023 fiscal years, the largest outflow from the agency in at least two decades.
This summer, two assassination attempts against former President Donald J. Trump revealed deep problems in the Secret Service. Failures in technology meant a would-be assassin was able to use a drone for surveillance. Failures in command meant a nearby rooftop was left unprotected for him to climb. Failures in communication meant he was able to fire, even after being spotted.
But agents say one problem underlies all the others: an exodus of the best-trained people.
Their departures, partly rooted in longstanding failures by the Secret Service management, have left agents in a kind of permanent state of emergency, lacking the focus, rest and training necessary to do their jobs well, more than two dozen current and former employees told The New York Times.
Among the reasons they leave:
Crushing amounts of overtime work, often assigned at the last minute and sometimes without pay.
An initiative to rehire retired Secret Service agents backfired by spurring more employees to retire so they could be paid a salary and a pension at once.
Perceptions of favoritism in promotions and hiring, including an episode in which the agency’s chief uniformed officer moonlighted as a real estate agent for subordinates, who then won promotions.
Pleas from agents to rapidly embrace new technology like drones that could improve protection efforts and ease the workload went unheeded.
The loss of so many valuable agents might be less of a crisis if enough people — and the right people — were ready and waiting to take their place. But management had not solved that problem either.
Recruiting standards slumped, longtime agents said, as the agency ushered more people in the door. Training, which takes years to adequately prepare a new hire to protect a president under the best of circumstances, was slowed by a decrepit facility where the fight-training room flooded during downpours.
They have them working constant grueling overtime.
On July 13, when Thomas Crooks fired at Mr. Trump in Butler, Pa., even basic radios were unreliable.
The report goes on in this vein.
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