I’ve been looking at this like a major safety failure. What I keep finding is obvious barriers that are missing. We usually talk about Swiss Cheese Models, but here, there isn’t a hole in the cheese, there is no cheese.
1) Security sweep misses the gun apparently placed by Crooks ahead of the event.
2) Security personnel had less access to the roof than Crooks.
3) Crooks had a drone. Security personnel did not.
4) There were all sorts of things put up around the stage including the bleachers, a large American flag held by cranes and large video displays, why wasn’t one of these placed to block line of sight from those buildings?
5) Lots of questions about communication, but there appears to have been a command center in place. Why didn’t the command center:
a) Inform Trump of the threat
b) Demand the event stop until the suspicious person was found and the issue defused
c) Any of the agents at the stage take the stage to put themselves between the suspicious person and the protectee
d) Have the Rapid Response Team moving to the building (btw, that team couldn’t enter the secure area, because they were locked out of the protective fencing with no means beyond battering the fence with vehicles to enter)
I’m ok with an ROE that errs on not shooting first. I know that is controversial after a loss of life, but do we really want the government to shoot first and ask questions later? That said, what ROE says relax and take no action until shots are taken? I’ve heard as much as 3 minutes between when people knew Crooks had a rifle on the roof and the first shot. That’s less time than it took to get Trump off the stage after the first shot. That means Trump could have been removed from that stage before Crooks fired a shot, and yet nothing happened.
I agree that this needs an independent investigation that is transparent as possible. Anything less will leave conspiracy theories unresolved. There is no excuse for not treating this as serious as the other events mentioned (JFK assassination, Three Mile Island, Challenger/Columbia Investigations). I do think we might find less conspiracy, and that is the reason to do it right with as much transparency as possible.
> I’ve heard as much as 3 minutes between when people knew Crooks had a rifle on the roof and the first shot.
Exactly three minutes or perhaps somewhat less? And were the “people” police or common people? If the latter then how long did it take for people making that observation to alert local police, and then how long from local police to Secret Service?
From the video I saw, it appears to me test it was much less than three minutes from common people noticing that the guy had a gun to when the first shots rang out.
But, I think the more important question was whether the informed Secret Service (the counter-snipers were pointed to that roof after all) wanted to get confirmation before pulling Trump off the stage mid speech. If so, that could account for precious fractions of a minute that they didn’t have.
My guess is that, if the Secret Service had word of a fella on the roof before Trump started speaking then they wouldn’t have allowed Trump to start speaking. But, because he was well into the speech then they were reluctant to stop him mid-speech until they got confirmation. It’s all going to come out in the congressional hearings.
“I’m ok with an ROE that errs on not shooting first. I know that is controversial after a loss of life, but do we really want the government to shoot first and ask questions later?”
Even an average shooter would have little difficulty with shooting someone from less than 150 meters. When I was in the infantry, we trained against human silhouette targets out to 300 meters with iron sights and on well-worn M-16s, including from the standing position. Giving the shooter one free shot will likely end in a dead or wounded target. In cases like this, an unauthorized person with a rifle with a clear line of sight to the protected person has to be taken out. There is no other way to do the job.
Larry, I’m fine with the military in combat shooting first. Sadly, they are often given an ROE to not fire first.
My point is specifically about government police forces, non-DoD. To be clear, I’m ok with that being the ROE. If they had shot Crooks first and his dead body was lying next to a rifle; I would have been ok with that too.
The counter sniper saw him with the rifle and so did a cop. There should be no hesitation on taking out the threat under those circumstances. A skilled sniper can hit his target over 1000 meters away. A shot of 150 meters is a gimme. Fortunately, he wasn’t a skilled sniper and yet he only missed because Trump turned his head. There are no second chances in situations like this. Anyone who writes ROE allowing a sniper to shoot first should be fired.
Doesn’t pointing a rifle at the police officer climbing up the ladder cross that threshold?
Any ROE should take into consideration a person lying prone on a rooftop with a rifle pointed at the President when determining when to shoot.
The ROE defense the administration was pushing is a massive cop out to avoid accountability and/or culpability
That’s what happens when you let lawyers write ROE for tactical situations. During the fighting in Iraq, I suggested that no lawyer should be allowed to write ROE until he or she had spent a few months walking point on patrols or riding in convoys outside the green zone.
Still to early to make analysis. Very little unfiltered facts are known. Those govt sources releasing any information are completely suspect.
Law enforement reports say the shooter had no social media presence. FBI cracked his phone and retreived 4TB (yes terrabytes) of data. Does that smell fishy?
Having stuff on a phone doesn’t demonstrate a social media presence. Having stuff on social media demonstrates a social media presence. Even if the various social media companies raced to pull this guy’s stuff from the internet, there should be a big footprint left, if that 4 Tb of stuff is part of his presence there.
No. For the same reasons that Karl states.
What is weird is that the kid was a programmer and gamer, yet had no on-line presence to the extent that only two photographs of him can be found.
Other weirdness: At 20, he had a drone and did aerial recon of the rally site the day before (the USSS didn’t have a drone); had a couple of remote-controlled DIY bombs in his car, and a remote detonator on him; damn near hit Trump in the head from 130 yards with an AR-15, despite having been kicked out of his school’s shooting club because he was such a lousy shot (the AR-15, even with a scope, isn’t exactly a sniper’s choice, and would be a handicap for a “lousy shot”); got off 8 shots in 2 seconds, indicating a highly developed trigger reset shooting ability. I’ve been shooting for 62 years, and couldn’t do that.
It will be interesting to find out the truth, but that will only be possible if Trump is elected. Otherwise, the truth will be ruthlessly suppressed.
Indeed!
According to the school’s website, he was never a member of the shooting club and never applied to join.
Interesting. That’s more consistent with his performance, which was pretty good.
Other weirdness: At 20, he had a drone and did aerial recon of the rally site the day before (the USSS didn’t have a drone); had a couple of remote-controlled DIY bombs in his car, and a remote detonator on him; damn near hit Trump in the head from 130 yards with an AR-15, despite having been kicked out of his school’s shooting club because he was such a lousy shot (the AR-15, even with a scope, isn’t exactly a sniper’s choice, and would be a handicap for a “lousy shot”); got off 8 shots in 2 seconds, indicating a highly developed trigger reset shooting ability. I’ve been shooting for 62 years, and couldn’t do that.
OTOH, “lousy shot” sounds like someone who refused to follow club safety rules (or perhaps was just interested in spewing bullets Hollywood-style rather than legit target shooting) more than having an usually bad accuracy. According to the story, three other people were hit with those 8 shots indicating that maybe the shooting really was by a lousy shot. And the only thing that needs a “highly developed trigger reset shooting ability” is his AR-15. He could put out bullets in Trump’s general direction as fast as he could pull the trigger.
My take is luck happens and he had eight chances to get lucky.
He had a discord account and discord made a statement that none of the stuff he engaged in was related to politics. True or not, I don’t know but that is what they said
I vote for malign incompetence. When covid first came up, I voted for the same and that’s how it turned out. I do hope this one involves a honey trap, as I want to see if the shooter was paid enough to die for the cause. Also, was he smart enough to leave behind a trap to take out his handlers?
I can believe malign incompetence. I think that phrase should be taken up by commenters as well, it basically sounds like the entire Biden maladministration, too.
One audio analysis I saw had the first shot followed by two others at what sounded like measured intervals, followed by 5 shots as quickly as possible which likely weren’t well aimed, followed shortly by the last shot that killed the patsy.
Make of it what you will.
Secret Service will hinder the investigation, just like they deleted all their j6 texts. That doesn’t mean the Biden administration, or whoever controls it, were involved with the shooter but it could point to a strategy of being intentionally incompetent while hoping someone would take advantage.
We are dealing with people who use foreign spies to write fake dossiers to justify spying on a presidential candidate and later remove from office, rig their own primaries, fabricate kidnappings of governors, run an unelected shadow presidency, and force their candidate out in a coup.
It could be that this assassination attempt was organic, probably was, but that doesn’t mean the people running the country are not ethically capable to engineer it as well.
The former director of the Secret Service took full responsibility today…
Excuse-seeking behavior is a many-splendored thing.
The director of the US Secret Service took full responsibility today by becoming the former director of the US Secret Service. [bumped from below]
More on this breaking story here.
I’ve been looking at this like a major safety failure. What I keep finding is obvious barriers that are missing. We usually talk about Swiss Cheese Models, but here, there isn’t a hole in the cheese, there is no cheese.
1) Security sweep misses the gun apparently placed by Crooks ahead of the event.
2) Security personnel had less access to the roof than Crooks.
3) Crooks had a drone. Security personnel did not.
4) There were all sorts of things put up around the stage including the bleachers, a large American flag held by cranes and large video displays, why wasn’t one of these placed to block line of sight from those buildings?
5) Lots of questions about communication, but there appears to have been a command center in place. Why didn’t the command center:
a) Inform Trump of the threat
b) Demand the event stop until the suspicious person was found and the issue defused
c) Any of the agents at the stage take the stage to put themselves between the suspicious person and the protectee
d) Have the Rapid Response Team moving to the building (btw, that team couldn’t enter the secure area, because they were locked out of the protective fencing with no means beyond battering the fence with vehicles to enter)
I’m ok with an ROE that errs on not shooting first. I know that is controversial after a loss of life, but do we really want the government to shoot first and ask questions later? That said, what ROE says relax and take no action until shots are taken? I’ve heard as much as 3 minutes between when people knew Crooks had a rifle on the roof and the first shot. That’s less time than it took to get Trump off the stage after the first shot. That means Trump could have been removed from that stage before Crooks fired a shot, and yet nothing happened.
I agree that this needs an independent investigation that is transparent as possible. Anything less will leave conspiracy theories unresolved. There is no excuse for not treating this as serious as the other events mentioned (JFK assassination, Three Mile Island, Challenger/Columbia Investigations). I do think we might find less conspiracy, and that is the reason to do it right with as much transparency as possible.
> I’ve heard as much as 3 minutes between when people knew Crooks had a rifle on the roof and the first shot.
Exactly three minutes or perhaps somewhat less? And were the “people” police or common people? If the latter then how long did it take for people making that observation to alert local police, and then how long from local police to Secret Service?
From the video I saw, it appears to me test it was much less than three minutes from common people noticing that the guy had a gun to when the first shots rang out.
But, I think the more important question was whether the informed Secret Service (the counter-snipers were pointed to that roof after all) wanted to get confirmation before pulling Trump off the stage mid speech. If so, that could account for precious fractions of a minute that they didn’t have.
My guess is that, if the Secret Service had word of a fella on the roof before Trump started speaking then they wouldn’t have allowed Trump to start speaking. But, because he was well into the speech then they were reluctant to stop him mid-speech until they got confirmation. It’s all going to come out in the congressional hearings.
“I’m ok with an ROE that errs on not shooting first. I know that is controversial after a loss of life, but do we really want the government to shoot first and ask questions later?”
Even an average shooter would have little difficulty with shooting someone from less than 150 meters. When I was in the infantry, we trained against human silhouette targets out to 300 meters with iron sights and on well-worn M-16s, including from the standing position. Giving the shooter one free shot will likely end in a dead or wounded target. In cases like this, an unauthorized person with a rifle with a clear line of sight to the protected person has to be taken out. There is no other way to do the job.
Larry, I’m fine with the military in combat shooting first. Sadly, they are often given an ROE to not fire first.
My point is specifically about government police forces, non-DoD. To be clear, I’m ok with that being the ROE. If they had shot Crooks first and his dead body was lying next to a rifle; I would have been ok with that too.
The counter sniper saw him with the rifle and so did a cop. There should be no hesitation on taking out the threat under those circumstances. A skilled sniper can hit his target over 1000 meters away. A shot of 150 meters is a gimme. Fortunately, he wasn’t a skilled sniper and yet he only missed because Trump turned his head. There are no second chances in situations like this. Anyone who writes ROE allowing a sniper to shoot first should be fired.
Doesn’t pointing a rifle at the police officer climbing up the ladder cross that threshold?
Any ROE should take into consideration a person lying prone on a rooftop with a rifle pointed at the President when determining when to shoot.
The ROE defense the administration was pushing is a massive cop out to avoid accountability and/or culpability
That’s what happens when you let lawyers write ROE for tactical situations. During the fighting in Iraq, I suggested that no lawyer should be allowed to write ROE until he or she had spent a few months walking point on patrols or riding in convoys outside the green zone.
Still to early to make analysis. Very little unfiltered facts are known. Those govt sources releasing any information are completely suspect.
Law enforement reports say the shooter had no social media presence. FBI cracked his phone and retreived 4TB (yes terrabytes) of data. Does that smell fishy?
Having stuff on a phone doesn’t demonstrate a social media presence. Having stuff on social media demonstrates a social media presence. Even if the various social media companies raced to pull this guy’s stuff from the internet, there should be a big footprint left, if that 4 Tb of stuff is part of his presence there.
No. For the same reasons that Karl states.
What is weird is that the kid was a programmer and gamer, yet had no on-line presence to the extent that only two photographs of him can be found.
Other weirdness: At 20, he had a drone and did aerial recon of the rally site the day before (the USSS didn’t have a drone); had a couple of remote-controlled DIY bombs in his car, and a remote detonator on him; damn near hit Trump in the head from 130 yards with an AR-15, despite having been kicked out of his school’s shooting club because he was such a lousy shot (the AR-15, even with a scope, isn’t exactly a sniper’s choice, and would be a handicap for a “lousy shot”); got off 8 shots in 2 seconds, indicating a highly developed trigger reset shooting ability. I’ve been shooting for 62 years, and couldn’t do that.
It will be interesting to find out the truth, but that will only be possible if Trump is elected. Otherwise, the truth will be ruthlessly suppressed.
Indeed!
According to the school’s website, he was never a member of the shooting club and never applied to join.
Interesting. That’s more consistent with his performance, which was pretty good.
Other weirdness: At 20, he had a drone and did aerial recon of the rally site the day before (the USSS didn’t have a drone); had a couple of remote-controlled DIY bombs in his car, and a remote detonator on him; damn near hit Trump in the head from 130 yards with an AR-15, despite having been kicked out of his school’s shooting club because he was such a lousy shot (the AR-15, even with a scope, isn’t exactly a sniper’s choice, and would be a handicap for a “lousy shot”); got off 8 shots in 2 seconds, indicating a highly developed trigger reset shooting ability. I’ve been shooting for 62 years, and couldn’t do that.
OTOH, “lousy shot” sounds like someone who refused to follow club safety rules (or perhaps was just interested in spewing bullets Hollywood-style rather than legit target shooting) more than having an usually bad accuracy. According to the story, three other people were hit with those 8 shots indicating that maybe the shooting really was by a lousy shot. And the only thing that needs a “highly developed trigger reset shooting ability” is his AR-15. He could put out bullets in Trump’s general direction as fast as he could pull the trigger.
My take is luck happens and he had eight chances to get lucky.
He had a discord account and discord made a statement that none of the stuff he engaged in was related to politics. True or not, I don’t know but that is what they said
I vote for malign incompetence. When covid first came up, I voted for the same and that’s how it turned out. I do hope this one involves a honey trap, as I want to see if the shooter was paid enough to die for the cause. Also, was he smart enough to leave behind a trap to take out his handlers?
I can believe malign incompetence. I think that phrase should be taken up by commenters as well, it basically sounds like the entire Biden maladministration, too.
One audio analysis I saw had the first shot followed by two others at what sounded like measured intervals, followed by 5 shots as quickly as possible which likely weren’t well aimed, followed shortly by the last shot that killed the patsy.
Make of it what you will.
Secret Service will hinder the investigation, just like they deleted all their j6 texts. That doesn’t mean the Biden administration, or whoever controls it, were involved with the shooter but it could point to a strategy of being intentionally incompetent while hoping someone would take advantage.
We are dealing with people who use foreign spies to write fake dossiers to justify spying on a presidential candidate and later remove from office, rig their own primaries, fabricate kidnappings of governors, run an unelected shadow presidency, and force their candidate out in a coup.
It could be that this assassination attempt was organic, probably was, but that doesn’t mean the people running the country are not ethically capable to engineer it as well.
The former director of the Secret Service took full responsibility today…