The Secret Service’s scandalous failure to protect former President Trump from a would-be assassin in Pennsylvania is not the first time the agency has clearly fallen down on the job with disastrous results.
As revealed in my book "The First Family Detail," under pressure from President Reagan’s White House staff members, the Secret Service allowed John W. Hinckley, Jr. to come within 15 feet of Reagan without magnetometer screening as Reagan left the Washington Hilton on March 30, 1981.
The Secret Service subsequently covered up its failings that led directly to the assault on Reagan. However, the Secret Service now includes the real shocking story when it trains new agents at its Rowley Training Center in Laurel, MD.
Six years after Hinckley shot President Reagan, the Secret Service’s Office of Training assigned agent William Albracht to teach what was called the "Reagan Attempt." Along with a range of other topics including actual assassinations, Albracht taught the course as a senior instructor for two years.
In preparing for the sensitive assignment, Albracht read all the Secret Service interviews with the agents who were involved in the incident, studied Hinckley’s history, examined the shooting site, watched video and reviewed photos taken that day, and interviewed the agents who were with Reagan and did the advance. He then taught the class to agents who had actually witnessed the incident to make sure everything was accurate in the course he would teach to new agents.
Even though his findings would have been the lead story in newspapers throughout the country if they had ever become public, Secret Service management under Director John R. Simpson approved them and certified Albracht to teach the course to new agents.
On the one hand, Albracht taught that when Hinckley began shooting, the agents protecting Reagan performed magnificently.
That day, the agents acted with "utter disregard for their own personal safety," Albracht concluded. "They placed themselves directly in harm’s way with little to no thought to anything other than their duty."
But heroic though the agents were, Albracht determined that the reason Hinckley was able to shoot Reagan was that for PR purposes, the president’s own White House staff had ordered agents to allow unscreened members of the public to come close to the president so he could greet them as he left the Washington Hilton.
As taught by Albracht, the USSS training center synopsis bluntly says the Reagan White House staff overruled the Secret Service and demanded that the public be allowed without any magnetometer screening within about 15 feet of the president as he left the hotel.
"John Hinckley, a mentally deranged individual, pre-positioned himself in a general public area that the White House staff had requested," the course synopsis says flatly.
"To the White House staff, this was an issue of letting the people see their president. They did not feel that the potential risk factor outweighed the positive PR," the synopsis says.
Contrary to a later internal inspection report’s claim that the public’s access to the president was "within accepted standards,” the Secret Service’s Washington field office advance agent and the Presidential Protection Division advance agent had both objected to letting the public into the area, according to what Albracht taught new agents at the training center..
"They looked on it as an unneeded security risk," the synopsis says. "They wanted zero press or public in the area that would be considered within handgun range. The counter-sniper teams and the advance security checks on nearby buildings would have taken care of snipers at a greater distance from the hotel entrance."
When the Secret Service and the White House staff disagree on security arrangements, "the USSS advance attempts to work out the issue," the synopsis says. "If an acceptable solution cannot be agreed upon, the matter is kicked upstairs to the USSS detail supervisors and the White House advance office."
However, "in these matters, the White House staff usually trumps the USSS unless a direct link can be shown to a potential threat," the synopsis continues. "In the case of the public area in proximity to Reagan’s arrival and departure, based on the intelligence on hand, a direct link could not be made — only that it was a security concern, and we wanted a sterile environment.
In other words, unless the Secret Service had a crystal ball and knew in advance that Hinckley was planning to shoot the president that day as Reagan left the hotel, agents would have to bow to the wishes of the White House and let the unscreened members of the public get close to the president.
H. Stuart Knight, who was Secret Service director when the shooting occurred, never revealed what really happened.
Indeed, Knight and other Secret Service officials who testified to Congress claimed that looking back, they saw no reason to change the Secret Service’s protective procedures. However, Knight, without basis, was happy to point fingers at the FBI.
Asked in a Senate hearing what the Secret Service might have done if it had known from the FBI about Hinckley’s previous arrest in Nashville and President Carter’s arrival in Nashville later that day, Knight said lamely, "At a minimum, we would have interviewed the gentleman, and perhaps something more, I don’t know."
Similarly, an August 1981 report on the assassination attempt by the Treasury Department — which then included the Secret Service before it was moved to the Department of Homeland Security — concealed the real story.
Prepared by the Treasury Department’s general counsel Peter J. Wallison, the report referred vaguely to a need for the Secret Service to work more closely with the White House in setting up protection procedures.
As the Treasury report was about to come out, Wallison frankly told the Associated Press that he would leave questions of who should be allowed near the president and how close they should be to the "political people and to the people with more expertise in protection." In other words, by Wallison’s own account, the investigation into why the tragedy happened would not address that question.
However, In commenting to me for the "The First Family Detail," Wallison, who later served as Reagan’s White House counsel during the president’s second term, confirmed that he learned from his interviews with Secret Service agents who were involved that the agents wanted Reagan to be in a secure environment as he left the Washington Hilton, but the Reagan White House staff overruled them.
"The [White House] staff had wanted the president to be seen by the media and the public as he came out from the speech," Wallison told me for the book, while the Secret Service "fought that."
Wallison added, "My view now would be that as soon as there is a problem and the president was shot at and hit, the people in the White House were wrong."
Ronald Kessler, a former Washington Post and Wall Street Journal investigative reporter, is the New York Times bestselling author of "The First Family Detail: Secret Service Agents Reveal the Hidden Lives of the Presidents" and "In the President’s Secret Service: Behind the Scenes with Agents in the Line of Fire and he Presidents They Protect." Read Ron Kessler's Reports — More Here
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