It took only minutes for conspiracy theories to start flooding social media when news broke on July 13 that a sniper had almost assassinated former president Donald Trump. Some conservatives asked whether U.S. Secret Service agents assigned to the Butler, Pennsylvania, campaign rally were actually plotting Trump’s demise. Left-leaning partisans suspected the shooting was somehow faked to garner sympathy for the candidate. According to the media monitoring site NewsGuard, appearances of the words “inside job” and “staged” surged more than 3,000 percent on the X platform immediately after the shooting.
It’s easy to understand why the public seeks more compelling narratives to explain this shocking event. The facts known so far are hard to accept: a suspicious man was spotted roaming the rally grounds and was reported to authorities, but the event went forward anyway. According to ABC News, a USSS sniper team spied the shooter on a nearby, unprotected rooftop a full 20 minutes before he opened fire. Nonetheless, as the Federalist’s Sean Davis writes, “They kept the rooftop open, watched the shooter, kept Trump on the stage, and didn’t do a damn thing until after he had been shot. And we’re supposed to believe it was an innocent oopsie?”
That’s a good question. Every aspect of the Secret Service’s catastrophic failure on July 13 should be investigated by Congress, by independent researchers, and, one hopes, by a nonpartisan commission of the type that investigated the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear meltdown and the 1986 space shuttle Challenger disaster. Investigators should keep open minds regarding even the most outré theories; almost anything is possible, after all. But I suspect the answers uncovered by an honest inquiry will strike many as surprisingly—even unbelievably—mundane. That’s the upshot of most disaster investigations: rather than discovering intricate plots or amoral villains, investigators usually find simple mistakes made by ordinary people who’ve been numbed by routine and blinded by all-too-human cognitive biases.
After Three Mile Island, the Exxon Valdez, Chernobyl, and other great disasters of the late twentieth century, a loose-knit group of engineers and sociologists began studying such incidents looking for common themes, warning signs, and ways to prevent similar catastrophes in the future. We usually assume that big disasters are caused either by massive mechanical breakdowns or by some sort of deliberate recklessness—even malfeasance—on the part of those involved. (Conspiracy theories fall in that latter category.) But Yale sociologist Charles Perrow, a pioneer in the relatively new field of disaster science, notes that careful reconstruction of accidents such as the Three Mile Island meltdown typically “reveals the banality and triviality behind most catastrophes.”
In the hours and minutes before an organization falls into chaos, Perrow found, the managers and workers involved don’t usually think they are flouting rules or courting disaster. They assume that they are following routine procedures. And they are as shocked as the rest of us when everything falls apart. Such disasters are also typically a long time in coming. Researchers find that over time, even high-performance organizations such as NASA gradually cut corners, take on greater risks, and allow workers to grow complacent. When disaster strikes such organizations, it isn’t usually because of a single spectacular mistake but rather a long series of small decisions that progressively shaved safety margins and dulled alertness.
Was that the case with the Secret Service’s failure to protect Trump? It’s too soon to say. But congressional investigators would be wise to keep the lessons of disaster science in mind. USSS director Kimberly Cheatle has agreed to appear before the House Oversight Committee this Monday, July 22. (Other inquiries are also in the works.) Cheatle certainly deserves a thorough grilling. Congressmen who treat the hearing as a chance to grandstand will miss a deeper opportunity, however. It is important to identify failures of top leadership as well as any dereliction of duty on the part of agents at the rally. But if we hope to restore the USSS to competence, it is not enough to single out wrongdoers in this incident; we also need to understand the institutional pressures that have degraded the once-venerated agency’s effectiveness.
Columbia University sociologist Dianne Vaughan spent a decade studying the Challenger disaster. After that catastrophe, most observers blamed the accident on reckless NASA managers who ignored obvious dangers. Her research found something very different. She discovered NASA to be a very rule-bound organization. But the agency’s many rules, traditions, and operational pressures subtly nudged NASA engineers into accepting—and, in her words, normalizing—greater and greater risks. The officials who approved the doomed launch believed they were following the rule book. NASA’s safety problems were not merely the fault of a few rogue managers, she realized; they were baked into the culture. “Locating blame in individuals perpetuates the problem,” Vaughan concluded. The individuals responsible for the disaster might be fired or even jailed, she added, “but unless the organizational causes of the problems are fixed, the next person to occupy the same position will experience the same pressures and the harmful outcomes will repeat.” Likewise, Congress should not fall into the trap of thinking that firing a few lax performers will fix the problems at the USSS.
The House Oversight Committee and other investigators should take lessons from disaster science to help guide inquiries that do more than give politicians 90-second clips on TikTok. Here are some questions Congress and other investigators should ask.
How unusual were the decisions made on July 13? For outside observers, the poor decisions and lack of urgency that USSS agents on the scene showed seem inexplicable. Campaign security veterans have noted how unusual it is to leave a roof located just 130 yards from a campaign rally stage unprotected. Congress should seek records from other campaign events to see whether such lax practices have in fact become more commonplace. Director Cheatle told ABC News that the building was used as a staging area for local police and therefore out of the direct supervision of Secret Service agents. The “Secret Service was responsible for the inner perimeter,” she said. “And then we sought assistance from our local counterparts for the outer perimeter.” (The implication that she was passing the blame off on local officers raised hackles among law enforcement groups).
According to ABC News, the suspect, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, was first spotted by law enforcement over an hour before the shooting. He was noted acting suspiciously but faded into the crowd. Over the next 40 minutes, he crossed paths with officials several more times before ascending to the roof. But apparently local police had not been given specific protocols on how to follow up on a suspicious encounter. Congress should ask who has the authority to halt an event when troubling activity is detected. Are local or state police authorized to raise an alarm that would require removing the candidate from potential danger? Or does the Secret Service keep that prerogative to itself?
What competing goals might have undermined the agency’s focus? Some conservatives have criticized Secret Service Director Cheatle’s very public emphasis on achieving Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion metrics. The agency aims to have women make up 30 percent of recruits by 2030. Critics noted that the 6-foot-2-inch former president towered over the female agents trying to protect him as part of his security phalanx. The Secret Service responded by saying that it is “appalled” by the criticisms. But the purpose of the agency is to protect key politicians, not to advance other social goals. It is legitimate to ask whether shorter, less powerful people—of either gender—are appropriate for a president’s or candidate’s immediate detail. And anyone protected by the Secret Service has a right to be concerned that its female agents are held to lower fitness standards than male agents, as Manhattan Institute senior fellow Chris Rufo has documented.
But there is a bigger question Congress should ask: How much do DEI concerns distract agents and supervisors from the agency’s core mission? The Secret Service’s 2023 annual report describes one meeting in which USSS leaders “facilitated an exercise on unconscious bias.” (The theory of unconscious bias asserts that most Americans hold implicit racist attitudes which subconsciously nudge them to discriminate against black people. The theory has been persuasively debunked, yet implicit bias exercises remain a common element in DEI training programs.) Clearly, some agents on the ground in Butler last Saturday made crucial errors. Would less time spent sitting in DEI seminars, and more time training in the field have helped?
More broadly, is the Secret Service spread too thin? The agency was established after the Civil War to fight rampant counterfeiting. After the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901, it was tasked with protecting presidents. In recent decades, though, the small agency has taken on many additional roles, including investigating cybercrime, identity theft, missing children, credit-card fraud, and more. Congress should explore whether most of those roles could be handed off to the FBI or other law enforcement agencies. In any high-risk field, having too many conflicting priorities can undermine attentiveness.
Is the Secret Service ignoring the “weak signals” of trouble? Karl Weick, of the University of Michigan, and Kathleen Sutcliffe, of Johns Hopkins, used lessons from disasters to develop their concept of the High-Reliability Organization. A key strength of these accident-resistant institutions is being attentive to what the two business professors call the “weak signals” of potential trouble. For example, in the months leading up to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil platform blowout, the rig’s computer systems were in poor condition, and several fire alarms had been disabled. If those seemingly minor problems had been seen as warning signs—weak signals—of deeper problems in the rig’s management, the devastating accident might have been prevented.
Similarly, for years the Secret Service has sent out its own weak signals—and not-so-weak signals—that its operations are sloppy and undisciplined. In her 2021 book Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service, Washington Post investigative reporter Carol Leonnig describes the agency’s “frat-boy culture of infighting, indulgence and obsolescence.” She reviews decades of screwups, including a 2012 incident in which USSS agents doing advance work for a presidential trip to Cartagena, Columbia spent time drinking and cavorting with prostitutes. In 2014, an intruder armed with a knife made it deep into the White House. (A female agent tried but failed to block his path, due to “the size disparity between the two.”) Since then, several intruders have penetrated security cordons around Mar-a-Lago. No doubt, most USSS agents are dedicated professionals. But the agency as a whole appears to be anything but a High Reliability Organization. Congress should demand a new approach.
Why are Secret Service operations so disorganized? Conspiracy theorists say that it is not credible that Secret Service agents and local law enforcement officers made so many maddening mistakes on July 13. (And certainly, the possibility that they were merely following instructions must be explored.) But it is more likely that the loose organization and poor communications seen that day are typical for the agency. Many post-disaster investigations show that the organizational problems leading to a particular deadly incident had been present for years—but noticed only when the catastrophe finally occurred. Congress should explore whether that was the case in Butler.
A key problem appears to have been poor coordination between Secret Service agents and the local and state police on the scene. A Secret Service advance team walked the fairgrounds with local law enforcement on July 8. The federal agents decided that the group of warehouses to the north of the stage would be covered by local police rather than by the Secret Service. “That created a blind spot,” the New York Times writes, “outside the security perimeter but well within rifle range.” According to ABC and the Washington Post, the Secret Service later asked for a local police cruiser to be stationed by the closest warehouse, but the tiny Butler police department couldn’t fulfill the last-minute request. Such details hint at an ad hoc, haphazard operation.
Some security veterans have noted that lapses often occur in the “seams” between different law enforcement groups. That seems to have been the case at the July 13 rally. According to numerous sources, several local officers reported Crooks’ suspicious movements (including his use of a rangefinder) and even circulated a cellphone photo of the suspect. Reports went out over the radio network. But somehow, even after the suspect was seen climbing up on the warehouse roof, Secret Service agents either didn’t hear the messages or didn’t treat them seriously enough. Congress should ask who is responsible for making sure serious warnings get passed to supervisors. Investigators should also explore whether a cultural problem is at work here: Do Secret Service agents put less credence on reports coming from local police units who they consider unsophisticated?
Poor communication across the seam between local and federal officers might also explain the extraordinary delay in engaging the shooter once he was in position on the warehouse. The Secret Service sniper team had Crooks in view for a full 20 minutes. Why didn’t they take action? Some experts speculate they assumed he might be a member of a local law-enforcement team. It makes sense that Secret Service snipers are trained to avoid friendly fire incidents. But the agency needs to explain why it didn’t have a protocol in place to identify friend or foe rapidly. And, once agents spotted a possible shooter in position, why didn’t they rush Trump off the stage?
Is “safetyism” crippling the Secret Service? Director Cheatle’s explanation for why the Secret Service didn’t station its own team on the warehouse roof is being widely mocked: “That building in particular has a sloped roof at its highest point, and so there’s a safety factor that would be considered there, that we wouldn’t want to put somebody up on a sloped roof,” she told ABC News. “So, you know, the decision was made to secure the building from inside.” Anyone who has seen a photo of the building’s barely sloping roof knows that her statement is ludicrous. But investigators should dig down. Was Cheatle merely tossing off a thin excuse for the lapse? Or did her statement reflect a deeper philosophy within the agency?
In The Coddling of the American Mind, authors Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt define “safetyism” as an obsession with safety “to the point at which people become unwilling to make reasonable tradeoffs demanded by other practical and moral concerns.” Similarly, disaster researchers find that institutions that insist on doing everything by the book often lack the flexibility to respond to new, dangerous situations. Congress should explore whether such attitudes have infiltrated the Secret Service. Did agents really decide to leave a perfect sniper perch unprotected out of a misplaced sense of safety? Does safetyism explain why it took so long to take out the gunman?
These are some of the questions Monday’s House Oversight Committee hearing should ask. And more far-reaching investigations should follow. Their findings will be crucial to reforming the Secret Service, an agency that had run off-track long before July 13. And a better understanding of that day’s events might even help put some conspiracy theories to rest. In the end, of course, the best way for federal officials to counter conspiracy theories is to be competent at their core jobs.
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