Talking Truth

This is Liz Renzel with Crawford Media Group in Denver and I'm joined today by Ed Henderson, one of our commentators on our sister station 560KLZ. Today we'll be talking to Frank Loveridge, former Secret Service agent, and we'll be talking about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump and some of the details on that day. Welcome to our program, Frank. Thank you. Great to be here. Frank, I think for so many of us, the day described as the shot heard around the world has baffled us at how a novice could have pulled that off. What are your thoughts about that? Well, I think that the first thing we have to do is give credit to the Secret Service, the individuals that were with the President at the time, and them honoring their oath by putting their bodies in position to go between the actual shooter and the President in order to do their job that they've been trained to do, and that they've agreed to do, at the cost of their own life. With that being said, there were lots of mistakes that were made by the Secret Service that day, and we can go through those mistakes that were made as we go through this interview. But the bottom line is that we have to get better at what we do, especially protecting these former Presidents. Frank, it's been over a month now. Please take us through what's been learned so far, and where you believe this investigation may be headed. So the first thing I would say is to talk about the process of how we go through an advance. Because as I said before when I used to teach advance work and certify these agents when they got to do the first advance on the President's detail, I would always tell them that we are victorious warriors. Victorious warriors wouldn't first be foregoing the war. Defeated warriors go to war and seek to win. What makes the Secret Service what they are today as a premier protective agency in the world is their advance work, is going out and doing advances. And that's where they failed this day. They were defeated warriors that day on July 13th. And how do I know that? Having seen these sites designed and the protective methodology employed. Number one, I don't think they had the proper assets in place. If you look at the actual secure zone, it should have developed the high ground. It should have developed the HDR building and the other buildings in that complex. Which was a primary threat to President Trump when he was on stage. And it did not. If you look at the fence line, the fence line did not have anything obstructing the view from that fence line, which was actually closer to the stage than the HDR building. And you could see President Trump on that stage. Which is something that should never happen, especially when no one has gone through a Mel detector or has been swept for explosive devices. So what did we learn from that day? The first thing is we needed to do a better job with our design. We needed to go back to the way they were taught to do it. And the second thing is communication. Look, Ed, Liz, you know the communication was a major failure. You don't have two command posts. You only have one command post called a security room. And every one of your law enforcement assets has got to be represented in that room. So they can relay important traffic to the Secret Service detail. Now let's just say this. The Secret Service does not work on the tactical frequencies. They have their own encrypted system. And so therefore, messages that come in from the police and from the local tactical assets has got to be relayed over our system so that we know what is going on and we have situational awareness. And that did not happen that day. So the communication was the next failure. And then the last failure that I would say that we should have learned from was you have to have the proper assets. And they have to be communicating. The fact that we didn't have the proper mitigation detection teams out there. The fact that we didn't have communications between local snipers, counter snipers, and Secret Service counter snipers. That is absolutely a huge problem that has to be fixed. Those are three ways I would wrap that up and say those are three areas we need to really pay attention to. So ultimately, where does that responsibility lie with all of that communication between all three of those points that you just made? So I would say this, you can delegate responsibility, but you can never ever delegate accountability. And the Secret Service is accountable for everything that goes on. But you saw from that video, you saw the actual body videos that were frantically trying to get up on top of that roof. And people were putting it out over the tax frequency. Officers reporting it out, and it just wasn't getting to the right people. And the fact that that AGR building has not been, we have not talked about who is responsible for the AGR building. I'm saying responsible. Secret Service was accountable. But we still don't know to this day what happened. There are reports that the counter snipers that were on top of that roof may have gone down into the building. There have been several reports on that, but once again those are just reports. We need to see this in the investigation as a result, so we can look at that as a fact. But I think what it gets back to is you can't delegate accountability and the Secret Service is accountable. So to everyone you've spoken to that was there on that day. Did anyone have a sense that something was off in all of this, what you're talking about, the accountability, the placement of where they should have been, what they should have looked at? So here's what the process works. And this is we can go through this real quick. First of all you have a police meeting with all your police assets, the first day you get into town. After that's over with, you then marry up with those assets and you go on your conductor advance. The site agent will go out to the site, such as the incident where the incident occurred in Butler, and they will do a site advance, and they will work with their tactical assets, the counter assault teams, the counter sniper teams, and other assets that we have in place. Together they will develop a plan. They will memorialize this plan in writing called a special operations division tactical survey, which will tell you exactly where everyone is supposed to be to neutralize any of the threats that they saw when they did the advance. Then you will have a countdown meeting every night with the entire group. And what they do is they go over all this information and collaborate to make sure we fine tune it, to make sure that advance is solid. After that the lead advance has to approve it. And on top of that you have a field officer that walks through it, who also approves. And then lastly you have a senior supervisor from the detail who comes out and approves it. So you look at all of this vetting that goes on and they didn't see it. Well that tells me that the plan may have been better than we think it was. The execution of the plan was where we failed. Frank I was underwhelmed by the very evasive and arrogant performance by Kimberly Cheetle during her testimony before Congress shortly after the shooting. What do you anticipate the secret service will need to do to help enhance the image of secret service leadership going forward. And of course the best thing they could do would be to hire you as the new director. But in addition to that what would you do? Well first I want to thank you for that endorsement. Actually I was I did interview for the director of United States Secret Service back in March of 2017. Secretary Kelly decided to go a different direction and go outside the service. But with that being said I would say that the one thing that I think is important to see here was the lack of communication between the former director and the American people. I was very reluctant to go on Fox News on that Saturday evening and I waited until 11 o'clock at night when I didn't hear or see a response from the secret service. I thought the American people deserved to know what happened that day with former president Trump. And I didn't see that for nine days. And then nine days later she came out and testified and opened hearing and really didn't give us any answers. So I think the biggest thing was her lack of communication. Now how are we going to enhance the image? Well what we have to do is we have to look at a number of things. Do we belong in department of Homeland Security as one of 22 components sharing a $108 billion annual budget which we only get $3 billion of it. I know that's a double what we got in 2014. But we need to improve technology. We need to make sure that we have the right assets in place. We need more people because we're stretched to thin. And all of these things need to be done. And I think it would be done better if we were in a smaller. And with some form but somewhere in the government where we're not competing with 22 other components. That's the first thing I think they need to restore the integrity of the secret service by being better at what we do. And advancing our technology and getting better people in the pipeline using recruiting methods and not using USA jobs and job basically jobs seminars. We've been going out looking for people but not in the right places. I believe personally that we need to recruit and actively recruit like we used to do before we went to USA jobs and job fairs. So that would be two things right there to get better people, get better technology and then you need a strong leader who's going to pull it all together and make decisions that are in the welfare of the people and the American people as well and protect our assets as best we can. Hey Frank just to clarify, is it known how long the shooter was up on the roof? Was it an overnight deal? Did he get there right before he did that? Does anyone know? Well I will tell you what I do know at 5.42 p.m. a local Congress like for observed the shooter with a range finder. Now we knew of this individual as a suspicious person. And there's a difference between a suspicious person and a threat. A man on the roof with a gun is a threat. So at this point we just have a suspicious person. We might have had multiple suspicion suspicious people that day. At 5.42 p.m. though one of the local Congress sniper teams sent out a text message saying that this individual is using a range finder and aiming it towards the stage. So that right there this individual needs to be interviewed and we need to find out what is he doing with a range finder. Why does he have a backpack? Why is he walking around the site? This should have happened. Once again I don't think we had the proper detection and mitigation teams there because this didn't happen. They lost contact with the individual and then he shows up again and he's shimming his way up on the roof using the H-Fact system or the air conditioning to get back up on the roof. Two law enforcement officers that were doing traffic control respond and they try to go up on the roof. If you look at the body cam you can see how frantic they were trying to get up on the roof and make contact with this individual. And then you can see the body cam where they made contact with the individual and the individual turned around pulling the weapon towards them and they had to drop down because it couldn't even use their weapons because they were holding on to the side of the building. At that time I believe the shooter was rushed and began to take a shot about 30 seconds later. And at that time that's when the shots were firing over the president and the shift then responded to form the body bunker to move them off the stage. So he wasn't on that route very long. We've been visiting with Ed Henderson commentator on our sister station 560 KLC and Frank leverage former secret service agent and we've been talking about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. Ed what are your final thoughts? You know Frank I would just first of all thank you so much for sharing your expertise and your time with us today. Ultimately what are the lessons learned from this going to be? Well the first thing is that we have to make sure that our former presidents get the right assets. Now I understand that Jimmy Carter is not going to get the same assets as Donald Trump because obviously we have to do a front analysis and you have to match the threat. But I do believe that we should have had better assets, more secret service involvement. And you'll have to look at the percentages when you look at it and see how many secret service agents were actually there. Percentage wise to the HSI, Homeland Security Veltiators and local and state. And I think what you're going to find out is that there wasn't that big of a representation from the secret service. We've got to stop outsourcing this. It's not that the police aren't good at what they do. They're great at what they do. But protection is what we do. And we shouldn't be trained that over to someone that doesn't have the same experience level that we have. And that being said, that's the first thing. The second thing is we just got to do a better job getting the right people in position. And that means going out recruiting, going to the right places to find these people. And that's going to be something that's going to be strategically a goal for us because it's not going to happen overnight. And then we just need better leadership. That's all. Making sure that these advanced plans are put together the way they're supposed to put together. The site is designed properly. It's not it's not as shallow as this site was. The secure zone should be pushed out further. And we just should have had more assets on the ground. Frank, thank you so much for joining us today. Frank, it was wonderful. And as always, speaking with a fellow Red Sox fan is a real treat for me. Well, it may not be a treat for us this year, but I'm sure it's strategically thinking it may be a treat for us down the road. But it's great talking to both of you. I hope I shared some information that might be helpful for your listeners. Thanks so much, Frank. Thank you all.