 |
“We missed again.” |
The Secret Service Makes Me Nervous :: SteynOnline
"... A famous line of Ian Fleming's seems more germane:
Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action.
Which begs the question: if it's enemy action, who precisely is the enemy?
The perp is the usual pliable boob out of central casting - in this case, a "Teacher of the Month" from California. But the interior of a DC hotel shouldn't be that hard a venue to secure. Even forty-five years ago, when Ronald Reagan was shot at the very same Hilton, the would-be assassin had to wait till the President was leaving the joint and take a potshot on the sidewalk.
I have thought that the world's most lavishly funded protection detail were total rubbish ever since I observed them at Bush campaign events in New Hampshire twenty-two sodding years ago, where the front door was the usual chaos but the back door was wide open and unsecured.
Then came the Obama-era "Cartagena Hookers" episode, in which the twenty-one agents claimed not to have known their companions were ladies of the evening. That's to say, these are the only guys on the planet who can't walk into a nightclub and spot the professionals: I know that's what I'm looking for in my security detail. As your niche Canadian wrote at the time:
He made the fairly basic mistake — for an expensively trained government operative — of attempting to pay a prostitute in the hotel corridor, and Dania caused an altercation whose fallout has brought the Secret Service to its knees. Which isn't how these encounters usually go.
Still, there are limits to how incompetent even federal agencies can be. Oh, wait. Not at the Secret Service there aren't:
What's the old line? When seconds count, the police are minutes away? Not at a Secret Service event: even when the police are on site in massive overwhelming numbers, they're still minutes away. Here are fifty-two seconds of members of the public yelling that 'he's on the roof'...
The basic facts of Butler should chill the blood:
In the last seventy-two hours, we have learned there were at least three government snipers in the very building whose rooftop the assassin was trying to access. They sat inside and watched him through the windows, as he arrived and peered up at the roof, and then wandered away.
They watched him when he came back and took out a laser range-finder to calculate the distance between the building and Trump's head, and then left again.
They watched him a third time when he returned with a bulky backpack.
They watched him for the best part of half-an-hour ...and then they let him go ahead and shoot the Republican presidential candidate.
Yet here's the kicker:
Almost two years later, they're all still working for the federal government.
Less than a month ago, at the Philadelphia airport, one of Jill Biden's Secret Service detail accidentally shot himself in the foot. I remember thinking at the time that this was just a little too cute - almost as if (not to go too conspiratorial too early on the morning after) it was to plant an obvious reminder to the public of the total crapness of the Secret Service just ahead of yet another ostensibly ridiculous security failure.
Surely nobody can be this bad this often and pay no price for it? Not in a functioning "republic"? Among those present at the Hilton last night were RFK Jr, who lost his father and his uncle to assassins, and Erika Kirk, whose husband was killed just last September. Mrs Kirk was hustled out of the hotel's hideous subterranean ballroom in tears. Earlier this month, she had pulled out of a TPUSA show with JD Vance on "security" grounds. Which seems an odd thing to do at a Vice Presidential event under Secret Service protection.
Yet perhaps, sadder but wiser, Charlie Kirk's widow knows a thing or two about "security". Look at the ease with which the gunperson gets past security simply by running at them...
As I wrote the day after Butler:
Let's cut to the chase - the US Secret Service: In on it? Or just totally crap?
I don't think it's possible to be this rubbish this often. If the object of a thing is, as they say, its outcome, then the object of the United States Secret Service these last two years is to enable the increasing number of Trump-deranged persons to take a potshot at him. But, even if you incline to cock-up rather than conspiracy, their dysfunction is unreformable.
[UPDATE! "Known wolves" aren't just for Islam anymore: a relative called in the name of the shooter before the dinner but the lethargic bureaucracy could not rouse itself to act even though he was registered at the Hilton under his real name.]" .......
The very fact that Sean Curran was the main agent there on the day that Homeland shot the President in the head is suspicious. I’m sorry if he is a true patriot, but it is.
He was also in charge at the Dinner.
Time for a change.
more:
Oops! He Did It Again :: SteynOnline
“… At Butler, Mr Curran and his colleagues shrunk the perimeter so that it excluded an easily accessible roof with a clear line to Trump’s head. At the Washington Hilton, Mr Curran and his colleagues shrunk the perimeter to the event room and its immediate approach. In the usual tedious “manifesto”, the would-be killer nevertheless noted that the security was so “insanely” bad, they must be “pranking” him:
'What the hell is the Secret Service doing..?
Like, I expected security cameras at every bend, bugged hotel rooms, armed agents every 10 feet, metal detectors out the wazoo.
What I got (who knows, maybe they’re pranking me!) is nothing.
No damn security.
Not in transport.
Not in the hotel.
Not in the event.
Like, the one thing that I immediately noticed walking into the hotel is the sense of arrogance. I walk in with multiple weapons and not a single person there considers the possibility that I could be a threat.
The security at the event is all outside, focused on protestors and current arrivals, because apparently no one thought about what happens if someone checks in the day before.
Like, this level of incompetence is insane, and I very sincerely hope it’s corrected by the time this country gets actually competent leadership again.
Like, if I was an Iranian agent, instead of an American citizen, I could have brought a damn Ma Deuce in here and no one would have noticed shit.
Actually insane.'
So, once he’d run through the security line, he was able to get into the same men’s room that the entire cabinet had to use. Had RFK or Pete Hegseth felt the urge before settling in for a night of long speeches, the headlines this weekend would have been very different. Half the presidential line of succession was in there. That’s what the geopolitical types call, if you remember, a “decapitation strategy”. Except you don’t need a bunker buster, just some California doofus willing to take a run at the checkpoint – and bingo, whoever the Secretary of the Interior is winds up like some z-list ayatollah.
As a taxpayer, I’m revolted by the money-no-object crapness. Yet, instead of heads rolling, Sean Curran is congratulating himself on what a brilliant job he did.
Perhaps it is because I am thousands of miles away in Ukraine, which is a very corrupt country but straightforwardly so. Yet I find it deeply weird that the majority of American conservatives are apparently willing to live with a federal protection service large numbers of whom are trying to get the President killed. The White House ballroom, to which Saturday-night right-side influencers pivoted in an instant with the grace and poise of a synchronised-swimming team, is not the issue. Au contraire, it should be possible on this absurd a protection budget for the chief of state occasionally to venture out and espy long-distance glimpses of what life is like for his fellow citizens.
The issue is the corruption undermining the government from within. The United States Secret Service is a national disgrace, and I renew my 2024 call for it to be abolished and rebuilt from scratch.” …….
Cole hit his knee on the magnetometer or else he would have gone much farther.
Curran says it was a perfect set-up and he wouldn’t change a thing.
I would. Starting with Curran.
 |
2 Samuel 7
8 “You must tell my servant David, ‘This is what the Lord of heaven’s armies says: I took you from the pasture when you were following the sheep. I took you to become leader of my people, the Israelites. 9 I have been with you everywhere you have gone. I have defeated your enemies for you. I will make you as famous as any of the great men on the earth. 10 Also I will choose a place for my people, the Israelites. I will plant them so they can live in their own home. They will not be bothered anymore. Wicked people will no longer make them suffer as they have in the past. 11 Wicked people continued to do this even when I appointed judges. But I will give you peace from all your enemies. I also tell you that I will make your descendants kings of Israel after you.Good is Your Word, Lord Jesus!
No comments:
Post a Comment