Breakdowns in communication reportedly played a major part in the failure to prevent the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.
Frank Loveridge, former Secret Service Special Agent, weighed in on setting up command posts ahead of an event and spoke with Fox News host Laura Ingraham about how the Internet was reportedly down 25 minutes before Trump was shot at during the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
“Well, it’s so much worse than Secret Service originally let on. The Washington Post is reporting that to get important urgent messages about Mr. Crooks to the agency, a local commander had to pick up a cell phone and call a state trooper who would then tell the Secret Service like a game of telephone tag,” Ingraham said on “The Ingraham Angle” Monday, referring to reports that a message about the shooter did not get relayed to the Secret Service command post on time.
(Video Credit: Fox News)
“This happened three times that afternoon, including when a local counter-sniper radioed about a young white male lurking near the AGR building at about 5:42, and that they had then lost sight of him,” she continued, citing a Washington Post report. “It even happened when 30 seconds before Trump was shot, a local officer radioed the command center that the shooter was on the roof and armed. Well, that message never got to the Secret Service command post.”
Loveridge noted one of the immediate failures was that “sensitive and critical information should never be passed on a cell phone.”
“The proper protocol is to have one command post, a security room in which all assets are in that room with radios ready to transfer any information that might be critical so we can get situational awareness real-time, ” Loveridge said. “And that did not happen.”
He further explained that the Secret Service uses an encrypted network and does not communicate through that network with any other agency or law enforcement and therefore relies on local agencies to forward critical information.
“Hey, look, at 4:26 p.m., we knew this guy was a special interest. Then at 5:42 p.m., it basically became more important to see him because he’s using a range finder now to sight towards the stage. So Secret Service should have had information,” Loveridge continued, noting that, according to Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe, Secret Service counter snipers and local counter snipers “were not communicating.”
“That is a huge problem…We lost him for 20 minutes,” he said, referring to Crooks.
“Frank, I have to just share this issue with the text messages, which I just only saw. They were trying to text out a photo of Crooks that…it wouldn’t go through. About 5:47, it says, ‘Units be advised, Internet and cell service is down, another officer on that channel said a minute later, Your picture is probably not going to go through because I don’t have any service.’ That was the Sheriff’s deputy at 5:49,” Ingraham recounted, citing The Washington Post’s report.
“That’s why we don’t rely on that,” Loveridge emphasized. “We don’t rely on cell phone coverage because you can’t trust it. You need to get it over the radio and get it to the people that need it quickly.”
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Originally from New York, Powers graduated from New York University and eventually made her way to sunny South Florida. Powers also contributes to BizPac Review.
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