by
Austin BaySeptember 18, 2024
The list of American security agencies stained by bureaucratic incompetence, dreadful leadership and outright political corruption just keeps getting longer.
Let's start -- but not finish -- with the erstwhile elite of the elite in the bodyguard business: the U.S. Secret Service.
On Sept. 16, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) released his "whistleblower" report documenting the USSS's failures from large to small in the July 13 attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. At an open-air rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, the assassin killed a bystander and wounded Trump and two others.
Hawley's report is damning. The regrettable but slam-dunk proof of Hawley's critique occurred the day before, on Sept. 15, when another wannabe assassin, this time in Florida, came within a couple of minutes of taking a scoped-rifle shot at Trump.
Give the USSS a tactical success. An alert agent spotted the killer. The wannabe killer -- he's got the faraway stare of a Marxist fanatic -- was nabbed by Florida police.
In the immediate aftermath, government and law enforcement officials praised the agent. He did a stellar job. But one Florida sheriff bluntly assessed the operational failure, the failure that allowed the fanatic to get close enough to kill. The operational and leadership flaw: Despite the July attack, Trump simply did not have sufficient USSS and police protection.
Hawley's report deserves close attention. Sample jaw-droppers: At Butler, USSS intelligence sections failed to connect with Pennsylvania law enforcement agencies on what are absolutely routine and essential issues. Example: There was no assessment of local suspicious individuals. Lack of prior planning: The hospital where Trump was taken was inadequately secured. When an American leader under USSS protection moves, USSS is supposed to have a secure medical evacuation plan.
The Department of Homeland Security, which commands the USSS, has failed to answer critical questions. An example: "Did the Acting Secret Service Director ever deny resources to the Trump campaign, or USSS sniper teams, as has been reported in the press?"
Review this column's intro. DHS's failure to answer a resource question asked by a senator -- three months after the attempted homicide! -- is either Washington bureaucratic incompetence at its paper-pushing worst, or political corruption.
Both hide a truthful answer to a life-and-death question affecting a presidential election.
When it comes to telling the truth to the American public, DHS has a lousy record. Check the internet. For some three years, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas routinely claimed the U.S. borders were secure. Whatever your politics, his statements are a fact.
The borders are not secure, especially the southern border. Somewhere between 9 million and 15 million illegal immigrants have entered the U.S. since early 2021 -- we don't know the exact number, which is another institutional failure that has economic and physical security consequences. Ultra-Democrat sanctuary cities like New York City and Chicago have buckled under the illegal immigration onslaught that shredded their "social safety nets" -- meaning the onslaught robs poor Americans. The physical security issue: As I write this column, Venezuelan gangs, who entered en masse under Mayorkas' watch, terrorize neighborhoods in Colorado and Texas.
U.S. intelligence agencies are absolutely essential to protecting America. But their reputations have been stained -- at least in flyover country.
Consider the 51 so-called intelligence experts who signed Secretary of State Antony Blinken's letter claiming that Hunter Biden's laptop was "Russian disinformation." The laptop has now figured as no-doubt evidence in at least two of Hunter's trials.
The 51 came from the CIA, Pentagon and state etcetera elite.
I carried a top secret clearance of some sort for over three decades. Why do any of these "experts" still have clearances? They lied. Yes, several quibble, claiming weasel words, but at the down and dirty, they lied to the American people and participated in election interference. In the name of accountability, they should lose their clearances.
Within the Washington Post-protected Beltway, Biden-Harris Department of Justice elites don't know how deeply their lawfare schemes have tarnished the DOJ's reputation. Would that it were surface tarnish. They're into banana republic corrosion.
How long does it take to restore a reputation? Lt. William Calley's 1968 Vietnam War massacre scarred the Army and the Pentagon. The Army didn't shake the Vietnam-Calley stain until 1991's Desert Storm. So, 23 years?