ONE of the country’s leading protection experts said the US authorities tasked with overseeing security for the Donald Trump rally “clearly failed”
Reflecting on the assassination attempt, Philip Grindell, founder and CEO of security firm Defuse Global, said: “There’s a clear security failure. For an event with such a high-profile individual, you have what’s called a ‘layered security process’.
“This starts with two questions: where are the threats coming from? And what are the risks and how can we mitigate them?
“There’ll be a search regime to make sure there’s no explosives or firearms or bladed weapons or anything of that nature on people that are coming into the event.
“With people that are sat around the event, there will be searches of bags, and searches of people. There will almost certainly be a vehicle mitigation process too so that no one can drive into the venue and run people over or detonate an explosive device.
“The reason is, whilst you’ve got to protect the main guest or speaker, you’ve also got to protect the rest and the public.”
Explaining in more detail how the specific protection of Trump would have been coordinated, he continued: “What you’re looking to do is stand where the former president’s going to be at the podium and look around. You need to say, ‘Where are the vantage points? Where could a sniper get a clear line of sight and fire on the president?’
“Now, based on what’s being reported, they clearly failed, given that a gunman armed with a semi-automatic weapon managed to gain access to an elevated position with direct line of fire within a distance which is easily within the range of that weapon, that’s a failure.
“It would appear from some eyewitnesses that they saw that person before he opened fire, and yet the counter-sniper team did not see him, and if they did, they didn’t engage.
“Clearly, once he’d opened fire, they then shot and killed him, which is great, but he’s already killed one person, injured somebody else, and frankly, had it been a better shot, he would have killed Trump.
“Trump has been extremely lucky not to be killed in this attack. So it’s a failure. The reasons why it’s a failure will come out in the wash.”
Describing one factor that may now form part of a review, Philip continued: “It may be that they have identified that venue and that they’ve satisfied themselves that it’s secure or it’s safe. They could have been let down by a security guard letting somebody in that they shouldn’t have done.
“We don’t know yet what that failure is, but it is very clear that that is a significant security failure. They are fairly basic security protocols. If you’re doing an event, it is always more difficult if you do an event in the open. The reason for that is you’ve got a far greater distance to cover and in a modern age, when you’ve got sniper rifles that will kill from a mile away, it’s extremely difficult.
“There are ways to combat that, but they haven’t done any of those things. That is where the questions are going to be asked, because, yes, Trump survived, luckily, but somebody else was killed and that therefore is a failure.
“That said, the failures take nothing away from the bravery of the US Secret Service close protection agents who rush to provide a human shield around Trump, risking their lives in the process.”
