During the September 11 attacks, she was part of the team that accompanied Vice President Dick Cheney into a secure bunker. Under Barack Obama, she was responsible for the security of Joe Biden, then vice president, and his wife. After 29 years in the ranks of the Secret Service, including almost two at its head, Kimberly Cheatle had to answer to Congress on Monday, July 22, for the most serious failure in 40 years of the agency charged with protecting public figures: The attempted assassination of Donald Trump in Pennsylvania on July 13.
The head of the Secret Service was questioned by the House of Representatives committee responsible for overseeing federal agencies. In a forum that generally has no "real promise for bipartisan consensus," according to its president, James Comer, Republicans and Democrats agreed to call for the director's resignation. She said she took "full responsibility" for "the most significant operational failure" by the Secret Service "in decades." But she refused to resign on the spot, as called for by Representative Jake LaTurner, Republican of Kansas.
Cheatle greatly irritated the representatives with her refusal to detail the elements that enabled a 20-year-old gunman, armed with an AR-15 rifle, to succeed in stationing himself on the roof of a warehouse less than 140 meters from the podium where Trump was delivering a campaign speech. Although he had been reported to security forces, Thomas Crooks had time to fire eight shots, killing volunteer firefighter Corey Comperatore, 50, and wounding three people, including the Republican candidate. He was neutralized by a Secret Service sniper 26 seconds after the first shot.
Cheatle said the Secret Service had been alerted "two to five times" to the presence of a "suspicious" individual. A SWAT unit spotted him 18 minutes before Trump took the stage. Secret Service agents noted his "suspicious" appearance but did not deem him to be a threat. He carried a rangefinder – a device used to measure distances – which is not illegal, she said. Officers were sent to identify him, but it was too late.
Why didn't she delay Trump's speech? Why wasn't the hangar roof secured? Who had defined the security perimeter? The director refused to answer the elected representatives' questions. "I don't have that information," she invariably declined. According to the FBI investigation, Thomas Crooks had come to scout the site with a drone. But when? Was he alone? After being disappointed by the young man's discretion on social media, the investigators found a few clues showing that he had done online research on various personalities, Joe Biden as well as Trump, as if he were looking for a target, no matter which one.
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