Secret Service Seeks Funding Boost to Address Dangerous ‘New Reality’

By Maria Sacchetti, Carol D. Leonnig, Jacqueline Alemany, Josh Dawsey / The Washington Post

11:10 JST, September 20, 2024

Acting Secret Service director Ronald L. Rowe Jr. is urging Congress to heavily invest in the protective agency after two apparent assassination attempts against former president Donald Trump, saying the service must confront its shortcomings and better position itself to handle a dangerous “new reality.”

Rowe, in a wide-ranging interview with The Washington Post, said the guardians of U.S. presidents, former presidents and other top officials are desperate for more counter-snipers and investigators, upgraded armored limousines for motorcades, and a greater supply of ballistic glass.

He said that the agency’s aging Maryland training center lacks studios to train agents for real-world attacks and that agents are working more hours in a state of hypervigilance than anyone should.

“We are running our people at levels that we have not seen in our protective operations,” Rowe said this week. “We are burning everything hot right now.”

The agency operates with a $3 billion yearly budget and more than 7,000 employees, including the elite protective details.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a separate interview that the Secret Service is asking Congress for a “significant” budget increase for staff, transportation and technology, though he and Rowe separately declined to provide specific numbers. The agency is part of DHS.

The acting director’s ambitions are colliding with skeptical members of Congress who have watched with growing alarm as solo gunmen appear to have targeted the Republican nominee for president twice in a 10-week span.

On July 13, an armed man scaled an unsecured roof and fired multiple shots at a Trump campaign rally in Butler, Pa., killing an attendee and injuring Trump and others in the crowd.

On Sunday, a Secret Service agent spotted an armed man on the perimeter of the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach and opened fire. No one was injured, and the suspect was taken into custody.

The July attack was the first direct hit on a U.S. leader since the 1981 shooting of President Ronald Reagan (R) in Washington. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned days after the Butler shooting, after bipartisan complaints that she failed to provide sufficient protection to Trump or answer lawmakers’ questions about the security breach. The Secret Service plans to give an update Friday on its investigation of the incident.

Rowe, a 25-year agency veteran who became acting director on July 23, is attempting to expand the service amid multiple investigations into the suspected attempts on Trump’s life and complaints that the agency has failed to implement policy recommendations as far back as the Bush and Obama administrations.

The agency has suffered multiple security lapses, including an embarrassing incident in September 2014 when a man carrying a knife jumped the perimeter fence around the White House and entered through the front door.

Rowe has received cautious praise from lawmakers for his candor at congressional hearings and for his impassioned defense of agents who risk their lives to guard more than 40 top U.S. and foreign officials and their families.

The day after being named acting director, Rowe visited the Pennsylvania scene and has stated publicly that the security breach was not due to budget limitations but to a “failure of imagination” to properly prepare for and prevent the threat.

But, he said, the agency has insufficient resources to run at its breakneck pace in its “new norm” – a rapidly rising number of violent threats against the country’s political leaders.

On Sept. 5, Rowe wrote members of the Senate Homeland Security Appropriations Committee that the agency’s protection details needed a dramatic upgrade and an influx of cash, making him the first agency head in decades to publicly admit the protective details had shortcomings.

The last time a Secret Service leader was so clear about the agency’s vulnerabilities was when Director James Rowley demanded more agents and an overhaul in training in 1963, after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The agency’s Maryland training center is named in his honor.

Rowe said in the Post interview that the Secret Service is guarding against an increasing array of unpredictable threats, from foreign adversaries and domestic extremists to lone wolves with access to weapons in a politically polarized nation.

Since taking the leadership role, he added an applied-technology division to research and leverage the best technologies, including from the Defense Department.

But Rowe said he must add many more law enforcement agents and officers to the rolls to properly safeguard all the leaders under the Secret Service’s protection.

“You can have all the whiz-bang technology,” he said. “But at the end of the day, it comes down to people doing their jobs.”

He said the Secret Service is on schedule to hire 400 agents by the end of this year, rebutting claims that the agency is lagging in replacing those who resign or retire.

But, he said, “I can’t work them to death.”

After the golf course incident, Trump and his team have said they want more agents and protection, though Rowe said Trump already has one of the highest levels of detail the agency can provide.

Joe Hagin, who served on a bipartisan blue-ribbon panel that recommended numerous Secret Service reforms following several security failures during the Obama administration, said he was disappointed that many of the recommendations did not bring change.

The agency’s strain remains similar to 10 years ago – more than 40 people it must protect, caps on hiring and budget, high attrition, and staff forced to work excessive overtime. “The agents themselves have done an extraordinary job” given the limited resources, he said. “They’ve been under a lot of pressure for a long time.

While President Joe Biden and Senate leaders have expressed support for increasing the agency’s budget, many remain worried that management also needs an overhaul.

“They are saying Trump is getting the highest level of protection?” Rep. Jared Moskowitz, a Democrat from Florida, said Monday on CNN. “Well, if this is the highest level, then we need to see several higher levels that they need to create for the level of protection.”

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who received the service’s protection in 2016 when he was presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s pick for vice president, weighed in during a Spanish-language news conference Wednesday. “We’re going to have the debate over resources. That’s easy. We’re going to increase the service’s resources,” he said. “But we need to work more to understand if it’s necessary to change the direction of the agency.”

Current and former colleagues say Rowe, 52, is the right person to lead the agency, a straight-talking, towering figure with a buzz cut who guarded president George W. Bush during his second term, after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

“He is very well suited for this moment,” Mayorkas said in an interview. “He is unflappable and decisive and commanding.”

“If you say to yourself what does a Secret Service agent look like, he’s the prototype,” said Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw, who was the police chief of the West Palm Beach Police Department when Rowe served there. Bradshaw works often with the Secret Service now to protect Trump when he is in town.

Rowe was a 9-year-old growing up in Maryland when he attended Reagan’s inauguration parade and remembered Reagan being wounded by a gunman near the White House weeks later. That episode inspired him to join the agency years later, friends and colleagues said.

In the interview, he compared the changes the Secret Service put in place after the 1981 assassination attempt with his effort to help the agency evolve to meet a new threat level.

Rowe joined the agency in 1999 after serving four years as a police officer in West Palm Beach, where he won commendations for saving lives and served on highly trained teams combating drug dealers during the crack epidemic.

As a police officer in September 1997, Rowe disarmed a man with a gun who showed up at a hospital emergency room demanding drugs. Rowe, who was at close range, could have shot him, said Tony Spatara, the assistant police chief in West Palm Beach who worked with Rowe. Instead, Rowe grabbed the gun and subdued him, he said.

Spatara said that and other incidents illustrate that Rowe understands viscerally what agents need: staff, equipment and, most importantly, training.

“He knows what it takes to put yourself literally in the line of danger on a daily basis,” Spatara said.

In the interview, Rowe said he is hoping to build an agency that will be prepared for years beyond the November elections. He is planning for Inauguration Day. For the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. For future international gatherings and still unknown threats.

“It’s easy to say, well, the Secret Service has mismanaged or that the Secret Service has not done a great job. That may be the case and look, if that’s the perception of [Congress] members, I respect that,” he said. “This isn’t just about getting us through November 5.

“This is about setting the Secret Service up for success and sustaining them with the capabilities and resources they need for future years.”