Deborah Daniels: The Secret Service is long overdue for major overhaul

On July 23, U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned following a terrifying security lapse that almost ended in the assassination of a former and potentially future president. But the story is much more complicated than that and goes back decades.

I greatly admire the agents who put their lives on the line every day for those they are charged with protecting. But their tradition of toughness and bravery is insufficient to counter mismanagement and insularity that has led to security breaches, outdated and insufficient resources, and undermining of innovative leadership.

Multiple failings have combined to cause these outcomes. An outdated and subjective hiring process has over time led to a homogeneous culture of white males who operate in reactive rather than strategic mode and rely on “brawn and bravery” rather than the use of intelligence and strategic thinking.

Thus, the agency fails to predict and plan for threats that have yet to materialize—such as a small plane attempting to crash into the White House in the ’90s; someone firing a high-powered weapon into the White House from Constitution Avenue in November 2011; or, despite the known potential for air attack, the 9/11 attacks.

“Zero Fail”, a book published in 2021 by Washington Post national investigative reporter Carol Leonnig, outlines these failings and more that have contributed to a diminution of public trust in the agency whose motto is “Worthy of Trust and Confidence.”

The insular former hiring process has led to some predictable problems, including racism, sexism and competing internal factions leading to the undermining of leadership. Leonnig recounts a 2000 lawsuit filed by Black agents accusing the agency of a racially discriminatory promotion system. This occurred long before the New York Times revealed in 2008 a continuing pattern of internal ridicule and mistreatment of Blacks, including a noose hung in a USSS training facility room used by a Black instructor.

Women have also been treated as inferior. A vice presidential detail leader, when rejecting a female agent on his shift, was once quoted as saying, “Women don’t play in the NFL.” Kimberly Cheatle was only the second woman ever to serve as director, and her efforts at reform were undermined in the same way as those of her predecessor, Julia Pierson, appointed by President Obama in 2013 and forced to leave in 2014.

She and other directors have suffered from a reluctance of underlings to report security breaches or wrongdoing until they become public. The same tendency leads to stonewalling of Congress.

Agents have serially undermined any director not seen to be one of the guys, including both female directors and the first outside director in 100 years, hired by President Trump’s Department of Homeland Security director, John Kelly. His pick, a retired Marine Corps general, was resisted by senior USSS leadership and the president’s protection detail, and even by Trump himself, who preferred to appoint someone he knew and who “looked the part.” The general didn’t last long.

This last point might be the primary problem that has led to poor leadership of the USSS over many years. Every president has a tendency to elevate someone from his protective detail, generally the detail leader, to the very different role of director, which requires significantly different skills. Presidents come to like the detail leader and feel comfortable with him, so they promote him to a job he can’t do.

In order to succeed at its mission, this agency needs a major overhaul; but everyone up to the president keeps that from happening based on bad management decisions.•

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Daniels is a retired partner of Krieg DeVault LLP, a former U.S. Attorney and assistant U.S. attorney general and former president of the Sagamore Institute. Send comments to ibjedit@ibj.com.

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