Catherine Herridge Identifies BOMBSHELL From Secret Service Senate Hearing: ‘Incomprehensible’
Veteran Capitol Hill reporter Catherine Herridge singled out remarks by the acting chief of the Secret Service on Tuesday suggesting that the federal government’s ability to coordinate with local officials may be no better than it was before 9/11 despite billions of dollars spent to break down the information siloes that led to the attacks. She also identified an “incomprehensible” admission regarding a drone operated by the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks.
The bombshell disclosure came during Robert Rowe’s testimony before a joint Senate committee investigating how lapses in security allowed a deranged gunman to come within an inch of killing former President Donald Trump last month. The director affirmed a question by Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) asking if it’s accurate that local authorities had “no way of communicating with the Secret Service” or a counter-sniper for at least 30 seconds before they reported the gunman was on a nearby roof. “Would that be enough time to react prior to the firing of those shots?” the senator asked.
“Senator, if we’d had that information they’d have been able to address it more quickly. It appears that that information was stuck or siloed in that state or local channel,” Rowe admitted before pointing to other ways in which the Secret Service did its best to partner with police in Butler, Pennsylvania that day. “It is troubling to me that we did not get that information as quickly as we should have. We didn’t know that there was this incident going on, and the only thing we had was, locals were working on an issue at the 3 o’clock, which was to the president’s right which was where the shot came. Nothing about the man on the roof, nothing about a man with a gun, none of that information ever made it over our net.”
Before promising to break down the siloes which led to the July 13th attack, Rowe also disclosed that the Secret Service’s capability to intercept the gunman’s drone was more limited than previously known. ““Do you have the capacity to stop a weaponized drone?” Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) asked him. “What I will tell you, sir, is that we have technical security measures that we utilize” but only a “limited” ability at “temporary sites” like the rally, Rowe replied. “What I can tell you is on this day the [counter-drone] system had technical difficulties and did not go operational until after 5 o’clock.” Crooks operated his drone between 3:50 pm and 5:01 pm.
Sen. Cornyn quickly connected the dots, asking if gunman Thomas Crooks would have been more successful if he had chosen to use a weaponized drone instead of his AR-15 rifle in the attempted assassination. “In this case, the shooter had a rifle, but somebody who wanted to kill a president or former president or candidate for president would not need a rifle. They could use a drone, correct?” he asked. “It is a potential threat vector,” Rowe replied.
WATCH:
Rowe has been linked to previous denials of additional security requested by the Trump campaign even after the Republican received death threats during his campaign for reelection. Last week former FBI Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned after placing blame on local authorities for the shooting, leaving her deputy in charge of producing an analysis on how security failed that day. Crooks, a recent high school graduate, has not been linked to a firm ideology, and conversations with those who knew him suggested he was anti-establishment in general despite being a registered Republican and recently donating to a progressive pro-Biden political action committee.
