Ceremonial Execution

The Secret Service Story

The Secret Service badly messed up in the job of protecting ex-president and candidate Trump, judged not only by the outcome, at least six shots fired at Trump from about 400 feet away, but by how it happened, pretty clearly due not to a clever and sophisticated plot by the would-be assassin but incompetence by the Service; details available from your favorite news source. Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle conceded that her agency had failed, offered only partial and unconvincing explanations,  eventually resigned under pressure. She is being at least temporarily replaced by Ronald Rowe, the agency’s deputy director.

At first glance it makes sense. Someone messed up and the head of the organization, as the person with most control over what the agency does, is the most likely candidate. The organization still exists and will need someone to run it, the deputy director is the most qualified person, at least in the short run, since he already knows the people and policies of the organization.

The problem is that, if Cheatle, as the most powerful person in the organization  is the most likely person responsible, Rowe, presumably the second most powerful, is the second most likely. If the objective is to have the best person in charge, the organizational failure lowers the claim to the job for both of them. If Rowe’s appointment turns out to be only temporary he will have to be replaced either with another high-up insider, for whom the same issue arises, or with an outsider, someone without the specialized knowledge that the job requires;

The ideal solution would start by finding out who was responsible. One part of the story, which the Secret Service first denied and then admitted,  was the Secret Service repeatedly denying requests for additional resources to protect Trump. Suppose it turns out that Rowe urged Cheatle to provide the resources and she refused. That looks like a reason to keep him, get rid of her.

The issue of resources is one part of the story that has surfaced so far but there are probably other and more important parts. The most explosive possibility is that the Secret Service did a bad job of protecting Trump because they, or at least some key people, didn’t much want him protected — more plausible than an actual plot to kill him, although the latter would make a better thriller. That is the sort of thing evidence for which might come up in saved emails. Less explosive but even more plausible would be evidence that people in the agency put a low weight on the job they were supposed to be doing relative to other objectives, such as maintaining their and the agency’s public image, and allocated resources accordingly. I have not yet seen an explanation from agency spokesman Anthony Guglielmi of why he first told reporters that the story that the agency had denied some of Donald Trump’s requests for additional security resources over the past two years was “absolutely false” and then, a week later, admitted that it was true. Was he deliberately lying and, if so, on whose orders?

My discussion so far assumes that the reason to replace Cheatle was to get someone more competent in her position. For that purpose it might have made more sense to wait until one or more of the ongoing investigations had determined what happened and whose fault it was. A more plausible explanation is that her forced resignation was symbolic. The agency messed up, the agency must be punished, and she represents the agency. Something must be done and this is something, so do it.

Her very uncooperative response to congressional questioning probably contributed to her forced resignation but people were suggesting resignation or removal before that. She herself had said that she took responsibility for the failure, although it didn’t seem to have occurred to her that that might have implications for what she should do next. I was reminded of a long-ago incident when Janet Reno “took responsibility” for the Waco disaster. It did not seem to occur to her that the appropriate response for being responsible for 76 people, some of them children, being burned to death was at least resigning her office, arguably joining a nunnery or equivalent, possibly killing herself.

A related explanation is that the policy of firing the head of an organization that messes up is intended to improve not the quality of its leadership but their incentives. Even if this head was not actually responsible for what went wrong, her successor will have a good reason to make sure that nothing goes wrong on her watch, as will the heads of other organizations.

Or at least to make sure that if something does go seriously wrong, the fact does not become public.

A final explanation of the pressure to get rid of Cheatle is her demonstrated incompetence, not at protecting Trump — that might not have been her fault — but at protecting the agency afterwards: the sloped roof defense, the effort to blame local law enforcement, the failed denial that resources had been refused, the attempt to stonewall a congressional inquiry.

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