How The Secret Service Actually Works | Authorized Account | Insider Take notes

My name is Kenneth Valentine, veteran of the United States Secret Service, including protecting three sitting presidents, and this is everything that I'm authorized to tell you. Truth is that the Secret Service is anything but secret. Everything we do is on the front page of the news every single day. And so when you have a success, we shrink into the darkness. People don't even think about you. If you have a failure, it's front-page news. The Butler, Pennsylvania, shooting has been difficult on many fronts. We failed. The Secret Service failed. The first and foremost is that one person died inside a secured event. Three other people, including a former president, were wounded inside that event. There's just no way you can't use the word failure when shots are fired into what is supposed to be a secured venue. I was actually clued in by a text from multiple agents because I was in the hospital with my mother, who was about to have open heart surgery, and I had to commandeer the TV in the room from her bedside roommate and put it on a news show to pick up what was happening. I have to assume that we didn't follow our own protocol, that we did not pay attention to detail, which is, one of the mantras of the presidential protection detail is to pay attention to detail. And that's one of the failures that I see with Butler, is not only was he able to get off rounds, but he was able to focus in, to see the protectee from outside the venue, and to put those shots in with some accuracy. So that's actually multiple failures. You don't want to be reacting to the sound of gunshot because those bullets have already whizzed past if you hear it. When the prevention doesn't work and now you're reacting, your job is to cover the protectee and then to evacuate that protectee, and the cover looked outstanding. The reaction by the detail was very good. They were very fast. It was fearless, as it should be. Their training kicked in and they did exactly what we train to do, which is get on top of that protectee and put them down. Put them down behind some assets and resources where they can't take another intentional, focused shot at the protectee. There are a myriad of ways that that could have been and should have been prevented that weren't that day. Shipping containers blocking line of sight. If you can't use a shipping container, which is going to stop the bullets, could you use a flag?