Senior-level personnel changes at the US Secret Service as well as the creation of new divisions are underway as the agency works to resolve security breakdowns that preceded the two attempts on former President Donald Trump’s life this summer.
Acting Director Ron Rowe laid out his plan in an agencywide email earlier this week even as his own days as head of the agency may be coming to an end. Typically, incoming presidents choose their own Secret Service director, and it’s hard to know whether Vice President Kamala Harris or Trump would retain Rowe.
“I can’t think about what’s going to happen to me,” Rowe said in a telephone interview on Friday. “I am trying to be the best leader I can be for the Secret Service at this moment in time, and what I am focused on right now is making sure that I’m advocating for our people that are out there doing the mission.”
In the email reviewed by CNN, Rowe called the moves part of his effort to enact a “paradigm shift that will allow us to enhance our resources” and to streamline operations.
“I’m trying to get programs more closely aligned with the mission, getting them out to the field so that they are directly supporting enforcement operations, major criminal investigations and, of course, protective operations,” Rowe told CNN.
Rowe’s email lists multiple new assistant directors and deputy assistant directors — filling gaps left by several top leaders who have elected to retire in recent months. The agency also has created two new top-level positions will help “facilitate decision-making,” according to the memo.
The new divisions were created, in part, to address communication lapses and the failure to detect a drone flown by the shooter before the July rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, where Trump was shot and a rallygoer killed.
“This is meant now to bring these programs closer into the operations, get them into the field, so that the people that are doing the mission have the support that they need to execute,” Rowe told CNN.
The Aviation and Aerospace Division will be chiefly responsible for the agency’s drone and counter-drone strategies.
Hours before the July shooting, the would-be assassin was able to fly a drone in the rally area undetected because, according to congressional reports, a Secret Service operator could not get the agency’s counter-drone system operating and had so little training he had to call a tech support line to fix the issue.
Rowe has testified that if the counter-drone system were operating, they would have likely detected the drone and found the shooter hours before he shot Trump in the ear.
Rowe also announced the Operational Communications and Integration Division to manage radio and other communications — an apparent response to the Secret Service’s failure to effectively communicate with local law enforcement partners even after the gunman in Pennsylvania was spotted several times.
The agency’s well-documented communication failures that day — from having two separate command posts, failing to pick up local radios and the disjointed system — led to a scenario in which the soon-to-be shooter was spotted and reported as a suspicious individual more than an hour before the shooting. Radio calls from local police who saw the shooter on the roof shortly before he opened fire never made it to the Secret Service.
Rowe said that while Trump now gets every security resource that a sitting president enjoys, the agency “needs to put all assets, all technologies and the necessary people that we need to achieve mission success out there all the time,” regardless of who is under its protection.
CNN has previously reported on the strain inside the Secret Service as the agency dramatically ramps up protection during the final stretch of the campaign season. Rowe’s recent email also announced a new Office of Employee Wellness to ensure the agency meets the needs of its employees and their families, acknowledging the workforce is “strained.”
“Law enforcement is a very difficult profession,” Rowe said Friday. “It is not only hard on the individual, it’s hard on the families. And so we want to make sure that we have support systems in place and not only support our operators that are out there doing the mission, but that that support extends to their families.”
As part of the changes, Rowe is also standing up an Office of Staffing and Recruitment “to elevate the critical hiring pipeline.”
In the latest scathing report in the aftermath of the July shooting and the arrest of man accused in the second assassination attempt last month at Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida, an independent panel appointed by the Department of Homeland Security Secretary recommended a complete overhaul of Secret Service leadership.
The panel also recommended the agency shed some of its responsibilities not related to security, including its investigative work. Rowe called that recommendation “shortsighted.”
The investigative wing of the agency — which mostly focuses on financial crimes — allows the agency to build relationships with local law enforcement, who they depend on heavily for protective operations such as campaign rallies and similar visits.
“We train state and local officers in cyber investigations. We provide them training in how to trace cryptocurrency and illicit uses of cryptocurrencies and money laundering,” Rowe said. “We have a particular skill set within investigations that you cannot duplicate anywhere in other agencies.”
