During today’s congressional hearings House members blistered Director Kim Cheatle of the Secret Service over the incident in Butler, Pennsylvania where Trump was almost assassinated – most saying she should resign or be fired. She provided almost no facts about the incident, she deferred to the FBI’s investigation for details of the day and refused to provide details on her own investigation. After nine days of investigation, much of the uncontroversial detail should have been at her fingertips, but it seemed to me that she was reasonably clueless in even the basics of events.
It was mentioned that she had not visited the Butler site, and that she had not talked to any of the agents until three days after the incident. Every leader from the CIA (station chiefs and team leads up to and including the Director himself), every business leader, every police chief, and anyone who is truly responsible for the people who work for them would have been on the ground on site within hours. In a crisis situation, speed is of the essence. Responsible leaders want to know RIGHT NOW everything that can be known. I don’t respect anyone who would do otherwise, and the fact that she did not go there shows a lack of integrity and work ethic.
Based on this testimony, it is clear to me she is the epitome of the “Peter Principle” i.e., she has risen to her level of incompetence, and suffers the Dunning-Kreuger Effect, i.e., she has vastly overestimated her own capabilities. Not only does she not display leadership within her organization, she does not even have the fortitude to protect. She presides over a broken Secret Service and she is content to leave it broken for now.
Some major points that lead to Cheatle’s incompatibility with the job:
She is not prepared to fire anyone for incompetence. When pressed, Cheatle would not commit to firing anyone for incompetence, she could not even fathom the possibility. ANY leader must be prepared to fire incompetence. Retaining incompetence in an organization that vows never to fail is a recipe for failure. But she seems to have the attitude of many government employees, that no one should ever be fired and government jobs are jobs for life. This quality alone makes her incompetent to lead the Secret Service.
Further, she has not relieved anyone on the team that exhibited breathtaking incompetence, they are still on duty and persons being protected have the possibility of being protected by those incompetent people. Think about that for a minute. She knows there is incompetence in that team somewhere, that incompetence almost got someone killed. If she doesn’t know who that is, then the entire team should suspend all of them. Would you go to a surgeon who killed his last patient? How about a mechanic whose repairs have failed? How many times should your food spoil before you fire your refrigerator repairman? Yet she is allowing incompetent Secret Service agents to continue trying to protect people. How does this happen?
She has the goal of producing a report in 60 days. She is NOT prepared to do anything to fix the Secret Service until the reports are done. So the flaws in the Secret Service will remain at least until then. What? So a broken Secret Service remains as it is, during the last 100 days until a Presidential election?
Cheatle denied that DEI had any effect on the Secret Service, but one congressman noted that DEI has been a major focus of Cheatle and that she has targets for hiring women and minorities. This and other comments in the hearing lead me to believe that Cheatle’s focus has not been on excellence.
My conclusion? Cheatle has no control over the Secret Service, she is out of touch and she has no leadership skills. Nothing will get fixed while she is there. But she won’t quit, she must be fired.
In the meantime, Trump and Harris are traveling around the country campaigning, and may indeed draw the agent whose incompetence allowed Trump to be fired upon. The Secret Service of legend would never have tolerated such risk.