Secret Service Protection, Since Ronald Reagan
Lessons from Ronald Reagan's Assassination have not been followed today
Secret Service Agent J. Lawrence Cunningham was in charge of designing the Secret Service protective protocols after the Secret Service failed to protect Ronald Reagan1 from assassination on March 30, 1981. In this video he describes the differences between the lessons the Secret Service applied then and the way the Secret Service has handled security for President Trump in:
Butler, PA
Mar-a-Lago
White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Hilton Hotel, Washington
Gemini Summary
This transcript features a discussion between host Judge Andrew Napolitano and Jay Lawrence Cunningham, a former Secret Service agent with 20 years of experience. The conversation centers on security vulnerabilities concerning President Trump, specifically regarding an incident at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, previous events in Butler, Pennsylvania, and security concerns at the Mar-a-Lago golf course.
Assessment of Security Failures
Cunningham argues that security measures during the White House Correspondents’ Dinner were inadequate, specifically citing “profound missteps” regarding the perimeters.
Weak Perimeters: The “concentric circles of protection”—outer, middle, and inner—were not sufficiently robust or wide enough to account for potential threats.
Inadequate Screening: The screening process was limited by space, and the entry requirements were too lax (requiring only a ticket rather than verified identification).
Lack of Counter-Surveillance: There was an absence of “roving intelligence units” or “counter surveillance units,” which should have been deployed to detect suspicious behavior before individuals reached the magnetometers.
Response Delays: During the incident, the protective detail for the President appeared to be at a distance, causing a delay in the “alert, shield, and evacuate” protocol. This resulted in the President being exposed longer than necessary compared to the Vice President, who was moved more expeditiously.
Training and Procedural Concerns
A central theme of the discussion is a perceived decline in the effectiveness of the Secret Service, which Cunningham attributes to several factors:
Lack of Training: Cunningham states that agents have not consistently engaged in high-level training, including physical training (PT), in recent years.
Inconsistent Leadership: He suggests that modern agents are not held to the same standards of accountability, site-walking, and “red teaming” (thinking like an attacker) as they were in previous eras.
Staffing Issues: He notes that assignments sometimes involve personnel lacking the specific nuances of presidential or candidate protection, such as Homeland Security Investigators, rather than specialized agents.
Broader Security Philosophy
Cunningham highlights several principles he believes are necessary for effective protection:
Coordinated Attacks: He expresses grave concern regarding the potential for “coordinated” or “simultaneous attacks,” citing the 2015 Paris attacks as a model that the Secret Service must prepare for. He warns that current operations could be vulnerable to diversions, where one person acts as a distraction while others penetrate the site.
Site Management: He emphasizes that every location must be treated as a unique environment requiring rigorous advance work, which includes consulting with local law enforcement, counter-snipers, and hotel security to form a cohesive team.
Previous Incidents: Regarding the Butler, Pennsylvania incident and the Mar-a-Lago security breach, Cunningham characterizes them as “egregious” abandonments of basic protective principles, noting that in his era, having an individual camp out for 12 hours would have been impossible.
Questions:
Do you agree with former Secret Service Agent Larry Cunningham that the Secret Service protection have featured egregious abandonment of basic protective principles?
Why do you think Trump hasn’t insisted on more of an investigation into the Butler and Mar-a-Lago assassination attempts?
DETAIL:
Video Transcript:
Today is Monday, April 27th, 2000.
1:10 I can’t hear you, Judge. Um,
1:13 all right.
You hear me now through the Yes, I I put speakers. We’re good. Thank you.
1:18 All right.
Ready to go. So, our uh guest uh is Jay Lawrence Cunningham.
Larry was
1:26 a Secret Service agent for 20 years, was in was a supervisor for many of those
1:32 years, was the lead advance agent for such people as President Ronald Reagan
1:39 and Pope John Paul II.
Larry is of course an expert on security, having spent so much time in the Secret Service
1:47 and having been engaged by the government and others to advise them on security issues.
Larry, welcome here.
1:55 It’s a delight to have you even though we’re talking about a most unpleasant subject.
Um, was President Trump adequately protected on Saturday night
2:04 at the White House correspondents dinner at the Hilton Hotel?
Well, uh, I would have to say in total, no.
There were
2:11 some missteps and candidly profound missteps on the out of perimeters which allowed um this person Allen to get
2:21 close.
uh in some areas they were um following protocol but the problem is
2:29 the um issue that I saw there are many that contributed to this but the outer perimeter is weak and the observation
2:39 tools that you have were not in place adequately and the other problem I found is that they adapted um the environment
2:48 for screening which was limited But given that uh that limited space between the entry and the metal detectors, there
2:58 was limited space.
So to accommodate that, there should have been a few more buffer zones, a few more
3:05 sort of what you say is the outer perimeter.
As I understand it, the Secret Service operates, and I’ll I’ll try and make this simple for everyone
3:13 listening, with concentric circles of protection.
And what you’re saying is the outer circle either wasn’t strong
3:21 enough or didn’t go out far enough.
Is that a fair way to describe this?
3:26 I would say both candidly.
Um there are a lot of tools. Well, let’s back up for a second in the context of the number of threats that the president currently
3:35 gets on a daily basis.
the elements that you do as you described in the perimeters approach the outer middle and
3:42 inner perimeters they need to be far more robust to deal with all the threats known and unknown and because of that
3:50 I’m faulting the uh candidly the um somewhat porous outer and middle
3:57 perimeter uh this person was basically had uh a free rain and a free uh runway
4:04 to get right to the metal detector and the metal detector really wasn’t very far at all down the steps to the main
4:11 dining area.
So, in my view, there should have been more robust screening on the way in. A couple contributing
4:19 factors, all you needed was a ticket to get into the event.
You didn’t really need ID, per se. Uh, anybody could have
4:28 had a ticket.
There’s a lot of remedies for that. They did not have that. There could have been trouble desks.
There could have been folks to verify ID, hire
4:37 lots more people, get more staff and do all that verification as far away from the inner perimeter as possible.
So,
4:46 judge, as you rightly point out, it is a perimeter’s approach, but it has to be adapted to the circumstance and to the threat level and frankly the geography and the infrastructure.
4:57 Shouldn’t someone have noticed him in the hallways, in an elevator, on escalators,
5:05 if he was carrying a long gun?
I mean, I can understand you can you can hide a handgun under your jacket or your
5:13 clothing, but you can’t hire you can’t hide without being obvious as hell a long gun.
5:19 That’s true. Well, I I’ve read the latest update and apparently he came down a back stairwell with a black bag.
5:27 He assembled that weapon somewhere. We don’t know exactly, but you’re absolutely right.
And that speaks to what I’m talking about with the outer
5:35 perimeter assets.
Uh there’s a couple of couple assets that go with this.
5:40 Obviously, it’s barriers and sort of tiered entry points, ID and tickets.
But
5:49 to your point, judge, uh there are other things that can be done.
They do it at the White House, and they’re basically called uh counter surveillance units or
5:58 roving intelligence units.
Ideally under these circumstances given the geography given the threat level and given the
6:06 condensed uh geography there there should have been numerous teams like that not only in the outer perimeter but
6:13 in the middle perimeter in the lobby area and also before the metal detectors because
6:19 some team usually p paired with a local intelligent asset would be able to see
6:26 something suspicious presumably and that speaks to another thing which lots of folks have made a big point about.
Uh
6:35 I’ve developed some curricula for the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA on this very subject and it’s basically called site protection and it’s called
6:44 lone wolves.
In this case, the service has a a very robust study on behaviors of lone wolves and in general they their
6:53 behavior exceeds the baseline.
It’s just simply not normal. Let me ask you a few specific questions.
6:58 Do you know what kind of a long gun he had as the government revealed that?
7:02 Yes. He had a shotgun and his thinking in his manifesto which I read uh was he didn’t want a rifled slug to go through walls.
He wanted it to be a scattershot.
7:13 So it was actually a shotgun with uh pellets.
He had a handgun and a couple of knives.
7:22 Can Chris, can you run the clip of him running past the magnetometer?
7:30 You You’ve probably seen this, but I would like Yeah.
I would like you to analyze it for us, Larry. To me, it’s odd.
7:38 It’s almost as if the agents in pursuing him a fired but missed. I know. Unbelievable.
7:45 abandoned their posts. It appears that way. Maybe there were other agents to follow.
I I don’t know. I mean, how did
7:52 they not know that this guy was just a decoy to be followed by uh a dozen others?
So, thanks be to God that didn’t happen.
8:01 I’ll address that as soon as we watch this one more time.
Okay.
8:06 Now, you’re making several points and I have this in my notes actually. Here we go.
Okay.
8:13 That’s him in the circle. Yes. Okay.
8:22 Are they They can’t just be pointing.
8:25 They must be shooting.
Yes, they are shooting. There were six rounds,
8:29 apparently. Six pops that we know of.
If you look in the lower left, there’s a police officer who actually fires. It appears.
There’s a little bit of a a
8:38 flashbang on that officer right there on the lower left.
And candidly,
8:44 the asalent had a free runway up to the magnetometer point.
My issue with the whole thing is given that close
8:53 proximity between the outer perimeter or the middle perimeter and up to the magnetometer, there should have been a
9:00 far more robust screening or barriers or personnel to minimize this kind of thing.
If I were setting the security
9:08 up, I would have put up a trouble desk or several to verify ID and verify the the tickets and maybe even given a
9:16 second ticket.
To me, this is far too few uh screening area and and too anemic
9:24 of a screening area to deal with all these attend agent there who almost seems to collapse or fall as uh Mr. Allen runs past him.
9:36 Well, the problem is, and this is a ongoing issue with agents and police, they have a tendency to look at the protectee.
So,
9:45 whomever did the advance wasn’t really strict enough or emphasized enough that you should be looking at the outer
9:52 perimeter, not the inner perimeter.
And I’m I’m struck by the fact that you have police officers on the left and
9:59 presumably I haven’t looked at the the advanced plan yet, but presumably other agents further out.
If they didn’t,
10:07 that’s an egregious misstep. You’re out of perimeter.
Being so close to the magnetometers and then have this person
10:15 blow by you and then have the miss is just to me an egregious uh misstep.
It could have been resolved very easily. Do
10:23 you know the make and model of the shotgun?
I mean, did it have a folding stock? Could he have secreted it under his jacket or in a bag somewhere?
10:32 He may well have. I don’t know the specifics on that, but I would presume,
10:36 as smart as he is in trying to be surreptitious, I would presume he probably did have a folding a folding
10:43 shotgun.
Is the u job of the secret service to provide security for the
10:51 event or security for its designated protectees in this case the principal of whom is the president?
11:01 Yes. So that is a bit of a conundrum but when you do an advance like this I’ve actually done a Capitol Hilton security
11:10 advance.
The first thing you do is you talk that room.
11:13 Yes, I do.
And you talk to the manager of the hotel and you also hook up with their security folks.
To do it
11:20 correctly, you look at after actions of vulnerabilities from prior events,
11:24 whether they involve pus or just another dignitary.
And then you pair up with the
11:31 chief of security there.
Um, police from Metropolitan Police Department and other agencies, for example, State Department,
11:41 Capitol Police and others that to protect the attendees there, the other cabinet members, and you collectively make it a team approach.
This looks like
11:51 it that was not done.
And so to answer your question, yes, it involves you’re in their house for example, and so it involves consulting with them,
12:01 explaining to them what your requirements are, uh what their uh capabilities are, and pair up accordingly.
12:11 Why didn’t uh the Secret Service kill him or at least hit him with their weapons?
They
12:19 fired six times and the and the bullets went astray.
12:23 I I really can’t speak to that.
All I can do is speak to the training that I had in my era.
Um our folks were very um
12:34 shall I shall I say trained adnauseium for these kinds of things.
I do know I that they have not done a lot of
12:43 training in recent years.
And part of the reason that I’ve been given with some of my sources is the fact that they’ve been overwhelmed with other dignitaries,
12:52 other protectes.
And so they really haven’t been able to do PT, for example,
12:57 and they haven’t been able to do as many.
You say PT, you mean physical training. Right. Right.
13:03 And also, why was the vice president also there?
And why was he removed from the scene before the president was?
13:15 Well, that’s something that um concerns me greatly and I looked at that several times.
My conclusion without having the
13:24 benefit of being at their briefings is the VP detail you see coming in there right away were in closer proximity.
So,
13:32 they were able to access the vice president and remove him expeditiously.
13:37 Now on the left on the screen here you see the president.
13:42 It appears that his detail leader and his supervisors were
13:48 quite a distance from him which increases time and and reduces the efficiency and effectiveness of the response.
13:58 But now watch what happens when yes,
14:00 President Trump stands up and is surrounded by these people.
Watch what happens to him. I know you’ve seen this, but I’d like you to comment on it.
14:11 Okay.
14:13 They fell down.
Did Did they intentionally push him down so as to be out of the view of a shooter or did they trip over each other?
14:22 That’s hard for me to tell. The protocol is you alert, shield, and evacuate.
Um,
14:29 I don’t know if he fell down or tripped or whatever, but the fact is he was there almost 30 seconds exposed longer
14:38 than the vice president.
And the protocol calls for the following. You alert, shield, and evacuate. You don’t wait around.
Even though the protective
14:47 may want to stay or look around, it’s been said that he wanted to see what was going on.
That’s not the deal. You remove him from the vulnerable area as
14:56 soon as possible.
The textbook example is the removal of the vice president.
15:02 The other example with Donald Trump was it was too delayed.
I can tell you historically in my era the supervisors, the head of the
15:11 details wanted very close access.
In my area, if you look at era, if you look at
15:17 the old films and the old uh events, um a detail leader for the president and a
15:25 detail leader for the first lady are in very close proximity.
They may be a seat behind in a tux for this very purpose.
15:33 It appears that the presidential protective division agents were not near in close proximity enough to be
15:41 responsive and effective in a timely manner.
Thank God there was no other compadres out there, no other shooters in the audience because he was exposed for too much of a time.
15:52 Let me expand this to the two other threats in his life, one of which could have killed him just a matter of an inch in Butler, Pennsylvania.
16:03 How did that guy get up on on the roof?
16:06 Okay, I’m very familiar with that. I actually wrote a 16 page 17page paper on it, which I will send you.
Uh that was
16:13 probably one of the most egregious um abandonment frankly of the most basic
16:21 protective principles, the basic advanced principles.
And the the way I look at this is that part of it was the
16:28 assignment of the personnel.
The personnel that were assigned did not have protective experience.
The numbers of the personnel that were assigned was
16:36 not commensurate with this level of a protectee, especially given the threat level.
They utilize homeland security investigators.
16:46 Nothing wrong with those people, but they’re not trained in the nuances and of presidential or candidate protection.
16:54 So to answer your question, there were a series of missteps in terms of leaison with the police, partnering with their
17:02 intelligence group and basically having a one voice command post.
There are so many other issues that occurred but
17:10 those types of things sort of doing the advance solo in a vacuum is part of the problem.
The other issue is the folks
17:19 that were doing that advance, and I don’t take pleasure in in talking about this this way, but I have to call it out, is that they really didn’t
17:27 understand how vitally important it is to create a cohesive team.
We’re in Butler’s house. We’re not at the White House, and there are many resources,
17:36 counter sniper, police, sheriff, state police that could assist in a very meaningful way.
The perimeters were set
17:44 up in a way that is completely counter to what we’re taught.
The the thought was the perimeters are covered so they had personnel looking in to the site,
17:55 not outside the site.
And they arbitrarily said the fence was the dividing line. Well, threats can come
18:02 from anywhere, miles away.
And so to answer your question about how did this person get on the roof?
Candidly, they
18:09 didn’t have enough surveillance personnel, Secret Service personnel specifically. It wasn’t manned properly.
18:17 So, that person uh Crooks was able to get on the roof pretty much unnoticed
18:24 except for the police noticing that um that uh climbing on the roof and the assassin positioning himself on the roof.
18:33 If we go back to my concentric circle analogy,
18:37 Yes.
again in Butler, just like in Saturday night, the concentric the largest concentric circle wasn’t big enough and it didn’t go out far enough.
18:45 That’s correct. Exactly the same mistake.
18:48 And the same thing at his golf course in Florida where that guy actually aimed a long gun at the tea where Trump was
18:57 about to be putting.
And and I can explain a couple things here that this would not have happened in my era.
And I’m not saying because I was in that
19:05 era.
I’m saying because we were had we had very strict managers and very strict protocols and incredible accountability.
19:12 Let’s use the the um Marila Lago golf course as an example.
So that person
19:19 um Ruth was there for 12 hours. That’s impossible in our era.
When you when you have a site like that, the advanced
19:29 agent with a supervisor walks it a couple of times day and night.
Hours before you have dogs that do the
19:37 perimeter, you cut off the traffic and immediately before the advance, you do this again.
So to have someone like that
19:46 sitting there for camped out for 12 hours with no second supervisor going through this with the agents and with a
19:55 counterpart and dog teams to me is it’s anathema.
It’s just I’m a gasast at that oversight. That just simply is not the way it works.
20:05 Why is it that No. And I realize you’re retired from the service, Larry, but can you speculate
20:13 I’ll call it an educated guess as to why no substantial changes were made after the two threats on his life, the one in
20:20 Butler that almost killed him and the one in Mara Lago, God knows what would have happened if an agent hadn’t seen the tip of the gun.
Why is it that as
20:29 recently as two days ago, he’s still inadequately protected and one of the people assigned to him, a young female,
20:37 is half his size.
How could she be expected to pick him up when he fell?
20:42 Exactly.
And what I can tell you is that this gets back to training.
Uh Jason Chafitz after the penetration of the
20:50 White House several years ago and after a um armed felon was in the elevator with the president at the CDC many years
20:59 ago, Jason Chafus and um Lieberman did an extensive expose and study of the procedures.
21:08 uh conspicuously absent from the whole paradigm, the security procedures was
21:15 consistent and effective training.
You go forward some more in terms of Butler,
21:22 that still is the case.
They have not taken training seriously. Now whether it’s funding or basically making um
21:29 agents available for that or scheduling for that, I’m not privy to that exactly,
21:33 but I can tell you this is clearly a result of improper strategy application,
21:40 protective strategy application and a real lack of consistent training.
I know for a fact they haven’t done PT in many
21:48 years on a consistent basis.
But I wonder if Trump himself, you know, he was obviously exhilarated
21:55 later in the evening that his life was spared, but I wonder if he himself was aware of all all these defects when he praised the Secret Service to the skies.
22:06 Well, I was talking to a couple of uh former colleagues and candidly um he doesn’t completely understand the
22:13 perimeter’s approach.
This is not I mean this was a reactionary thank god successful reaction to an imminent
22:21 threat.
Let’s just say that upfront. But the the effective mitigation measures
22:28 which I’ve mentioned and we talk about some more were not in place in the correct numbers and in the correct
22:36 configuration.
And to answer your question from before, how is it now we keep having these missteps,
22:45 I have a couple of a couple of uh theories.
Number one, I don’t think they’re held to account the way the old
22:53 days were.
In other words, physically walk the site at nauseium. Um be a devil’s advocate.
uh put on a red team
23:02 hat if I were an assassin, if I were a terrorist or or god forbid, if I was a group of terrorists, how would I penetrate this?
And candidly, it scares
23:10 the daylights out of me because I’m looking at this having studied many terrorist attacks on my other work that
23:17 this basically was sitting doc.
If one person can get in like that and be a distraction, like you said, what to
23:24 prevent four or five more coming in from different directions?
That is the part that that flabbergasts me. And so I’m
23:32 thinking they don’t look at um terrorist attacks and how that matches the Secret Service strengths and vulnerabilities.
23:42 I’ll make make another observation here very quickly.
In 2015, you recall the Paris attacks and that was an ISIS um simultaneous multi-attack,
23:54 right?
And the the the strategy there was to distract. They had a theater, a couple of cafes, maybe a restaurant and
24:03 another area, but they also had the Stad Paris, which is the football stadium,
24:08 and that’s where the president of France was.
So if you were a resource person, a supervisor, you couldn’t handle this.
24:16 You would have to rep prioritize every minute or so because these are almost simultaneous.
the babyface bomber who
24:23 terrorist who went to the um gate to get into the stadium uh told one of the
24:30 ticket takers his friend was inside and had the ticket.
Can I go inside and get my ticket? Well, the uh senior ticket
24:39 taker said no, he can come out and give me the ticket.
So, he said he walked away and tried to do it again.
So the
24:47 whole point of this thing is that we need to be aware of simultaneous attacks.
In my paper regarding Butler,
24:56 uh DHS and I was part of it and some of my other uh police instructors created a course called uh coordinated attacks.
25:07 We’re not ready for that. I I I’m I’m just I’m I’m sad to say this.
I’m I’m I’m really concerned about it because if
25:15 you look at that scenario and you had a very studied terrorist group that observed our operation several times in
25:24 several different contexts and several different venues, you could see how vulnerable it is.
And judge, as you aptly astutely observed, they weren’t
25:33 looking at that.
That could have been a diversion and then the next wave of several attackers could have accessed the entire the entire group.
25:42 Wow.
25:43 Uh Larry, we have to go, but thank you very much.
This has been a fascinating fascinating conversation. Uh, will you
25:50 come back again as we learn more about this, more about the weapon and more about the uh more about the shooter and more about I I have to say this, the
26:00 defects in the protective services around the president of the United States.
26:05 I’m happy to. And this is done in the spirit of trying to improve. Yes, absolutely.
I mean, I I’m 100% red,
26:12 white, and blue. I want things to work.
26:14 But if you’re going to take on that responsibility, you’ve got to pay the dues and do the training,
26:19 right?
And I have to tell the audience how you and I met because the person who introduced us is a very, very popular
26:27 guest on this show who’s here twice a week.
And that of course is Larry Johnson. I think you know Larry Johnson from back when the two of you were working in the government.
26:36 Very well.
26:36 Another another great Larry.
Well, thank you for having me and I look forward to more and um I will send you some more documentation to help.
26:44 Okay, I’m gonna I’m gonna sign off and remind the audience of what we’re doing tomorrow.
Would you stick around? Uh I want to ask you something off air.
26:53 Yes.
26:53 Uh thank you very much, Larry Cunningham.
Uh coming up tomorrow, Tuesday, uh at 8 in the morning,
Footnotes
On March 30, 1981, Ronald Reagan, the president of the United States, was shot and wounded by John Hinckley Jr. in Washington, D.C., as Reagan was returning to his limousine after a speaking engagement at the Washington Hilton hotel. Hinckley believed the attack would impress the actress Jodie Foster, with whom he had developed an erotomanic obsession after viewing her in the 1976 film Taxi Driver.
Reagan was seriously wounded by a revolver bullet that ricocheted off the side of the presidential limousine and hit him in the left underarm, breaking a rib, puncturing a lung, and causing serious internal bleeding. He underwent emergency exploratory surgery at George Washington University Hospital, and was released on April 11. No formal invocation of sections 3 or 4 of the U.S. Constitution‘s Twenty-fifth Amendment (concerning the vice president assuming the president’s powers and duties) took place, though Secretary of State Alexander Haig stated that he was “in control here” at the White House until Vice President George H. W. Bush returned to Washington from Fort Worth, Texas. Haig was fourth in the line of succession after Bush, Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill, and President pro tempore of the Senate Strom Thurmond.
White House press secretary James Brady, Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy, and D.C. police officer Thomas Delahanty were also wounded. All three survived, but Brady suffered brain damage and was permanently disabled; he died in 2014 as a result of his injury.[2][5]
On June 21, 1982, Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity on charges of attempting to assassinate the president. He remained confined to St. Elizabeths Hospital, a psychiatric facility in Washington, D.C. In 2015, federal prosecutors announced that they would not charge Hinckley with Brady’s death, despite the medical examiner’s classification of his death as a homicide.[6] Hinckley was discharged from his institutional psychiatric care in 2016. (Wikipedia)