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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. The assassination attempt against former President Trump has put a question into the public's mind that generally we don't think about. How does the Secret Service keep presidents and others who they protect safe? With so few incidents like this in U.S. history, certainly in modern U.S. history, we generally just take for granted, I think, that that is a rock-solid agency that crosses every t and dots every i.

Somehow this shooting happened, Trump and two other people were wounded and one rally-goer was killed. As you've been hearing on the news, the Director of the Secret Service, Kimberly Cheadle, resigned under bipartisan pressure yesterday. The Director of the Secret Service is really not the central issue. Somehow, a would-be assassin got that close and had that clear a view of Trump. Now The Washington Post is reporting that the Secret Service is encouraging the Trump campaign to stop holding outdoor rallies. NBC News reports that the Trump campaign has accepted that request and will rally indoors only for now.

How did July 13th happen? What should the safety protocols be in this supercharged political environment and the AR-15 era? How does the Secret Service do its job anyway? With us now, Carol Leonnig, national investigative reporter for The Washington Post, focused on the White House and government accountability. Carol is a perfect person to have on for this because as her Washington Post bio page notes, she won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting back in 2015 for her reporting that revealed broad misconduct and security failures within the Secret Service that put presidents' lives in danger.

That reporting was published a decade ago, but here we are again today. Carol is also co-author of two books about Donald Trump called A Very Stable Genius and I Alone Can Fix It. Carol, thanks for coming on for this. Welcome back to WNYC.

Carol Leonnig: Oh, thank you. It's my pleasure, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Can I start with the current news? Is the Trump campaign giving up outdoor rallies for now?

Carol Leonnig: I think they're mindful that if they don't, they're really cheating death or tempting it. It seems also an incredible moment for me to watch because the Secret Service is acknowledging something that it really never acknowledges, which is it doesn't have the resources to protect Donald Trump to the degree some of us expected, or at least that his campaign expected. They're finally acknowledging our resources are finite. We don't have enough people to protect him from a line of sight in the frequency of campaign rallies that he wants to hold as he seeks re-election to the Oval Office.

Brian Lehrer: Wow. Vice President Harris and anyone else, are they being asked to limit rallies to indoor venues?

Carol Leonnig: I think there's just a slightly different standard that the Secret Service naturally applies for a president and a vice president versus a former president. I think that's what's so interesting, Brian, about this moment. It's so challenging for the Secret Service to cover all of the bases of all of the people it protects. Donald Trump, he doesn't fit the rulebook that the Secret Service has played by for many, many decades about the degree, essentially, of protection provided and afforded a former president or a candidate.

A candidate for president is tier 2. In other words, if you're the president, the vice president, the first lady, there's a level of protection you're receiving when you're at public events, outdoor events. A former president or a candidate for president, that security is calibrated slightly at that second tier, not the first tier. Of course, it's modified based on the threats that that individual may be receiving.

What the Secret Service has never really come to terms with is Donald Trump doesn't fit neatly in their playbook. He is an extremely high-profile former president, and he's the first former president in modern times since the 1930s to run for re-election. He's like a threefer, if you will, a former president, a candidate, and an extremely high-profile person. His protection should match that, but that's not what the Secret Service playbook calls for, nor do its resources allow for it.

Brian Lehrer: A listener has just texted, "The GOP gives everyone a gun and then cries when someone is shot." As it pertains to this, has the widespread ownership of semi-automatic weapons of war like AR-15s, with their range and their ability to fire many shots quickly, changed anything in Secret Service protocols in recent years or their general threat assessments for outdoor events for the people they protect?

Carol Leonnig: It absolutely is part of their planning and concern and has been a concern for several law enforcement agencies, not just the Secret Service. It's been a worry for the FBI. It's been a worry for the military. Ultimately, the style of the gun is irrelevant to mitigating the risk of a gunman from far away. This is something the Secret Service has trained for and obsessed about since John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. I assume all of your listeners are familiar with that tragic incident that created unbelievable scars for the American public, but especially for the Secret Service.

That was a gunman in a high building, the building that was not secured, was able to shoot down into the open convertible of President Kennedy as he drove through a plaza in Dallas on a motorcade route for a campaign visit as he was, himself, seeking reelection. The service works on line of sight to mitigate that. The problem that was pretty glaring when we all began scurrying as reporters on the night of Saturday, July 13th, was that the service hadn't properly addressed the ability of a gunman to get on a very broad roof, 150 yards from Donald Trump's stage. You don't need an AR-15 to kill the former president from that vantage.

Brian Lehrer: Maybe you get more shots off. One question you raise in your reporting is why Trump was allowed to take the stage at all because they knew at that time that Thomas Crooks was milling around the perimeter, at least with a range finder, instead of proceeding toward the rally as you describe it. What's the best answer to that question that's knowable as of now? Why did the Secret Service let Trump take the stage with what they already knew?

Carol Leonnig: The answer that I've gotten from inside the Secret Service, and of course, they are in the middle of a very intense mission assurance review, that's the Secret Service speak for a hot wash after action, "What the heck happened here?" investigation, its own internal review.

What I've heard from the people who are piecing together that mission assurance review is that there was a communication breakdown of some sort. They suspect there was. Let me reiterate that. They suspect there was a communication breakdown between local police and the Secret Service, but also they stressed that when police said, "We have a suspicious person," there was no indication early on that that person might be armed. Therefore, what the Secret Service heard in their command center on site, which is called the Security Room, what the Secret Service heard was, "Okay, strange person acting oddly, that happens at every rally."

A suspicious person could be reported in July wearing a very large winter coat that was bulky. Their view was, "Okay, we have a suspicious person, but how suspicious? How worried are we about this?" They were not and did not make any effort to discourage Trump from taking the stage or delay it. I think that if Trump had been the president at that moment, if it had been Biden in that open area, there would have been so many more resources on site, understandably so. I think if there were reports of, "Wait a minute, suspicious person," the Secret Service might have drilled down a little bit more and tried to understand what's happening here before POTUS takes the stage.

Brian Lehrer: This is interesting to me, and it might be new to some listeners, that you're framing the failure in terms of lack of resources rather than bad decisions. Do you think the Secret Service really just has been underfunded? Will that immediately change after this?

Carol Leonnig: I want to emphasize that resources have been a major vulnerability for the security net that the Secret Service tries to build around the president, the first lady, the vice president, both of their family members, an extended group of family members that they're also protecting, top senior officials. This is an agency that has been spread too thin since 2012, according to the reporting that I've been doing since that time. The really dramatic failure of Congress and various presidential administrations is to make this issue a priority.

I've written before that, in my investigative series back in 2014 and 2015, revealed how the Secret Service was trying to patch things together with duct tape and staples, trying to look basically tough and like it could do at all because there are incredible patriots in that agency, instead of directors going to the president and going to Congress and saying, "This is an emergency, stat, we need more resources, especially during a presidential campaign, which happens every four years."

That is a super high-stress point for the Secret Service. What do you know? An assassination attempt is executed right during a presidential campaign when rallies are ramping up, when the number of events the Secret Service has to cover explodes, and when their protection for a former president is different than their protection level for a current president.

Brian Lehrer: "Even with-" as another listener writes, "-Trump being hated so much more than almost anybody, wouldn't he get a-" and I'm paraphrasing a text here, "-wouldn't he get an extra level of protection as compared to other candidates or other former presidents?"

Carol Leonnig: I think the questioner is quite smart and on the money. I believe he does get more protection than other former presidents and other candidates but again, that doesn't rise to the level of protection for an actual sitting president or a sitting vice president. I can see with my own eyes when you watch the motorcade for Donald Trump, how much larger that is than for another former president or for, say, another candidate in 2012.

Brian Lehrer: As I mentioned in the intro, as we look back in time, you mentioned 2012, you won a Pulitzer Prize for your reporting a decade ago. The articles came out in 2014 about previous Secret Service failures, the one involving a shooting at the White House, the one involving a fence jumper at the White House. Remind us maybe briefly of one or both of those incidents. My real question is, do you see any pattern of how those failures and this month's failure came to be, or are they each unique unto themselves?

Carol Leonnig: There are certainly, Brian, unique elements of each of them. In the case of the 2011 shooting where a gunman who had a Messianic complex and believed it was his assignment to kill President Obama, he shot at the White House from the middle of the National Mall, 750 yards, I believe, from the White House. I think I have that number right. It could be 750 feet. That number sticks with me. He shot and struck the White House with seven bullets.

The Secret Service that night concluded that the gunman, who they could not find right away, must have been a member of a gang beefing with somebody else. That was pretty unusual for the National Mall, full of museums and outdoor parks, but that's what they concluded. For four days, the Secret Service had no idea that this was a person trying to kill Obama and that he'd actually gotten bullets into the windows where the president's children and grandmother were then staying. The president and the first lady were away that night. That bungling of that investigation revealed the Secret Service's cultural compulsion to say, "No problems here. Everything's fine. Look, everybody, keep moving."

The jumper that we exclusively reported at the time that was able to get inside the White House, passed more than a hundred Secret Service personnel and security members who were on the complex of the White House that night. Never had happened before. Stunned everyone. What was revealed in that incident was a lack of training and a kind of a Friday night casual kind of mode where people who were exhausted from the week were starting to relax their guard because the president's helicopter had taken off just minutes before the jumper got over the fence and inside the house.

Brian Lehrer: He wasn't there.

Carol Leonnig: Yes. Then finally, with the event on July 13th, the attempted assassination, again, to me, it is a team that's trying to cover all the bases, trying to say that they're indefatigable and all is well, and all is not well.

Brian Lehrer: That leads to this critique of the idea that lack of resources caused this. From a listener who texted, "It wouldn't have cost a single cent to simply stop the rally temporarily to check out the reported threat. They didn't use the brains and resources they already had," writes that listener. I want to play a clip, and then I know you got to go soon. I'll play this clip and you can respond to that texter and to this. A clip of yesterday's congressional hearing where the witness was the Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Colonel Christopher Paris, and he's describing here the harrowing moments just before the shots were fired from the vantage point of the local and state police.

Colonel Christopher Paris: Crooks was in that area around the building. My understanding is two additional municipal officers who were on a different post responded to that area and they began actively looking for Crooks. They circumvented or they circumscribed the building to try and locate him. It became apparent at some point that he was up on the roof.

Those two municipal officers who responded then to their credit actively, once they realized that he was on the roof, one boosted the other one up hanging from the ledge of the roof. By the time that officer was boosted up on top of the roof, Crooks was on it almost in that final position that you saw. He had the AR out and he pointed it at the municipal officer, who suspended from the roof, was not in a position, feet dangling at that point, to draw a weapon or continue hoisting himself back up on the roof. He drops back down from the roof.

At this point, I believe that's when the video that's been widely circulated with people filming Crooks up on the roof saying there's somebody up on the roof. There were other law enforcement around the building running, but their vantage point on the ground did not lend a clear line of sight to where Crooks was at the top of that building,

Brian Lehrer: Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner. What a scenario, Carol, a local police officer hanging by his hands off the side of the building, apparently seeing what was likely about to happen, but no way to hold on for his life and reach for a weapon at the same time. Wow. As far as you could tell at that point, what was the essential error if there was one? Maybe how did that intersect with the lack of resources?

Carol Leonnig: First off, I want to give credit to a colleague of mine, Isaac Stanley-Becker. He and I were working the late shift on the night of the shooting together, and he was the person who first reported with me about that horrific scene of an officer scrambling in the arms of another officer who boosted him onto the roof and saw the shooter had the rifle pointed at him and then dropped. Isaac got that amazing information, was the first to report it in our story together. It's vindicating to hear the Pennsylvania Colonel describe it exactly as we reported it 10 days ago.

I would say that what's important about that moment is you see police officers who are responsible or assigned- I should say, assigned to that outer security perimeter scrambling rather quickly to catch up with the gunman and what he is doing. What should have happened, and what I think the Secret Service internal report will ultimately conclude, is somebody should have been posted permanently around this huge building with, again, a huge opportunity to shoot directly at Donald Trump. Somebody should have been stationed in a key way to make sure no one ever got on top of it in the first place.

Brian Lehrer: Carol Leonnig from The Washington Post, who won a Pulitzer for reporting 10 years ago on security failures by the Secret Service and tragically on that beat again. Carol, thank you so much for coming on today.

Carol Leonnig: Thank you, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. More to come.

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