"US Secret Service: An Agency in Crisis" (2015)

The US Secret Service was having problems long before Trump.

See the PDF here. Some conclusions:

This report examines four incidents in detail: a November 11, 2011, incident where an individual fired several shots at the White House from a semiautomatic rifle; the April 2012 misconduct in Cartagena, Colombia; a September 16, 2014, incident at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, where an armed contract security guard with a violent arrest history rode in an elevator with President Obama and later breached the President’s security formation; and a March 4, 2015, incident where two intoxicated senior USSS officials— including a top official on the President’s protective detail—interfered with a crime scene involving a bomb threat just outside the White House grounds. 

The Committee also found that one year after the blue-ribbon Protective Mission Panel issued its assessment and recommendations for the security of the White House compound, several serious deficiencies remain. As USSS’s mission has grown, its workforce has had to do more with less. USSS is experiencing a staffing crisis that poses perhaps the greatest threat to the agency. The crisis began after 2011 when the number of employees began to decline sharply, and the decline continued across all categories of employment. Three main causes are significant cuts imposed by the Budget Control Act of 2011, systemic mismanagement at USSS that has been unable to correct these shortfalls, and declining employee morale leading to attrition. 

From budget-related hiring freezes to increasing attrition over the past five years, the personnel shortage is so high that—notwithstanding the blue-ribbon Protective Mission Panel’s recommendations that USSS increase hiring significantly—there has been a net decline in operational personnel, including the Uniformed Division that guards the White House. The high attrition rate means that the personnel who remain are significantly overworked, and morale is at an all-time low. Rather than swiftly bringing on new employees, USSS has an extraordinarily inefficient hiring process which overburdens USSS with low-quality applicants. Further, recent Page | 3 changes to the process have allegedly fostered risks in connection with the approval of security clearances. 

Internal USSS data shows that morale is further harmed because many employees do not have confidence in agency leadership. Some whistleblowers told the Committee they believed this was due to a culture where leaders are not held accountable. 

Many agency personnel who spoke to the Committee are desperate for new outside leadership willing to undertake dramatic reforms at the agency. The Committee found that reforms should include a reconsideration of USSS’s responsibilities, which have dramatically expanded in recent decades. No peripheral investigative duties should be allowed to detract from the core aspect of USSS’s mission: protection.

The Secret Service is sick and rotting away. As planned, apparently.