Watch the surveillance footage from Saturday night’s terrifying near miss at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and you’ll see that the suspect doesn’t slip through a gap or show any sophisticated exploitation of a missed security vulnerability. He runs straight through a checkpoint in plain sight past officers who fail to block his path in time. That, in itself, is the essence of what went wrong.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche called it “a massive security success story” during a Sunday appearance on CNN. But although the gunman was ultimately apprehended, he also breached the perimeter of an event attended by the president, the vice president, the secretary of defense, the acting attorney general, the FBI director and dozens of members of Congress. An officer was shot. It’s fair to ask what “success” means in that context.
I spent more than 35 years as an FBI agent and U.S. Marine, before retiring from government service to work as a security consultant. I’ve spent a career in environments where security decisions carry consequences.
What happened Saturday night reflects completely avoidable failures.
This is a preview of Robert D’Amico’s latest column. Read the full column here.
