The acting director of the U.S. Secret Service said Thursday he was concerned about the morale of his overworked agents, as he addressed an independent review that called for “fundamental reform” within the agency to prevent assassination attempts like the one in July that injured former President Donald Trump.
In an exclusive interview with NBC News, Ronald Rowe Jr. said he worried about the health and wellness of “demoralized” Secret Service agents who are being pushed to the brink and working long hours amid operational and policy changes.
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“We are redlining our people,” Rowe said. “We are asking them to do extraordinary things right now.”
His remarks come hours after an independent, bipartisan panel identified in a report “numerous mistakes” by the Secret Service and “deep” systemic or cultural flaws that enabled the assassination attempt at Trump’s presidential campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13.
Trump was shot in the ear, one rallygoer was killed and two others were wounded before a Secret Service countersniper shot and killed the 20-year-old gunman.
The panel, made up of four former senior law enforcement and government officials, said the Secret Service “does not perform at the elite levels needed to discharge its critical mission.” It warned that another assassination attempt “can and will happen again” without “fundamental reform.”
The panel’s recommendations included welcoming a new leadership team, mandating additional training and overhead surveillance for outdoor events, and establishing a central communications hub for large events.
Rowe, who has already publicly acknowledged the agency’s failures, said the Secret Service has increased Trump’s protective detail to the highest level, as much as a sitting U.S. president. The agency has also provided Congress with documents with little to no redactions and has invested in new technologies, he said.
“We’ll continue to work with the department to look at those recommendations that are actionable and feasible to make changes in the Secret Service,” he said. “But we have not been sitting back waiting for reports like this to come out.”
In a separate written statement, Rowe said the agency was developing a “comprehensive” plan aimed at “driving a fundamental transformation” within the Secret Service. He said the plan focuses on increasing and retaining the agency’s personnel, modernizing technology and building a training plan.
He told NBC News that applications to join the Secret Service were up, with 400 people currently in various stages of training.
Rowe was appointed acting director in July after Kimberly Cheatle resigned following a blistering House Oversight Committee hearing in which legislators skewered her over her lack of cooperation.
During a rare joint Senate committee hearing shortly after his appointment, Rowe testified that he was “ashamed” at the security gaps that led to the assassination attempt and said he could not understand or defend why the roof from which the shooter fired was not better secured.
Earlier this week, the two men who were wounded by the gunfire at the July rally told NBC News that the Secret Service failed them that day. “The negligence was vast,” one of them, David Dutch, 57, said.
Rowe apologized to them Thursday. “We failed that day, but we will not fail again,” he said.
In September, there was a second apparent assassination attempt at Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida. Officials said the suspect, Ryan Wesley Routh hid in bushes and pointed a semiautomatic rifle with a scope toward Trump, who was about 400 yards away.
A Secret Service agent spotted him and opened fire before Routh, 58, had Trump in his sights.
Routh was arrested as he tried to drive away from the scene and has pleaded not guilty.
A person close to Trump’s campaign and another person familiar with the situation previously told NBC News that Trump has not played golf since the Sept. 15 incident and will not do so until after the election.
On Thursday, Rowe said that was Trump’s “personal decision.”
“The former president is very much aware of the threats against him by foreign actors,” he said.
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