STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
As we follow the investigation of Saturday's events, we're going to be clear about what we know and what we don't know. Questions about the assassination attempt fall into at least two categories. One involves the shooter and his motive. The FBI has said very little about that, but hopes to find evidence by gaining access to his phone. The other category involves the Secret Service, which is supposed to secure events like this. Somehow the gunman climbed onto a roof that offered a clear shot down to the stage where Trump was speaking. Former Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Juliette Kayyem has been following this story and joins us now. Good morning.
JULIETTE KAYYEM: Good morning.
INSKEEP: OK, so I'm thinking about this overhead shot of this map that many people have seen. There's a cluster of buildings around this Butler Farm Show where the former president was speaking to people. How would the Secret Service approach that venue in the hours or days or even weeks before the event?
KAYYEM: It would most likely have been weeks. And there's two pieces to this. The first is just the general threat environment. Everyone knows, the FBI tells us, the Secret Service certainly will know, that the threat environment is elevated, in particular, around our democratic and voting processes. So you already know that it's higher. So that would be the first piece that you're taking into account when you're planning this. The second would be your site protection. Butler has chosen an open field. And there's very few buildings around it. So this is the question for the Secret Service is, who and why was the decision made not to protect those buildings? Either you have snipers on them - you certainly protect access to them. Given that there were so few, they gave what everyone has - you know, what we now what we call the line of sight to the protectee. And that vulnerability is so obvious even before the assassination attempt.
INSKEEP: Yeah, I mean, after the assassination attempt, Pete Souza, who's a famous presidential photographer, posted a picture from President Obama's time, and you see Obama in the foreground and in the background is a guy on a roof with binoculars, which is a familiar site. I would have assumed it would be automatic that somebody would be on the roof of any building that was - had a clear sightline. Is it supposed to be automatic that somebody should have been up there?
KAYYEM: It was - it wouldn't necessarily be always automatic, but here's the tell. And this is what - another question that the Secret Service has to answer. They had counter snipers there, right? So in other words, once you deploy your counter snipers, you've got to have some belief that there is a sniper threat. If that's the case, why aren't you either putting people on them or, as importantly, securing the building so that there's not access to them? What kind of sweeps were done? How are you going to stop someone from getting up there? So, to me, they knew that there was a sniper threat because of the deployment of them. People, over the last, you know, 24 or 48 hours - people are talking about this notion of the security perimeter - right? - that the sniper, that the assassin was outside the security perimeter.
It's a misnomer, though, to think, well, inside the perimeter, that's where we focus and outside we don't focus. The security perimeter is really about crowd control. It's about the people who can get close to Donald Trump or Biden or any protectee. They go through, you know, gun checks and reviews and whatever else the event requires. But outside the security perimeter, there is still a threat. And it's that sort of outside the perimeter, right? Why wasn't the building within the perimeter, so you're protecting it really strongly? Or if it's outside, why did it seem to be so unbelievably vulnerable that he got in and was able to come very close to killing Donald Trump?
INSKEEP: Should we assume that the Secret Service, in this case, and in just about every case, would be relying at least in part on local law enforcement, that they don't do all the work themselves?
KAYYEM: That's always true. And so the questions - again, we're hearing lots of rumors. So the questions to be asked are what was the integration of the federal Secret Service, in particular, state and local planning in terms of site selection, perimeter controls, outside the security perimeter controls, and then the deployment of resources behind them. Because we don't know - you know, we don't know who had what piece of it, yes. But the integration of the Secret Service with state and local is very typical. For example, if this were a city event, you would need local police to control traffic. So this is very common that the state and local police were present. The questions I have are who - what entity understood itself to be in charge of the vulnerabilities that we now see? And then the second piece of that, as we now know, is people who attended the event, supporters of Trump, as well as some police officers, understood the assassin's - he was viewed as suspicious. He was talked about. He then leaves. He all of a sudden appears on a roof. People are noticing that. Where was that communication breakdown? Because at that stage, you really only have seconds to respond.
INSKEEP: Does it surprise you that people would be shouting, hey, there's a guy on a roof...
KAYYEM: Yeah.
INSKEEP: ...And it seems to have taken critical seconds to marshal any response?
KAYYEM: Yes. That's a communication breakdown. There's almost no explanation for it than it was just a total failure. That piece of it and the seconds that someone could have either taken him out or gone up to the roof, and we're hearing things online, so we're going to wait to see...
INSKEEP: Yeah.
KAYYEM: ...What happened, were lost seconds to protect the president - former president.
INSKEEP: Just a few seconds left, but I just want to come back to the beginning. There must have been a moment before the rally when somebody stood on that stage where Trump was going to be and looked around and looked...
KAYYEM: Yeah.
INSKEEP: ...For threats. Is that the moment when things would have really, really gone wrong? About 10 seconds.
KAYYEM: That's exactly right. I mean, that is - you are the president, and you are looking out and saying, where am I vulnerable? Where could someone get me? You know, and you see that building. It is so close. It is so close.
INSKEEP: Juliette Kayyem, former assistant secretary of Homeland Security. Thanks so much.
KAYYEM: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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