Former CIA Analyst Johnson Unveils How Secret Service Failed To Protect Donald Trump-- Either by Incompetence or Complicity

July 15—Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst and co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), posted a private video to social media on July 14, in which he questions whether the Secret Service’s failure to protect former President Donald Trump from an assassination attempt on July 13 showed either “utter incompetence” or that the Secret Service were “complicit.” 

He states: “I’ll make this real simple, up front. This assassination attempt on Donald Trump was made possible by one or two things, and there are only two possible explanations: either the Secret Service is utterly, totally incompetent, or they were complicit in letting this happen.

“Let me explain. When an event like this is held, the Secret Service sends out, they do a site survey. Where’s the venue, what are the parameters of who can get in? How’s access going to be controlled? What screening process are you going to do? And then, once you’ve secured that venue, and figured out all the entrances and exits, and how to cover those, and prevent anyone from getting in that shouldn’t be there, and to control access, you then do a sweep outside. And it depends upon the location, how far out you go, but ultimately, what you really want to do is identify potential spots where a shooter could potentially have, to shoot at the person they’re supposed to protect.”

Johnson emphasized, "And you know it’s real simple. You take the stage where Donald Trump was going to be standing, put someone about Trump’s height, have him stand there. Then put your personnel moving around, and even you could probably use drones now, to identify locations where there was a clear line of sight, which means you would have a clear line of fire at someone like Trump. Now, what most people don’t understand, is that yes, we have snipers, both in military Special Operations community, and the law enforcement community, who are trained to make long-distance shots. They can shoot up to a mile, two miles away. But that really requires both special ammunition and rifles, and some significant training to pull off that kind of shot.

“So, what you’re really looking at, from the standpoint of what the Secret Service had to do, was to sweep an area of about 300 yards circumference, around, I guess they call it, that Butler Farm, but to identify potential locations. The building on which this sniper, this shooter, was shot and killed, after he fired the shots, was unsecured. That is inexcusable. At a minimum, at a minimum, as a result of the initial site survey, there should have been personnel attached to the top of that structure.”

Johnston continued: "Now, if the Secret Service wants to claim, ‘aw, we didn’t have enough people,’ guess what, you’ve got liaison relationships with the Pennsylvania police, and you could have said, ‘we want vetted persons up on that roof to make sure that nobody could approach it.’ That didn’t happen.

“I was initially inclined to lean towards the incompetence, to never underestimate the ability of a woke agency like the Secret Service has become….. So, I was willing to believe that this was incompetence. But then I saw the video of the Secret Service counter-sniper team that was posted on the roof immediately behind and to Donald Trump’s right, or as you’re looking at the video to your left, up on the roof; and, initially, you see them with binoculars, in the direction where the shots came from, before the shots had been fired. They didn’t act, they didn’t call for the President—say, ‘Hey, we’ve got a suspicious target on the roof.’ They didn’t call it in; they didn’t say ‘get the President off the stage, there’s a potential threat.’ You don’t assume, oh, let’s just assume that that’s just one of the local guys, or we’ll assume he doesn’t intend to do harm.’ You don’t make assumptions in that case! They should have, at that point, had Trump evacuated. They didn’t do that.”

Johnson queried, "There’s this story circulating, that, oh, the slope of the roof prevented them from seeing the shooter. Really? Then how the hell did they shoot him? If they couldn’t see him, then how did they shoot him, because they did end up firing shots. And what you see then on the video, is, the shots, the shooter on the roof gets off I think about three shots, maybe four maximum, and then, the counter-sniper team lights him up. They should have lit him up, killed him, before he even fired his first shot, because he had a rifle, and had a line of fire to former President Donald Trump, and probably future President Donald Trump.

“So, we need to know who gave the orders. Were they given orders—some were claiming that they were given the orders to stand down. But, in any event, there’s no pretty way, there’s no good explanation out of this. This was either gross incompetence, in terms of securing the perimeter, or the Secret Service was actually involved in a plot to kill Donald Trump.”