Inside the strain challenging the US Secret Service
By Betsy Klein and Jamie Gangel, CNN
(CNN) — The second assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump in as many months has underscored the strain that’s been placed on the US Secret Service during both a busy campaign season and what its acting director refers to as an “unprecedented and hyper-dynamic threat environment.”
“Everyone is focused on the failures of that day,” one former agent said about the Butler, Pennsylvania, attempt. “And what I would submit is the failures of July 13, as well as most recently in Florida, (are) symptomatic of a deeper-rooted problem within the Secret Service,” said the former agent, who departed in March.
CNN spoke to nearly a dozen current and former agents who describe a workplace mired in inefficient, longstanding procedures and cultural dysfunction.
While the reputation of the US Secret Service is one of precision, vigilance and security, the reality is more complicated – a high-stress, high-intensity workplace beset by management and logistical issues.
That was the case for a group of senior US Secret Service agents assigned to travel to San Francisco to help secure the perimeter of the site of a recent summit for Asia-Pacific leaders and President Joe Biden.
One of those agents, who requested anonymity to speak freely, told CNN that the two-person team in charge of the summit location had a combined four years of field experience, translating on the ground to poor communication and a mishandling of resources. When the agents arrived, there was no pre-event briefing, there was no plan, there were no directions to where the agent was supposed to stand. And there was minimal communication until it was over.
“I was there all week, and I didn’t see one of the site agents come by until I essentially flagged her down and asked her why we were still on post when the last protectee had left hours ago,” the agent, who had been with USSS for nearly two decades, told CNN in an interview. The agent left the agency a few months later.
Another of the senior agents had been on the fence about retirement, but texted his colleagues that the San Francisco experience had prompted him to leave.
The San Francisco episode highlights how the agency is wracked with low morale, burnout, staffing and retention issues, all of which, sources inside and outside the organization told CNN, are exacerbated by poor management at the top and mid-levels.
The sheer volume of the agency’s responsibilities in the weeks since the Butler, Pennsylvania, assassination attempt has challenged the agency: enhanced security for Trump, bigger events for Vice President Kamala Harris, the addition of vice presidential nominees Sen. JD Vance and Gov. Tim Walz and their spouses, plus the United Nations General Assembly in New York this week. (The Secret Service is mandated to protect all foreign heads of state while they are on US soil). There have also been major events: the Democratic and Republican National Conventions and a presidential debate.
That’s on top of its regular responsibilities protecting 42 principals – the president and vice president and their families, presidential candidates and their families, and former presidents, among others – full time and part time.
USSS has requested additional funding from Congress aimed at bolstering its resources. Congress is expected to pass an additional $231 million for the agency through a short-term government funding bill this week.
“Following the events of July 13, the U.S. Secret Service enhanced our protective model for protectees. … To sustain this enhanced posture, we need additional resources, for increased travel expenses, overtime, technical security assets, special operations capabilities, and partner support expenses for protection enhancements,” Anthony Guglielmi, USSS chief of communications, told CNN in a statement.
“The men and women of the U.S. Secret Service do an incredibly hard job day in and day out and are operating in a dynamic, heightened threat environment to execute its no-fail mission. The agency will continue to have their backs, including by advocating for the resources needed so our workforce can do their jobs effectively,” Guglielmi said.
Staffing challenges
The agency has long struggled with staff retention and turnover, even as it is now seeking to recruit additional agents to alleviate the workload on its existing workforce.
Speaking to reporters last week, President Joe Biden made clear that the agency “needs more help.”
“The one thing I want to make clear is (the Secret Service) needs more help, and I think the Congress should respond to their needs if they, in fact, need more Service people,” Biden said, adding, “They’re deciding whether they need more personnel or not.”
Acting USSS Director Ronald Rowe indicated last week that his agency was on track to hire more than 400 special agents this year, noting Friday that applications to join USSS are “at an all-time high.”
USSS has approximately 8,100 employees, according to a USSS official, which includes roughly 3,800 special agents, 1,500 uniformed division officers, nearly 275 technical law enforcement personnel, and more than 2,400 administrative, professional and technical employees.
During her testimony to the House Oversight Committee in July, then-Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle told lawmakers that the agency was “striving toward a number of 9,500 employees, approximately, in order to be able to meet future and emerging needs.”
The White House is taking steps toward replacing Cheatle and is currently in the process of making calls and compiling a list of potential candidates, according to a source familiar with the outreach. It was not immediately clear whether a decision would be made before the November presidential election.
A USSS official said the agency is prioritizing retention, while also employing a “proactive and dynamic” recruitment strategy.
But attrition of its existing employees remains a challenge.
According to the Secret Service official, the agency’s attrition rate was 10.26% in fiscal year 2022, 8.78% in 2023, and 8.85% for fiscal year 2024 so far.
One former agent described a lack of significant effort toward retaining employees who are thinking about leaving.
“You’re just a breathing body to them,” he said, pointing to a lack of incentives aimed at keeping employees who have been with the agency between five and 15 years who are contemplating roles elsewhere with similar pay, less travel and more balance.
US Secret Service ranks 413 out of 459 government agencies and subcomponents on the list of Best Places to Work in the Federal Government, the result of an annual survey conducted by the nonpartisan, nonprofit Partnership for Public Service and the Boston Consulting Group.
“We have had a lot of people leave rather than retire,” one current agent, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about some of the problems their colleagues are facing, told CNN.
One key factor contributing to frustration in the USSS workforce is that a significant number of more senior agents are being forced to work overtime without pay, sources told CNN. Once an agent hits a “pay cap” on overtime beyond their base salary, they are still required to work – but without pay.
The USSS official said that the agency was unable to provide the exact number of employees affected by this policy. The caps are defined by US code. Congress passed a bill in 2016, reauthorized this year, that lifts the pay cap up to $221,145.
Rowe, the acting director, nodded to this issue in remarks last week: “The men and women of the Secret Service right now, we are redlining them, and they are rising to this moment, and they are meeting the challenges right now.”
The staffing squeeze is exacerbated by the current environment.
Jonathan Wackrow, a former USSS agent and CNN contributor, said the agency’s security posture for all of its protectees “should be enhanced across the board” after the assassination attempt on Trump earlier this month in Florida. “But the reality is, there’s nothing else to give,” he said.
USSS should also be “very concerned” about the possibility of “potential retaliation strikes” against its other protectees in the aftermath of the Trump assassination attempts, Wackrow added, noting that the threat of a copycat acts of violence is “really high.”
Stresses of the job
In recent years, agents have been subjected to high-stress roles for longer periods.
Agents have previously been required to serve in “phase two” roles – typically protection duties – for approximately three years, but now, that expectation is up to six years, the agent said.
“You’re always on alert, on high alert. Imagine that stress throughout your body,” the current agent said, pointing to the high levels of burnout their colleagues are experiencing.
“If you are complacent in any way, you miss things like what happened in Florida,” they added, referring to the second assassination attempt thwarted by an agent at Trump’s golf club.
The agency, a spokesperson said, offers short-term counseling by mental health professionals and a confidential peer support program.
The hyper-polarized political environment over the last decade has also placed strain on an agency that has long prized its neutrality and deep relationships with leaders of both parties it works to protect. There have been questions internally and raised by Biden allies to The Washington Post during the presidential transition regarding some USSS agents’ strong personal political loyalty to Trump, which, sources told CNN, has led to problems with assignments.
CNN has previously reported that the relationship between the Bidens and the agency was “combustible” in the administration’s early days, exacerbated by biting incidents with two of the first family’s pets and challenging schedules. A USSS spokesman disputed any reports of tension between Secret Service and the Bidens.
“We never used to be political in a partisan way,” said one veteran agent.
“The most important thing was for the protectee to trust us, but it wasn’t about politics,” they added, noting that the polarization has contributed to a loss of pride and professionalism internally.
Significant attrition has caused an experience gap, which, according to Wackrow, was among the root causes of the Butler assassination attempt. A bipartisan Senate panel is set to release an interim report Wednesday reflecting stunning lapses in preparation and communication at Trump’s Butler rally.
Multiple sources suggested morale is at an all-time low.
“Protection is an art as much as it is a science and if you don’t understand the art and nuance of building out a site and coming up with site logistics and planning, it can be detrimental from a security standpoint – but also from a morale and staffing standpoint,” said Wackrow.
CNN’s Whitney Wild contributed to this report.
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