A retired Secret Service agent said the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump was a "failure" by the U.S. Secret Service that will have to be reviewed internally to determine what - if anything - could've been done differently.
"A tragedy was narrowly averted and there's going to have to be a reckoning as to how it happened," retired Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy told NBC 5 Investigates on Sunday.
McCarthy - a former police chief in south suburban Orland Park - is all too familiar with the realities of providing protection to a President.
While in the Secret Service, he suffered a gunshot wound to the chest during an assassination attempt against former President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.
He said that incident helped usher in the era of more frequent use of metal detectors.
McCarthy said what you saw Saturday on stage were Secret Service agents acting "swiftly" to cover former President Trump after he was struck in the ear, but he acknowledges that there could've been a lapse in security that will need to be investigated.
"And it appears the agents assigned to the former President Trump reacted swiftly, quickly covered him once they heard 'shooter down' - then they moved him onto the armored car and on to medical treatment," McCarthy said. "So they were successful there, but they are going to have to review what was done. And possibly everything that could have been done was done, but there's going to have to be answers to how that person got on top of that building."
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When asked if he thought this was a lapse in security, he said:
"It might ne a lapse, it might not. I haven't heard yet what was done to secure it. But when a protectee of the Secret Service is injured, there is a failure somewhere because it's not supposed to happen," McCarthy said. "Human failure, some other type... who knows what happened, but it's a failure nonetheless. The Reagan assassination attempt was a failure because he was injured. This is a failure too and we are going to have to look at what failed."
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McCarthy told NBC 5 Investigates that Secret Service security procedures for the both this week's Republican National Convention in Milwaukee and next month's Democratic National Convention in August could likely be reviewed but he doubts that major changes will occur because both of those are indoor events that are somewhat easier to secure that outdoor rallies - like the one held Saturday in western Pennsylvania.
He said the Secret Service trains for these exact situations. He said he could not say how often but added:
"It was regular training. You train for attacks on the president, the protectee, they use guns with blanks at the training academy, flash bangs to simulate explosives, knives and so forth and you would train for it. (You) cover and evacuate if the attacker was a distance away and you would go to the attacker in what we call the "arm's reach" theory - if they are within arm's reach with a weapon. So there's two theories you operate on. Those are the two."
