The acting director of the U.S. agency charged with protecting high-profile officials called the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump this month a "failure on multiple levels," describing it as shameful.
Ronald Rowe testified before U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday, promising immediate changes to fix breakdowns in communication and coverage that allowed a 20-year-old gunman to climb onto the roof of a nearby building and fire eight shots during the July 13 rally in western Pennsylvania, killing a rally-goer and wounding Trump and two others.
"What I saw made me ashamed," he told members of the Senate Homeland Security and Judiciary committees. "As a career law enforcement officer and a 25-year veteran with the Secret Service, I cannot defend why that roof was not better secured."
Rowe, who took charge of the Secret Service following last week's resignation of former director Kimberly Cheatle, appeared to be more forthcoming than his predecessor, who rankled both Republicans and Democrats during a hearing last Monday.
Cheatle said the attempted assassination was the "most significant operational failure" in decades, but repeatedly refused to answer questions about how the gunman evaded the Secret Service and local law enforcement agencies despite having been identified as a suspicious person at least 90 minutes before the rally began.
She resigned the next day.
Rowe told lawmakers Tuesday that the agency's initial investigation indicated that a local sniper team had been assigned responsibility for securing the section of roof used by the shooter.
Those teams should have had a clear view of the shooter as he climbed into place, he said.
"We were told that building was going to be covered," Rowe told lawmakers. "I could not, and I will not, and I cannot understand why there was not better coverage or at least somebody looking at that roof line when that's where they were posted."
Rowe also admitted that even though local law enforcement had communicated concerns about the shooter multiple times in the hour and a half before the rally, that information never got to the Secret Service agents protecting the former president.
"It appears that that information was stuck or siloed in that state and local channel," he said.
"It is troubling," Rowe said. "We didn't know that there was this incident going on. … Nothing about a man on the roof. Nothing about a man with a gun."
The acting Secret Service director additionally admitted there were other holes in the security set-up at the rally, specifically citing the agency's inability to put its own drones in the air before the event got underway due to a lack of mobile connectivity.
It is "something that has cost me a lot of sleep," Rowe said, noting the shooter had flown his own drone over the rally site in the hours before Trump took the stage.
"I have no explanation for it," he said. "It is something that I feel as though we could have perhaps found him. We could have maybe stopped him."
"Maybe on that particular day he would have decided this isn't the day to do it, because law enforcement just found me flying my drone."
Rowe even promised lawmakers that the Secret Service would be adding range finders, like the one the shooter was seen carrying, to the list of items prohibited at rallies and other events, going forward.
'People will be held accountable'
Despite the admissions, some lawmakers were not satisfied.
"My question is, why don't you relieve everybody of duty who made [a] bad judgment?" asked Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley. "What more do you need to investigate to know that there were critical failures that some individuals should be held accountable?"
"This could have been our Texas School Book Depository," Rowe responded, referring to the 1963 assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy.
"I have lost sleep over that for the last 17 days," Rowe said. "I will tell you, Senator, that I will not rush to judgment, that people will be held accountable, and I will do so with integrity."
'Nothing has been ruled out'
Meanwhile, the FBI's ongoing investigation into the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, has yet to determine why he tried to kill the former president.
FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate told lawmakers on Tuesday that the bureau has conducted more than 460 interviews but has so far come up empty.
"The investigation has not identified a motive, nor any coconspirators or others with advance knowledge," said Abbate. "Absolutely nothing has been ruled out."
But the deputy FBI director said a newly discovered social media account used in 2019-2020 may shed some new light on the shooter's motivation.
"There were over 700 comments posted from this account," he told lawmakers. "Some of these comments, if ultimately attributable to the shooter, appear to reflect antisemitic and anti-immigration themes to espouse political violence and are described as extreme in nature."
"While the investigative team is still working to verify this account to determine if it did in fact belong to the shooter, we believe it important to share it … particularly given the general absence of other information to date from social media and other sources of information that reflect on the shooter's potential motive and mindset."
If verified, however, the newly discovered social media account would stand in contrast to an account on Gab, a social media platform popular with the far right, that might also be linked to Crooks.
The Gab account, according to the FBI and Gab officials, espoused pro-immigration views and endorsed other left-leaning policies.
Only the acting secret service director suggested the inconsistencies ultimately might not matter.
"We have an individual who was focused on Donald Trump and Joe Biden," Rowe said, noting similarities between Crooks and John Hinckley Jr., who tried to assassinate President Ronald Reagan in 1981.
"Hinckley traveled the '80 campaign, and we know that he followed President [Jimmy] Carter," he said. In "March of '81, he happened to show up in Washington, D.C., and he saw an opportunity to try to attack President Reagan."
FBI officials, who briefed reporters on Monday, described Crooks as an intelligent loner and said it appears he "made significant efforts to conceal his activities," which may have begun more than a year ago.
Investigators said that is when he began using encrypted email accounts and aliases to make online, gun-related purchases, followed by a series of online purchases of chemicals to make the three explosive devices found in his car and bedroom.
Crooks also began to do internet searches on mass shootings, power plants, a variety of elected officials and attempted assassinations.
They also noted a lack of communication between the shooter and others, in general.
"We have identified only a couple people who we would call his friends, and most of those contacts were, in fact, dated," said FBI Special Agent Kevin Rojek.
Rojek added that even the shooter's accounts on gaming platforms showed "very little interaction," describing it as outside the norm.
