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WASHINGTON — When Kimberly Cheatle led the Secret Service’s operations to safeguard the American president and other dignitaries, she said she would talk to agents in training about the “awesome responsibility” of their job.
“This agency and the Secret Service has a zero fail mission,” Cheatle, who is now director of the agency, said in 2021 during a Secret Service podcast called “Standing Post.” “They have to come in every day prepared and ready with their game face on.”
Now, the Secret Service and its director are under intense scrutiny over that “zero fail” mission following an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump during a July 13 rally in Pennsylvania that wounded his ear. Lawmakers and others across the political spectrum are questioning how a gunman could get so close to the Republican presidential nominee when he was supposed to be carefully guarded.
Cheatle, who will testify before lawmakers Monday after congressional committees and the Biden administration launched a series of investigations, told ABC News that the shooting was “unacceptable.” When asked who bears the most responsibility, she said ultimately it is the Secret Service that protects the former president.
“The buck stops with me,” Cheatle said. “I am the director of the Secret Service.” She said she has no plans to resign, and so far she has the administration’s backing.
Democratic President Joe Biden appointed Cheatle in August 2022 to take over an agency with a history of scandals, and she worked to bolster diverse hiring, especially of women in the male-dominated service. The second woman to lead the Secret Service, Cheatle worked her way up for 27 years before leaving in 2021 for a job as a security executive at PepsiCo. Biden brought her back.
Now, she faces her most serious challenge: figuring out what went wrong with the agency’s core responsibility to protect presidents and whether she can maintain the support — or the job itself — to make changes.
Details are still unfolding about signs of trouble the day of the assassination attempt, including the steps taken by the Secret Service and local authorities to secure a building that the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, climbed within an estimated 147 yards (135 meters) of where Trump was speaking. A ex-fire chief at the rally, Corey Comperatore, was killed and two others were wounded.
The Biden administration has directed an independent review of security at the rally. The Homeland Security Department’s inspector general has opened three investigations and congressional committees have launched others as calls mount for Cheatle to resign. Two Republican senators demanding answers followed her as she walked through the Republican National Convention this past week.
“The nation deserves answers and accountability,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., posted on the social media platform X. “New leadership at the Secret Service would be an important step in that direction.”
In the House, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said on X that Biden should fire Cheatle immediately, noting Comperatore’s death and saying that “we … were millimeters away from losing President Trump. It is inexcusable.” Rep. Brendan Boyle, D-Pa., said in a statement Saturday that ”the evidence coming to light has shown unacceptable operational failures” and he would have no confidence in Cheatle’s leadership if she were to stay in the job.
The House Oversight and Accountability Committee subpoenaed Cheatle to appear Monday, and she is expected to be there.
After the shooting, Cheatle and the female Secret Service agents who protected Trump have faced scathing criticism and questions about whether Cheatle lowered hiring standards. Supporters are adamant that has not happened.
“It is disrespectful to the women of the Secret Service of the Department of Homeland Security and to women law enforcement officers around the nation to imply that their gender disqualifies them from service to the nation and their communities,” said Kristie Canegallo, Homeland Security’s acting deputy secretary.
Like many law enforcement agencies, the Secret Service has been wrestling with how to attract and retain agents and officers.
Women account for about 24% of the agency’s staff, according to the agency’s website. In a May 2023 interview with CBS News, Cheatle said she was conscious of the “need to attract diverse candidates and ensure that we are developing and giving opportunities to everybody in our workforce, and particularly women.”
Two years ago, Cheatle took over the agency of 7,800 special agents, uniformed officers and other staffers whose main purpose is protecting presidents, vice presidents, their families, former presidents and others. In announcing her appointment, Biden said Cheatle had served on his vice presidential detail and called her a “distinguished law enforcement professional with exceptional leadership skills” who had his “complete trust.”
Cheatle took the reins from James M. Murray as multiple congressional committees and an internal watchdog investigated missing text messages from when Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The Secret Service says they were purged during a technology transition.
Going back further, there have been other problems at the Secret Service, including a prostitution scandal before President Barack Obama’s trip to Colombia in 2012 and a man who jumped over the White House fence in 2014 and made it into the building.
The Homeland Security Department did not make Cheatle available for an interview, but Canegallo defended her work. Canegallo said Cheatle advocated for a law passed this year that authorized overtime pay for Secret Service agents and successfully oversaw nine high-profile events such as political conventions. The agency under her watch protected Biden during his trip to Ukraine without problems, Canegallo said.
During the podcast, Cheatle talked about how much planning goes into events that the Secret Service oversees — from bad weather and COVID-19 to threats of violence.
“It’s our job to kind of sit back and ‘What if?’ every potential threat and scenario,” she said.
Cheatle applied for the Secret Service while she was still in college. She was told to wait until she had graduated and said in the podcast that it ultimately took a little over two years to get hired: “I was pretty persistent.”
After training, she was assigned to the Detroit office where she spent a little over four years. Cheatle transferred to Washington where she served on the Treasury secretary’s detail and protected Vice President Dick Cheney, including on 9/11.
Other positions during her time with the agency include special agent in charge of the Atlanta field office and special agent in charge of the agency’s training facility in Maryland. She became the first woman to be named assistant director of protective operations, the division that provides protection to the president and other dignitaries where she oversaw a $133.5 million budget.
