Even Trump Shooter Thomas Crooks Had a Drone. Why Didn’t the Secret Service?

After Donald Trump was shot on Saturday, the FBI found a small drone in the gunman’s vehicle, about the size as the ones the Secret Service’s Counter-Surveillance Unit (CSU) sometimes deploys.

Among the big questions in the wake of the shooting: Why did the CSU not deploy one of their own at the rally?

“They certainly could have,” a senior law enforcement source who has often worked with active Secret Service agents told the Daily Beast.

Due to manpower constraints, the Secret Service is dependent on local law enforcement to secure the outer perimeter at such events. And Butler County District Attorney Richard Goldinger has said that the Secret Service was told by police there that it could not secure the building that the gunman subsequently used as his perch.

But a single agent with a drone could have kept an eagle’s eye on the entire area with particular focus on the roof—whose slant initially concealed the gunman from a Secret Service counter-sniper team (CST).

Maybe the Secret Service’s drone folks had been at the NATO Summit in New York at the end of last week and were in transit to the Republican convention in Milwaukee at the time of the rally.

Or maybe the agency as administered by the famously bean-counting Director Kimberly Cheatle does not allocate drone coverage to candidates who have not yet been formally nominated.

The Secret Service has so far been silent on the subject and did not respond to a query from the Daily Beast.

But what everybody should be saying —including Cheatle and members of congress and everybody else with a voice—is that the Secret Service needs many more agents.

At present, there are roughly 4,000. Sources with knowledge of the agency tell the Daily Beast that there should be at least 2,000 more. There is a particular need now, as the agency is entering a “retirement bubble” as a result of a hiring surge after 9/11 that is now leading to a boom in departures. It also comes just as the country’s political climate is becoming increasingly volatile and guns are easier to get than ever.

Members of Congress in both parties should take a break from casting blame at each other and pass the funding needed to increase the number of agents by at least 50 percent in time to begin hiring those who will protect whoever wins the next election—and all the elections that follow.

Without question, there was a major security failure on Saturday. And now that the Republican convention has ended, Cheatle should resign before the Democrats convene their own.

And while she can be held responsible for a woefully inadequate security plan, it is not a secret that the Secret Service needs many more agents—and there remains no reasonable excuse for not having deployed a drone on Saturday.

Even the gunman had one in his vehicle.