Secret service

The first time I worked alongside the California Highway Patrol’s Dignitary Protection Section was in Beverly Hills in the late 1990s. Think swimming pools and movie stars. The setting could have been a Hollywood caricature of itself: manicured hedges, a mansion where priceless Old World paintings hung in the hallways, and a guest list that ran from President Clinton to Barbara Streisand. The rest is appropriately redacted. I was a new Secret Service agent then still learning the art of protection, but amid the clinking glasses and camera flashes, what struck me most wasn’t the celebrities. It was the calm professionalism of the CHP officers beside me.

Let's sit down and have a talk about James Comey, America's tallest teenage girl. Typically the conversation around the nation's most famous former FBI director focuses on political gripes – whether his grandstanding, poorly timed announcements that Democrats still blame for Hillary Clinton's loss, or his back-channeling conniving debriefings Republicans still blame for Russiagate. But nowadays, whenever Comey pops up in the algorithm, it seems to be because he's just so deeply weird. His latest debacle: a social media posting of seashells spelling out "86 47", a threat which prompted immediate controversy which Comey attempted to brush off as naivete. “I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence.

A bipartisan House task force released an initial report detailing the calamitous security failures preceding the first failed assassination attempt against former president Donald Trump earlier this year. The failures are “stunning,” one of the staffers involved with its drafting told The Spectator. “Put simply, the evidence obtained by the Task Force to date shows the tragic and shocking events of July 13 were preventable and should not have happened,” the report says.Those who worked on the report noted to The Spectator that the failures that allowed a would-be presidential assassin to nearly kill Trump on live television and fatally shoot Corey Comperatore predated the Butler rally by days.

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky just stopped by an ammunition factory in Scranton, Pennsylvania — which CNN points out is President Joe Biden’s hometown.Now, a group of House Republicans is demanding answers about what taxpayer dollars and US resources were used in what they allege was essentially a campaign event for Democrats.The Hill reports that this past Sunday, Zelensky “was flown to Pennsylvania in an Air Force C-17 plane.” He was also protected by the US Secret Service.

Two months after former president Donald Trump went into the lion’s den to be interviewed at the National Association of Black Journalists, Vice President Kamala Harris made her own appearance at an NABJ event. With her sit-down coming just days after a second attempted assassination against Trump, Harris was asked if she has full confidence in the US Secret Service to protect her.She responded by flipping the question to accuse Trump, the victim of the attempted assassination, of fomenting hate and violence toward other groups of people and thus making them unsafe.“You can go back to Ohio,” Harris said. “Not everybody has Secret Service. And there are far too many people in this country who are not feeling safe.”“Yes, I feel safe.

Worldwide unrest is great for those in the riot-gear business. Shields and batons have historically cornered the market as the cutting edge in crowd control, but in recent years it’s evolved to include robots, armored trucks and drones. Milipol Paris is the homeland security expo of all expos. This is the kind of giant showroom where you will find law enforcement and private security agents checking out the newest innovations in robot dogs, armored vehicles and unmanned turrets as if they’re going from painting to painting at the Louvre. The Milipol expo comes around every two years. In 2023, you would have seen men plugged into VR headsets killing terrorists with a pistol.

The Secret Service’s worst week since John Hinckley Jr. failed to gun down President Ronald Reagan continued with some buggy problems just days after the organization’s embattled director announced plans to step down following bipartisan condemnation.Fresh off of failing to adequately protect President Donald Trump from a deranged gunman, the Secret Service failed to secure the Watergate Hotel where Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was staying and allowed a pro-Hamas organization to pour live maggots all over a room where he was alleged to be dining. “BON APPETIT!! MAGGOTS RELEASED ON THE CRIMINAL ZIONIST’S WAR TABLE!” the Palestinian Youth Movement posted on Instagram, along with a video of insects crawling all over the Watergate’s grounds.

As war rages in Gaza and Ukraine, Joe Biden is preoccupied with another bloody battle, in the White House — between his new German Shepherd, Commander, and Secret Service personnel.  Cockburn first reported Commander was roaming the West Wing looking for flesh in July. Since then, under the loving care of Joe and Jill, the canine’s bloodlust has intensified. He has bitten Secret Service agents in at least twenty-four incidents, according to recent documents obtained by a Freedom of Information request.  “They’ve been heartbroken over this,” a White House official said. “They’ve apologized to those who have been bitten, and taken flowers to some. They feel awful.

“No reasonable prosecutor”: remember him? He’s back! No, not James “Higher Loyalty” Comey. He’s sitting in a corner somewhere counting his doubloons. But like some inky creatures of the deep, he emitted lots of spawn. They’re maturing now and taking after dear old dad.  Remember the original sitcom. Despite the best efforts of every one from the country’s “intelligence” chiefs to its fawning media, news emerged that Hillary Clinton had essentially run the State Department from an insecure server in her home.  On that server, it transpired, there were thousands of classified documents (along, of course, with yoga routines and plans for her daughter’s wedding).

Cockburn came across this interesting little tidbit while he was stirring his first apéritif of the early afternoon: a Vox preview of Christopher Whipple’s forthcoming book, The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden's White House, reports that President Biden is distrustful of his Secret Service team and believes the agency fabricated a story about Biden’s German Shepherd, Major, biting an agent. Major Biden and fellow White House German Shepherd, Champ, were removed to Delaware for a while following the alleged incident. Vox reports how in the book, “Whipple details how Biden was showing a friend around the White House and pointed to the spot where Major allegedly bit a member of Biden’s security team. ‘Look, the Secret Service are never up here.

Cassidy Hutchinson, the young woman who testified recently in front of the January 6 Committee, seems unaware that she violated the six basic rules of being a staff aide. She doesn't even know her career is over; in fact, she thinks her efforts will be kickstarting her into fame. Someone should put her in touch with Monica Lewinsky. To understand Cassie's failure requires one to understand the Washington, DC ecology. There are the top-level predators, like Trump and Mark Meadows, his chief of staff, and there are the staff aides like Cassie. So Rule 1 of being a staff aide is knowing your place, followed quickly by Rule 2, never forget you will not be a staff aide forever. The little bird that sits above the rhino's tail seems important, and in a way she is.