Emergency Episode: Former CIA Agent On Trump Assassination Attempt - Mike Baker - #812

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show. Another emergency episode today in the wake of the events this past weekend with Trump's assassination attempt, this time with Mike Baker, who is a former CIA operative, and he has a great insight into domestic politics, international relations, how this will be changing the landscape of politics over the next few months, up until the November election, what this means for the Trump campaign, the Biden campaign, how other countries are going to interpret this, intelligence failures from a sort of more agency systematic systematic perspective, full works. And again, same as yesterday's episode, no ads, no interruptions, no nothing. I just wanted to get some information from people who have expertise out there. So I hope that you take something away from this one. Please welcome Mike Baker. Three, two, one. Mike Baker, welcome to the show.

**Mike Baker** (0:53)
Thanks very much, man. Appreciate you.

**Chris Williamson** (0:55)
Emergency episodes. Needed to have a chat with you. How big of an intelligence failure was this?

**Mike Baker** (1:02)
Well, you have to think of it more as a logistical failure as opposed to an intelligence failure. This was a breakdown in what should be very standard security protocols. Look, the Secret Service does that very well, but clearly, and you always have to, I'd caveat this with one thing. You have to always wait for an investigation to finish. They're currently in the middle of their own investigation as to what the hell happened. obviously, as soon as this happens, everybody on social media is an executive protection expert. So everybody's talking about exactly how this happened.
Well, I think it's important not to get out over your skis, but in a situation like this, clearly, it would be insane to say that there weren't failures, there weren't breakdowns here. And even people with no experience can look at this and say, I'm sorry, how did you not have somebody up on top of a roof that had line of sight to the stage, to the rally event? And so typically, look, when something like this happens, and I've done countless advanced plannings and security assessments and risk and threat assessments. And typically, when something happens like this, it's not one thing, right? It's a series of mistakes or missteps that compound and then you end up with this goat rope that never should have happened. So they're doing an investigation. Congress, of course, has called for an investigation. I wouldn't expect anything to come from that. Because Washington DC is where all investigations go to die.
But the Bureau is involved, Secret Service, obviously doing their own hot wash. And they sit underneath the Department of Homeland Security. So if DHS does a review, fine. But there's so much video footage of this, right? And it happened in real time with so many people watching and so many different angles that I think in this case, unlike sometimes. Sometimes you get investigations of an event, and you don't get much transparency, right? Because internally, they're trying to figure out, okay, how do we improve this? Well, you don't want to necessarily talk about all that activities because you're informing people who might have nefarious intent. But here, it was clear for everyone to see that there were a significant number of issues and problems.

**Chris Williamson** (3:38)
Whose responsibility, who does the buck ultimately stop with when we're talking about this? Homeland Security, Secret Service, Local Law Enforcement?

**Mike Baker** (3:48)
Well, I think what you're going to find likely is, first of all, in terms of who has primacy on the ground, it's a Secret Service. So they established a security perimeter, and then according to at least early reports, and what Secret Service is saying is, then they designated local law enforcement as having control outside that designated security zone, which included the building where the shooter took up position. But that's, you know, ultimately, it's the Secret Service's responsibility. So they should have obviously said, okay, so what are you doing in relation to those buildings that have line of sight? And if local law enforcement said, well, we've got a got a couple of unarmed officers that are patrolling the ground and, you know, interacting with the attendees, then you'd say, okay, well, how about you give me a state trooper or one of your local officers up on that rooftop and that went over there, any building, right, that's got line of sight. And you post somebody up there, just cover it down. That Secret Service's ultimate responsibility, even if, you know, theoretically, okay, on paper, this area over here is under the control of local authorities. So there is a procedural problem, there's a command and control problem, there's a communications problem during the course of this rally. I think you'll also find there was some command and control issues in terms of the ability for the sniper or the counter sniper team on site. And they had a couple of them up there to act, right? And there was probably, I don't know this, I'm speculating, right, but I'm speculating based on experience from past events that, you know, there may have been a lag time in getting the, you know, the go-no-go figured out in terms of taking a shot on the target. There may have been problems at the top of Secret Service in terms of what did they allow for as a security package for former President Trump.