US intelligence has “serious deficiencies,” a damning report says

The US secret service has “serious deficiencies” that must be urgently remedied, otherwise there will be more attacks like at Donald Trump’s rally, according to a damning report.

An independent panel tasked with investigating the July 13 shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, released its findings Thursday, saying the organization had become “bureaucratic, complacent and static.”

In the 52-page report, it called for a renewal of its leadership and said a “series of specific failures and mishaps” had enabled the attack on the Republican presidential nominee.

The Secret Service has already acknowledged failings on its part, and its director resigned weeks after the shooting.

In a statement Thursday, its acting director Ronald Rowe said the agency would carefully review the new report.

“We have already significantly improved our preparedness as well as operational and organizational communication and implemented increased protective measures for the former president,” he said.

However, according to CBS News, the BBC’s US affiliate, acting director Rowe said in an internal memo to agency staff that he had “reservations” about the recommendations.

He wrote: “I am deeply concerned about the unintended impact on agency morale.”

In the independent report, written by state and national law enforcement officials, the panel praised the agents who risk their lives to protect many of the nation’s most senior officials but found several leadership and culture failures.

These included a “worrying lack of critical thinking” among staff and a reluctance to “speak up”.

The agency’s problems, the report said, were “systemic or cultural” and called for “fundamental reforms,” ​​including the removal of some of its top executives “as soon as possible.”

“Without this reform … there can and will be a butler again,” the panel wrote to Alejandro Mayorkas, the Department of Homeland Security secretary who leads the organization.

President Joe Biden ordered a bipartisan review of the agency after a gunman tried to assassinate Trump at his campaign rally by firing from a nearby rooftop.

Gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks fired eight shots at the rally, killing one man and leaving Trump with a bloody ear. The Secret Service shot Crooks.

On Thursday, the panel called for “a mandate that all outdoor events be monitored through overhead technology.”

Another gunman was spotted near the former president in September outside the Trump International Golf Course in Palm Beach, Florida.

Police arrested him after noticing the tip of a rifle poking through the bushes a few hundred yards from Trump, who was on the golf course.