Many questions are being asked in the aftermath of the July 13 assassination attempt on Donald Trump at the fairgrounds in Butler, Pennsylvania. Among them are how the U.S. Secret Service (USSS) counter-sniper (CS) teams reacted before and after Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, fired shots from the roof of a building less than 450 feet from where Trump was speaking. Those shots killed a man, bloodied Trump, and wounded at least two others.
The War Zone asked three experts – two experienced snipers and one former USSS Special Agent in Charge – to give their perspectives, breaking down how these operations work and what they observed about how CS teams handled what would become the first time a USSS sniper ever actually killed anyone.
Jeff Bruggeman
For 18 years, Jeff Bruggeman was a sniper for the Fairfax City SWAT team. He spent many hours working with the U.S. Secret Service (USSS), often staring through high-powered Leupold scopes on his custom-built bolt-action .308 sniper rifle scanning for potential dangers. He did this during visits by presidents and candidates, as well as while providing overwatch during several inaugurations.
“A lot of people think of snipers as just shooters,” said Bruggeman, now a private security officer. “The primary objective of a sniper is to be eyes and intelligence, relaying a lot of information back.”
Counter-sniper teams generally work together, scanning separate as well as overlapping fields of view to ensure a full picture is gathered of what is taking place around them, Bruggeman said.
Videos emerged on social media showing Secret Service CS teams on the roofs of a group of three barns behind Trump looking through scopes during the rally. One team was on the northern-most barn roof and another on the southern-most.
“…if you really wanna see something that’s sad, take a look at what happened…,” Trump told the audience about eight minutes into his rally, but shots rang out before he could finish his sentence.
“So I will tell you what I think happened,” Bruggeman offered about the video of the counter-sniper team on the north roof. “If you watch the video of the snipers, you’ll see this is when the people started yelling, ‘he has a gun! He has a gun!’ and they were pointing” to the one-story tan building where Crooks climbed onto the roof with his rifle.
The Secret Service snipers “were pointed in that direction,” Bruggeman added. “But what I believe was happening was they were looking hundreds of yards past him into tree lines and windows, looking for what people were talking about.”
“You can only see what you can see,” he added. “The way it was described to me is this guy ducked down on a sloped roof. From their angle, they most likely couldn’t see” Crooks at first.
After the first shot is heard, “that sniper pulls away from his scope” because it provides a very narrow field of view. After getting a wider view without it, “he’s able to see the shooter right in front of him. They were just, unfortunately, looking over [Crooks] for the threat, and didn’t identify him until he gave his position away by pulling the trigger.”
After watching the video “several times” Bruggemen said he does not think that team fired. Their view was likely partially obstructed by a tree.
“I’m not seeing recoil pushing his shoulder back or the muzzle of his rifle rising,” he said. “It’s actually dipping down and his movement makes me think that he’s adjusting his position a bit.”
The video of the CS team on the southern barn roof doesn’t offer as much detail, said Bruggeman, because whoever took it ducked as the shots were being fired. He could not determine from watching it several times whether that team actually fired.
However, that team is claimed to be the one that fired the single shot that killed Crooks, according to CBS News, citing a local law enforcement source. You can see that team in the video below.
Regardless of who fired, all the snipers would have had full autonomy to act, Bruggeman explained.
“They are there to take that threat out,” he said. “There’s no ‘Police, don’t move.’ There’s no nothing. The only dynamics that would change that is if they took a hostage, or they just simply threw their gun down and surrendered. But if someone is actually engaging, that’s going to be something that is addressed immediately, because every trigger pull is a potential dead person. So especially the Secret Service with a former president, they’re not going to ask questions on that.”
Several maps emerged on social media showing the location of the CS teams in relation to Crooks’ location atop the roof. Bruggeman said that they offered a good look at the shooter’s line of sight and that of the CS teams once they spotted him. They did not, he argued, provide a true picture of the area those snipers had to scan looking for potential threats.
“The Secret Service snipers are some of the best in the world, and I mean literally, some of the best in the world,” he said. “But their responsibility is just tremendous. What I encourage people to do, and what I ask you to do, is go on Google Maps, put a pin where the President was, and then draw a line out to 1,000 yards, because that’s what our shooters look out to. And you’ll see that it covers another farm, car dealerships. It goes over a highway. There’s businesses, there’s houses, there are dozens of buildings.”
Bruggeman said that there were several things about this situation that raised concerns based on his previous experience.
One was that there was nobody from law enforcement on the roof where Crooks was firing, an issue we examined previously.
That would have been most likely local law enforcement because the building was outside the inner perimeter where the Secret Service provides security.
“You should have had at least somebody on the roof, whether it be local law enforcement or a Secret Service sniper,” he said. “If they didn’t feel comfortable with a local law enforcement officer with a rifle, they should at least have been up there with binoculars or spy scopes. I’ve deployed both ways, with a rifle and without. That would eliminate that altogether, and that would have forced that shooter to have to switch gears.”
Compounding matters is the emerging news that “three snipers — local tactical teams, deployed to assist the U.S. Secret Service — were stationed inside the building the shooter used in his attack,” according to CBS News. “The operations plan had them stationed inside the building looking out windows toward the rally.”
That, said Bruggeman, ‘tells me there was no security on their command post, which is pretty basic.”
It also contributed to the delayed response between the time Crooks was spotted on the roof and the time he fired the shots, said Bruggeman.
“Absolutely. I still have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that it wasn’t addressed immediately by someone on the ground.”
On Tuesday, Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle said in a television interview that part of the reason no officers were stationed on the building, owned by American Glass Research, because of its slope.
“That building in particular has a sloped roof at its highest point, and so there’s a safety factor that would be considered there that we wouldn’t want to put somebody up on a sloped roof,” she said. “So, you know, the decision was made to secure the building from inside.”
“Director Cheatle’s statement doesn’t make any sense,” Bruggeman opined. “The roof that the suspect was shooting from looks like less of a slope than what the USSS snipers were already on. This incident along with other factors during her appointment proves that she is a failed leader. I think she should resign and a Congressional hearing should be in her future.”
Another problem Bruggeman pointed out, was the apparent lack of drones helping to surveil the area. No video or images of drones have emerged on social media.
“I’m still kind of amazed that there were no drones,” he said, explaining that they could have spotted Crooks on the roof before he opened fire.
We reached out to the Secret Service about whether there were drones, and if not, why not.
Bruggeman expressed gratitude for never having to kill someone.
“I’ve been fortunate,” he said. “I’ve had the safety off of my rifle, and I’ve already picked my spot, but the person did the right thing at the last minute.”
During his time teaching other snipers, Bruggeman emphasized that what happens is dependent on the “suspect or bad guy.”
“They choose how that day ends, not me,” he said.
Brandon Webb
Brandon Webb is a former Navy SEAL sniper and sniper instructor. He is also a New York Times bestselling author and Editor-in-Chief of the SOFREP news team.
“The area where the rally was held is extremely challenging from a counter-sniper mission, probably a 9 out of 10,” said Webb, echoing Bruggeman’s sentiments. “There are infinite threat areas to cover from, the tree line, bushes, buildings, parked cars just to name a few.”
Webb shrugged off concerns about whether Crooks was able to hide behind the roof slope, enabling him to get enough shots in to kill a man and injure the former president.
“This is a moot point because it’s impossible to ask that every angle be covered,” said Webb. “I looked at the map and saw a thousand options I would take to set up and take a shot. This is almost an impossible task for any counter-sniper team.”
You can see Crooks setting up on the roof in the following video.
“Once the teams have the shooter’s position it looks like a relatively easy target to engage and eliminate but I’m also not sure what kind of sniper training these guys have,” Webb wondered. “In my experience, most law enforcement agencies — I’m unsure of what training is required for the Secret Service — don’t have the budget to train effectively for sniper operations, nor do they have great training programs that cover the science of environmental ballistics, and I’ve trained with some of the larger metro SWAT units. Great guys, highly capable but they lack the foundational training and ongoing training required to be a very proficient sniper.”
The “main breakdown in my opinion was communications between local law enforcement and the Secret Service team,” Webb said. “Bystanders saw and reported a man climbing on a rooftop with what appears to be ample time to report the threat to the protection detail in order to take Trump off the stage.”
He added that there are “counter-sniper optics detection technologies but not sure they were employed or would have been effective unless the shooter was using a high powered optic,” Webb stated. “Again, an impossible situation for any counter-sniper team to cover 100% of all threats.”
Crooks and his father “were members of Clairton Sportsmen’s Club, a gun club about a 25-minute drive from his house, and enjoyed going shooting there together,” CNN reported, citing law enforcement officials.
Still, Webb suggested that Trump was lucky the gunman did not appear to be well-trained.
“If this shooter had any training at all, Trump would likely be out of the race,” Webb postulated. “If it’s a well-trained sniper he would certainly be dead because this shot is an extremely easy one to make.”
Webb offered more thoughts about Crooks in a piece he wrote for SOFRep.
Jeffrey James
Jeffrey James was a Secret Service agent for 22 years, serving as a special agent in charge and under four administrations. He worked a detail under President George W. Bush and retired in 2018
USSS CS teams are “totally autonomous,” when it comes to the decision to pull the trigger, explained James, now chief of police at Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh.
“They don’t have to get permission from anyone to use deadly force. So pretty much as soon as they see a target, they can engage the target, because you look at [the Trump rally], even if the shooter had pulled his trigger, if they saw him and they had to radio and say, ‘Hey, man with a gun, do I have permission to fire?’ By the time that comes back, it might be too late, right? So they don’t need any kind of clearance or green light. They can act immediately.”
The FBI is leading an investigation into the incident and there are several others underway as well into apparent breakdowns in planning and communications that allowed Crooks to climb atop a building with snipers inside. Meanwhile, the CS agent who killed Crooks will undergo the standard post-shooting review, James said.
“They’re just going to look to see if it was a to see if it was justified, which I’m sure we all agree that it was,” said James. “And then from there, they’re going to go to interview the sniper and see what they saw and interview the other sniper teams and the sniper’s partner.”
In addition, the review will also include interviews of “witnesses, both law enforcement and civilian, just to ensure that things were done as close to being right as they could.”
The review will “definitely ask ‘when did you first acquire the target?’ ‘When did you first see him or hear him? What do you think stopped you from seeing him before?”
Like Bruggeman, James opined that the CS teams were “just looking over [Crooks] because he was so close.
“I don’t think anyone is questioning whether or not this was a justifiable use of force, but just as an after-action, which is always done, those are the questions that they’ll ask.”
For the sniper who fired the fatal shot, there are “things that are immediately triggered,” said James. “They’re immediately put on administrative leave. They get drug tested.”
There is also psychological help, but James said it wasn’t mandatory by the time he retired in 2018.
“But I’ve got to be honest with you,” he added. “I don’t know any law enforcement agency now that doesn’t make post-shooting psychological care mandatory.”
James agreed that allowing Crooks to climb the roof with his rifle was a security breakdown.
“We use concentric rings of security,” he explained. “They start in close, which is just the agents right around the president, former president, vice president, whoever, and they go out the middle perimeters usually just agents, but occasionally will sprinkle in some other law enforcement entities for certain roles. And then the outer perimeters, which usually are law enforcement partners.”
If the agent in charge during his briefing the day of the visit “told a police officer, ‘hey, you know what? This roof is a problem for us, we’ve identified it as a potential problem. This is your responsibility. Keep an eye on this and make sure nobody gets up there,’ and it turns out that officer didn’t do it, then it’s on the officer,” said James. “But if no one was ever given that direction, then that’s a failure on the part of the site agent.”
The bottom line is that “somebody should have had eyes on that roof, because it was identified during the week as a potential problem” he said.
Investigators will look at whether the USSS agent in charge of the Trump rally was “negligent or delinquent in their duties,” James stated. “And if they were, there’s going to be consequences. You know, for heaven’s sake, someone under Secret Service protection…came an inch from being killed. So if people were found to have been derelict or negligent, there are going to be consequences. I mean, there has to be.”
Cheatle, as USSS director, has come under increasing pressure to step down as a result of what many see as serious failures to protect Trump. Local authorities meanwhile, are blaming the Secret Service for the security lapses.
James said that she wouldn’t necessarily have to take the fall, even after she said the reason no one was on the roof where Crooks was because it was sloped and considered dangerous.
“I think if you look at everyone that was there, the director probably knows the names of the detail leader of the agent in charge from Pittsburgh, and maybe a couple of other people,” James said. “Her direct contact with the journeyman agent is limited, just because of how busy she is, and they’re always moving around.”
“I’ve always found it hard to fire the person in charge over a failure at a lower level unless we find out it’s systemic, which I don’t think there’s any evidence of that right now,” James postulated. “If a car factory in Michigan isn’t putting wheels on properly, you don’t fire the CEO of General Motors.”
Cheatle’s statement about the roof slope “doesn’t change my opinion because she’s just repeating what was reported to her from agents in the field who set up the security.”
As it sits now, nobody is questioning why the sniper took the shot that killed Crooks. The question of why it took so long is now the subject of massive public interest and multiple federal investigations.
Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com