The Secret Service Needs a Red Team

Donald Trump nearly died and one onlooker was killed due to a failure in tactics by the Secret Service. This does not detract from the bravery of the immediate members of the protective detail, but it does point to a...

The post The Secret Service Needs a Red Team appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Donald Trump nearly died and one onlooker was killed due to a failure in tactics by the Secret Service. This does not detract from the bravery of the immediate members of the protective detail, but it does point to a major weakness in both our military and national security establishments. That is a lack of effective red teaming.

Red teaming, when properly done, challenges the basic assumptions of any plan. The Trump assassination attempt is a case in point. The Secret Service planners assumed that the outer perimeter of the rally site would be secured by local law enforcement. This would have meant putting a local cop or state trooper on the roof of the highest adjacent building so the officer could survey the other structures for potential threats. No one apparently asked the question, “Who is going to do it and how?” (READ MORE: An Armed 20-Year-Old Got Within Range of Trump. How Did That Happen?)

Nobody likes to be red-teamed. When an editor asks me some hard questions about a statement that I have made in a draft article, I bristle. But the editing, which is a form of red teaming, usually results in a better piece and has sometimes saved me from embarrassment.

The Secret Service Isn’t the Only One Lacking Good Red Teaming

The Secret Service is not the only government agency that could benefit from red-teaming. The Marine Corps stands accused of holding flawed war games to justify its Force Design concept, which saw it divest itself of critical combat capabilities to buy anti-ship missiles that are redundant with capabilities possessed by other services and quite possibly easily countered by the Chinese who are the concept’s principal target. A recent Marine Corps Times investigative report indicates that the games were either poorly designed or deliberately skewed to come up with the “right” results.

Because the games were conducted under a cloak of secrecy, it is impossible to tell if the red teams were hobbled or merely incompetent. However, experienced red teamers — including this one — who have closely examined the concept have found some fairly huge inconsistencies in the assumptions; these have yet to be adequately addressed or even acknowledged. As a result, the Marine Corps will go through the humiliation of having its concept reevaluated by a congressionally mandated study by an independent think tank. (READ MORE: Toning Down the Dangerous Rhetoric Didn’t Last Long)

Although the Army has a school for red teaming, I tell my students that each red team should be designed specifically to test the concept or plan being examined. The red team should be familiar with the culture of the planners as well as that of the potential adversary and his doctrine and tactics. The is no such thing as a universal one-size-fits-all red team.

The Simple Fix

The Secret Service would be well advised to provide each protective detail with an independent red teamer. That individual should not be in the chain of command of the agent in charge of the detail. He or she should be familiar with  Secret Service doctrine and procedures and also an expert on past assassinations and attempts. The red team member should also be trained to appreciate terrain and to recognize choke points along planned routes. That individual should provide a written report of any weaknesses in the plan to the agent in charge who -in turn- should be required to state in writing if he or she disagrees with the recommendations of the red team findings. (READ MORE: Trump Is Now Our National Hero)

This would help reduce the kind of finger-pointing that occurred after the Trump incident, I cannot stress strongly enough that the red teamer should not be part of the protection team that will implement the plan because it is hard to grade your own work objectively. The red teamer should be constantly thinking like a potential assassin. No plan is foolproof, but a good red teaming effort ensures that all assumptions have been cross-checked.

Gary Anderson was one of the senior directors of the DoD Defense Adaptive Red Team (DART) and lectures on Alternative Analysis (Red Teaming) at the George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs

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