Among the slew of questions about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump on Saturday in Butler, PA, perhaps the biggest is whether we will ever get any credible answers at all.
More than 60 years after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, essential and troubling questions remain, dividing people who still demand answers. It seems we’ll never get them.
Trump as president was supposed to have revealed some of those declassified answers about JFK himself but backed away after apparent pressure from members of his own administration.
Two investigations and a review have been ordered into the attempt on Trump. The House of Representatives and the F.B.I.’s national security branch are doing the investigations and President Joe Biden ordered an independent review of security measures before and after the attempt.
The F.B.I. national security branch ran Operation Crossfire Hurricane, the failed attempt to smear Trump as a Russian stooge. This taints the division regarding its dealings with Trump.
The Republican-led House investigation will almost certainly be harder on the Secret Service, the F.B.I. and the local police. The committee has already called for Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle to testify next week. Cheatle is refusing calls to resign. We could expect fireworks. But will there be answers?
Dozens of Zapruders
Four frames from Zapruder film featuring the backwards motion of President Kennedy after the fatal shot. Photo: Abraham Zapruder / Wikimedia Commons.
We wouldn’t have had to wait nearly six years for the first public broadcast of the 1963 Zapruder film if everyone had had a mobile phone in their pockets that day in Dallas and social media to publish it on. If the dozens of people lining Kennedy’s route on the Grassy Knoll and across Elm Street in Dealey Plaza had had cell phones, it would have made a cover-up much harder. It makes one now — if indeed one is needed — next to impossible, one would think.
A Kennedy-type plot would be hard to conceive in the age of mobile movie cameras in everyone’s possession. There were dozens of Abraham Zapruders in the crowd on Saturday at Butler fair grounds. They, and not the mainstream, produced the most revealing videos of day.
Perhaps the most revealing are those that show the shooter on the roof preparing to attack, while bystanders loudly alert the police:
WPXI, a local TV station has reported that police spotted the shooter on the roof at least 26 minutes before he fired at Trump. The station reported: “Channel 11’s Nicole Ford confirmed that Beaver County’s ESU team had eight members at the rally, including snipers and spotters. According to Ford’s sources, one of them noticed a suspicious man scoping out a roof near the rally at 5:45 p.m., called it in and took a picture of the person. We have learned from our sources the person in that picture is Thomas Crooks. We’re told it’s not clear if Crooks had a gun with him at that point. …According to multiple sources, a law enforcement officer had also previously seen Crooks on the ground and called him in as a suspicious person with a picture prior to 5:45 p.m. Our sources tell us an officer checked the grounds for Crooks at that point, but did not see him where the first picture was taken. 26 minutes after the second picture of Crooks was taken by law enforcement and the information called in, shots were fired from the roof of the American Glass Research building. Seconds later, a Secret Service sniper returned fire and killed Crooks.”
Also, a “local police counter-sniper team” was inside the building while Crooks was on the roof, the New York Post reported on Monday, citing “law enforcement sources.” The newspaper said: “The building — the AGR International Inc. factory in Butler, Pennsylvania — was being used by local police as a ‘watch post’ for snipers to scan for threats as the former president spoke onstage only 130 yards away, according to sources. Cops were inside, but not on the roof during the shooting, sources said. … Law enforcement sources said it was not clear as of Monday night whether any of the local officers — who were tasked with securing the perimeter outside the Butler County Farm Show grounds — were able to warn Secret Service agents about the gunman.”
Speaking to The New York Times, a local police official, trying to defend his men, contradicted the Secret Service director, saying his officers were in an adjacent building, not the one directly under the roof on which Crooks was perched.
The Times said: “The director of the Secret Service said the local forces were in the very same building, an account suggesting that the gunman was essentially on top of them. A local law enforcement official told The New York Times on Tuesday that was not the case, and that the local officers were in an adjacent building. The discrepancy in their accounts is just one unsettled element in the effort to determine how security broke down and allowed a 20-year-old with a semiautomatic rifle to open fire in a rapid barrage that left Mr. Trump hurt, one man dead and two other people at the rally gravely wounded. That this simple matter — whether law enforcement used the same building as the gunman — is still not easily resolved three days after the shooting shows that divisions are emerging among the law enforcement agencies after a would-be assassin came close to felling the Republican presidential nominee two days before the party’s convention.”
Suspicions will soar if these questions aren’t answered.
Cock-up or Cover-Up
Days later, surprisingly little is known about the 20-year-old gunman. Crooks is so far a mystery. After authorities searched his home, car, and electronic devices; interviewed family, schoolmates and teachers, no clues have emerged about a motive or whether he acted with anyone else.
What we have now is a lone-wolf without a motive.
Even if incompetence is the sole reason for the massive security failure on Saturday, authorities may still try to cover up or downplay evidence that would embarrass and threaten their jobs. Already, the Secret Service is blaming local police and the local police is blaming the state police and the Secret Service, as seen above in comments to The New York Times.
The NY Post reported: “Secret Service representative Anthony Gugliemi point[ed] out that local agencies were responsible for the area where the shooter opened fire. … [But] a Butler City police dispatcher told The Post that the Pennsylvania State Police were charged with securing the AGR grounds…. [meanwhile] Law enforcement sources said the building was swept by cops before the event and that the local sniper team used the large manufacturing site as a staging and lookout post — but did not climb on the roof for the event — possibly over concerns that it would interfere with the Secret Service snipers.”
How will the authorities explain away this massive failure without holding anyone to account? This is what we are about to see.
Media Discourage Full Inquiry
It’s unfortunate if the partisanship that has ruined American journalism progressively over the past 30 years in a process that accelerated after Trump’s 2016 election extends to coverage of the assassination attempt.
Martha Raddatz, a long-time ABC News correspondent, on Saturday night said all buildings within 1000 yards of the event needed to be secured and the shooter was just 150 yards away. The anchor then logically asked her why the building the shooter was on was missed?
“Well you can’t get them all,” said Raddatz.
She was apologizing for the Secret Service, defending the authorities instead of challenging them: what the job of journalism was once supposed to be.
On CNN at the Republican Convention in Milwaukee, anchor Kate Bolduan was interviewing Republican Congressman Cory Mills, a former U.S. army sniper, when she freaked out after hearing Mills merely raise the possibility these security lapses may have been intentional and that that should be considered in the investigations.
It will be very hard to get answers if certain questions are not allowed to be raised. Like Raddatz at ABC, CNN wants to stop some of them from being asked.
What Needs to be Explained
These are some of the most important questions that need answers:
- Did police and/or Secret Service see Crooks on the roof 26 minutes before the shooting?
- Why wasn’t the roof he was on just 130 yards away secured? Were local cops inside that building as the shooting occured as The New York Post reported?
- After numerous eyewitnesses alerted police to Crooks crawling on the roof with a rifle, did the police alert the Secret Service snipers?
- Were the local police and Secret Service on the same radio frequency to communicate?
- Did Crooks really act alone?
- What was his motive?
- Did the fierce anti-Trump rhetoric from top Democratic leaders play any role in the shooting?
Will we get any answers?
Main photo: Map of Trump rally during assassination attempt in Butler, PA © MediaGuy768 / Wikimedia Commons.
Source: Consortium News.
