How Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy can make the Secret Service great again

At a recent church service, a close family member (an ardent Trump supporter) told me that the next president needs to clean up the U.S. Secret Service and fill it with vetted and loyal special agents.

As a former Secret Service special agent, his comment caught me off guard. Throughout the church service, I thought about how misguided and unfortunate the attempts to politicize the Secret Service are. But I also thought about how President Trump could refocus and energize struggling government agencies.

Here are some ways Trump can do it without being political.

remove civil servant protection

I worked with some great people during my time in the Secret Service. I worked with Ivy League graduates, Division I and professional athletes, and former members of the Navy SEALs, Army Rangers, and Delta Force. Every day, I witnessed the tremendous sacrifices my colleagues make to ensure the safety of America’s elected leaders.

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Recruitment and selection criteria are rigorous, but like any organization, the Secret Service recruits individuals from the human race. In some cases, agents may fall asleep on duty or inadvertently discharge their firearms. Some do not meet the minimum firearms requalification requirements. Some people cannot pass the physical exam. Incidents like this are rare, but they do happen

If Delta Force or SEAL Team 6 has a personnel issue, they can fire individuals for “failure to maintain standards.” The U.S. Secret Service cannot do this. All special agents are federal employees with civil service protection. It cannot be fired or deleted without reason. Additionally, the removal process for federal employees can take months or years to resolve.

This process was revealed in a July 2024 Congressional hearing after the first assassination attempt against Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) asked U.S. Secret Service Director Ron if the special agents at the scene were “relieved of duty” or if the agents involved in advancing the protection of the rally were fired. asked Rowe repeatedly.

But the bottom line is that even if some mistake was made, even if it led to the near-catastrophic killing of President Trump, federal employment rules say the employees involved are entitled to civil service protections. That’s true.

But President Trump could sign an executive order exempting Secret Service employees from existing civil service rules and allowing immediate firing if they “fail to maintain standards.”

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I’m not saying that special agents should be summarily fired from the federal workforce for any violation. Guardrails may be installed. For example, if an agent fails in a security mission, the order would require the Secret Service to use existing legal liability beyond a reasonable doubt to clearly demonstrate why the agent must be removed. It may be possible to force them to do so.

The Secret Service’s protection mission is critical to our nation’s national security. It is the foundation upon which the rest of our liberal democracy functions. The president must be free to make national security decisions based on his own judgment. Let’s start with this basic thing. The Secret Service cannot fail in its protection mission.

raise standards

When I was in the Secret Service, Counter Assault Teams (CAT) were the only special agents that went through a rigorous selection process that included physical fitness, firearms, and tactical evaluations. Additionally, the attrition rate for CAT selection and foundation courses was very high. If you pass the physical and tactical evaluation, you can proceed. If you fail, return to the previous task

There were no such training requirements for the training of Presidential Protective Department (PPD) or Vice Presidential Protective Department (VPD). The PPD had no criteria, physical or otherwise, to participate in or remain on the mission. Selection into PPD or VPD was often a sponsored choice, and protection training was a familiarization course rather than a rigorous mental, physical, or tactical challenge.

If it has not already done so, the Secret Service should make protective detail training extremely difficult and difficult, with strict firearms and physical fitness standards. Employees who do not meet strict standards should be reassigned.

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Reassign investigation roles

Those who support the Secret Service continuing its investigative operations believe that junior special agents must learn law enforcement fundamentals, interviewing skills, reading human behavior, conducting surveillance, etc. before applying those skills during protection missions. It claims to be a place to learn.

When I was assigned to the Washington field office, I worked with dozens of agents, but very few investigations were conducted there. Some of these agents currently hold senior management positions within government agencies, including high-level protection duties.

But the skills of street cops are rarely needed to investigate financial crimes, as the Secret Service does. Investigators rarely chase suspects through the streets or pull out firearms. Second, agents simply haven’t done enough research to truly learn that skill set. Third, investigators do not learn how to protect the president by conducting investigations. They learn defense by doing it.

The Secret Service should delegate its investigative functions to the Treasury Department or the dozen or so federal agencies that investigate the same financial crimes. Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswani should note that there is a lot of overlap between federal law enforcement agencies. Reassigning investigations would allow agents to be better trained to focus on protection.

Secret Service agents guard President Biden as he sits inside the presidential SUV as he arrives at Delaware National Guard Air Force Base in New Castle, Delaware, on June 18, 2021. (Olivier Drierly/AFP via Getty Images)

Elon and Vivek have something else to focus on. Why do we have so many field offices around the world? Does the Secret Service really need two in Oklahoma? Or three in South Carolina? We maintain our major large regional offices in Los Angeles, Dallas, Miami, and of course Washington, DC, with a focus on protection.

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The Secret Service is the world’s most elite protection agency and is always staffed by highly capable agents. All protection agencies around the world model their protection protocols after the Secret Service. Coach Lowe acknowledges that mistakes were made at Butler, Pennsylvania, and is making great strides in working to correct what went wrong so it doesn’t happen again.

But remember something else about Butler. All agents assigned to the Butler-Trump rally (as well as the uniformed division’s counter-snipers) responded immediately upon hearing the gunshots. They were willing to sacrifice their lives regardless of who they voted for. So, yes, refocus and reinvigorate this embattled government agency, but make sure the Secret Service remains a professional and apolitical organization.

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