The Future of Freedom Foundation
July 25, 2024
Members of Congress are besides themselves over the testimony of Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle regarding the near-assassination of former president Trump. They are upset that Cheatle was unable to provide them with adequate explanations as to what appears to be incompetence at best and willful blindness, conscious indifference, or complicity at worst on the part of the Secret Service.
But if incompetence is the right explanation, it is matched by the incompetence of Congress in its supposed investigation into the shooting. After all, Cheatle wasn't even there. Therefore, anything to which she testifies is necessarily based on nothing more than what others have told her. How is that type of testimony supposed to get to the bottom of what actually happened? It's not.
If Congress really wants to determine what happened and why, it should subpoena every single Secret Service agent and every single police officer on duty that day. Take the sworn testimony of all of them. Don't let any of them sit inside the chamber and listen to what other witnesses are saying. Then put all that sworn testimony together and see if there are any contractions, anomalies, etc. If there are, then follow up on them.
That's the only way for Congress to determine whether the facts and circumstances go beyond incompetence and cross the line into conscious indifference, willful blindness, or complicity.
If this was a deep-state operation, as some are alleging, it would be extremely difficult to pierce it, especially since the purported shooter, Thomas Crooks, is dead and, therefore, can't talk. After decades of study and practice, the deep state is very good at state-sponsored assassinations and, equally important, at keeping its role in such assassinations secret.
Recall the CIA's assassination manual from 1953 that was uncovered in the 1990s. It not only provided the means of assassination, it also provided the means of conducting such assassinations without anyone figuring out that it was the CIA that was behind the assassination. Getting away with the assassination is as important as committing it.
Thus, ordinarily the only way that a deep-state assassination is going to be pierced is with a fierce investigation that specifically makes the deep state a target of investigation. Simply having a big-publicized political circus in which some head of a federal agency is skewered and maybe even forced to resign will not pierce a deep-state assassination. It will just garner big publicity and political satisfaction.
The big reason why Congress or any other federal agency will never aggressively investigate whether the Trump shooting went beyond incompetence is that nobody within the federal government can afford to suggest that the Secret Service might have crossed the line from incompetence to willful blindness, conscious indifference, or complicity. That's because they would then be acknowledging that such a thing is possible here in the United States. Nobody within the federal government or even the mainstream press wants to go down that road.
We saw this phenomenon in the JFK assassination. In the immediate aftermath of the assassination and afterward, the standard question among U.S. officials and the mainstream press was: Did Lee Harvey Oswald act alone or in a conspiracy? Hardly anyone asked: Could this be a highly sophisticated national-security state regime-change operation in which Oswald, who was now dead, was being made a patsy? That's because it was considered to be simply inconceivable that such a thing could happen here in the United States. That type of thing only happens in foreign countries.
Thus, hardly anyone thought it strange, for example, that the military took control over JKF's autopsy or that former CIA Director Allan Dulles, who JFK had fired after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, was appointed to the commission that was ostensibly intended to investigate the crime.
In the 1970s, the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations, in response to public pressure, reopened the investigation into the JFK assassination. It hired a fierce and honest criminal prosecutor from Pennsylvania, Richard Sprague, to lead the investigation. Sprague specifically targeted the CIA for investigation. He refused to comply with the CIA's demand that Sprague sign a secrecy agreement, responding that he, not the CIA, was in charge of the investigation. He also forced a CIA official named David Atlee Phillips to testify regarding Oswald's trip to Mexico City. Sprague caught Phillips red-handed committing perjury and recommended that he be indicted for perjury.
Sprague soon learned the difficulty in making the deep state a target of investigation in a state-sponsored assassination. He was run out of town before he could get to first base. He was replaced by a lawyer named Robert Blakey, who followed a deferential policy toward the CIA.
My prediction? Cheatle will be made a sacrificial lamb and be forced to resign, and the Trump shooting will be blamed on incompetence. The congressional "investigation" into the shooting will be over. Most everyone in Washington, D.C., will be satisfied.
Reprinted with permission from The Future of Freedom Foundation.