by Bernie Goldbach in Clonmel
ON THE DAY Donald Trump was shot in my home state of Pennsylvania, I remember several C-141 flights when we took Secret Service teams aboard our aircraft in support of the President of the United States. We often had a comfort pallet like the one in the photo.
Some of the Secret Service teams were CS (Counter Sniper) specialists. They could carry all their gear on our military aircraft. I remember watching one of the guys cleaning his bolt action Remington 700. It had a suppressor on it and he had a box of .300 Winchester Magnum rounds. I once saw that weapon on a firing range and it had a substantial recoil when the sniper was dialing in a target nearly 800 meters away. These were not off-the-shelf rifles.
Inside our comfort pallets the Secret Service team members would often compare satellite imagery to venues. They would use grease pencils to encircle 100, 200, and 300 yard threat perimeters. Once they knew where they would be positioned they wouldn't have to worry about milling-out their weapons because they would have dialed in their scopes with their range finders and wind analyses.
In the 1980s when I was actively flying these kinds of support missions, I learned about the Minutes of Angle computation used by snipers. A standard rifle has one MOA which means a shooter should expect to get a one inch grouping when 100 yards from a target. An average male target is 25x40 which is a large target.
While earning a Marksmanship ribbon while a cadet at the USAF Academy I remember an instructor explain how he specified a Hollow-T target preference. He had survived a tour in Vietnam and had very graphic explanations about how body armor couldn't prevent fatal injuries related to head shots.
Setting Up Protective Cover
There will be inquiries about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. Many of these public hearings will involve Kimberly Cheatle, director of the Secret Service. Something failed in the tiered and layer protection strategy at the Butler Township Farm Show Grounds. If the tiered and layered approach of a protective detail is done correctly, a threat should not get within a kilometer of a candidate. But lots of resources and command structures have to be put in place for protection to be improved. And if I remember correctly, top tier protective details do not roll into place until a national Presidential candidate has been nominated by established party structures.
In the case of Trump's mid-July campaign stop in Pennsylvania, protection of the middle tier surrounding the main stage is delegated to local law enforcement, probably the Butler Township police.
Looking at Google Earth of the Trump Campaign Rally, it appears that 18 buildings would have clear line of sight to the stage on which Donald Trump was speaking. And on one of those buildings, a man was bear crawling up the roof with a rifle on his back as Trump started speaking.
Threats Ahead
The New York Times surveyed Americans about what they thought about political violence. Ten per cent of those surveyed believed the use of force is justified to prevent a candidate from assuming office. And one third of those responding owned guns.
The shooting of Donald Trump reverberated around the world. At the same time, politicians in Ireland receive bomb threats and verbal intimidation. The CEO of Rheinmetall in Germany has been threatened because of his company's production of artillery rounds. And the prime minister of Slovakia has been shot. Across all nationalities, people need to think about dialing down their abusive comments and threatening behaviour.
[Bernie Goldbach has flown more than 3000 flying hours, nearly 1000 of those hours in a C-141.]
