Secret Service fights to shed politics, but Trump's indictment, 2024 election are major tests

WASHINGTON – Inside a darkened room, on the fourth floor of Secret Service headquarters, a panel of video screens offers an extraordinary window into the agency's future – long on hold.

A replica of the White House, including the East and West wings, along with the sweeping South Lawn, appears as if transported to an 18-acre lot, about 20 miles north of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

The nearly $10 million Maryland training facility project has remained an unrealized dream, even after a series of high-profile White House security breaches raised serious questions about the agency's training regimen in which agents and officers have drilled on an empty parking lot with an imaginary mansion in the background.

"It is unfathomable" to lack such a tool, Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle said in a rare interview with USA TODAY.

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Almost a decade after the project was last proposed, Cheatle believes the agency is closer than ever to winning congressional approval. Though the project would represent the largest addition to the Secret Service's physical footprint in years, it also carries weighty symbolism for an agency eager to turn the page on a turbulent era in which its performance and apolitical brand have been called into question.

For Cheatle, 52, the stakes could not be higher as the service confronts long-standing challenges, including chronic staffing shortages and training struggles, even as it gears up for a potentially volatile 2024 presidential campaign.

Questions about the agency's independence have been just as jarring after the service was swept up in a House committee's investigation of the Capitol attack and an inquiry into missing text communications around the time of the insurrection. 

"I think, unfortunately, the Secret Service has been painted, at times inaccurately, as being a political organization, and we're not," Cheatle said. "We don't talk politics here. We are an agency that truly does take pride in our apolitical mission."

Seven months into her tenure as director, Cheatle, just the second woman to lead the agency, appears most anxious to reclaim the agency's mission – minus the drama.

The timeline for any reset, however, will have to be quick, because the 2024 campaign already has begun.

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That campaign already features Donald Trump, whose bid to reclaim the White House will now feature awkward stops for court appearances in Manhattan. The former president was charged with 34 felony counts in New York related to a hush money scheme to silence an adult film star in the final weeks of the 2016 campaign about an alleged affair years earlier.

Trump, the first former president to face criminal charges, also faces legal jeopardy in Atlanta and Washington, D.C. State and federal prosecutors are pursuing separate criminal investigations in his handling of classified documents and attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

The unprecedented prosecution of a former president also thrusts the Secret Service into a previously unimagined role that is already testing the boundaries of the agency's obligation to provide lifetime protection for a former commander in chief who is now a criminal defendant. Secret Service agents escorted Trump to his arraignment last week. And some service representatives were expected to testify in the Justice Department's special counsel inquiry into Trump's handling of classified documents, Fox News first reported this month.

"We are in uncharted territory here," said W. Ralph Basham, who led the agency during the George H.W. Bush administration. "I'm sure the attorneys are scrambling to find answers to those questions."

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Jan. 6 Capitol riot drew Secret Service into politics like never before

At perhaps no time in its history has federal law enforcement's independence been scrutinized more than in the shadow cast by the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol assault. Questions about a lack of preparation and urgency of response still linger more than two years after rioters sought to halt the certification of President Joe Biden's election.

And some of the sharpest body blows landed on the Secret Service that has long prided itself on operating outside politics, protecting presidents of all political stripes in sensitive times.

Last year's disclosure that text messages were missing from the agency's cache of communications around the time of the Capitol attacks prompted an investigation by the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general.

The temporary assignment of a top agency executive, Tony Ornato, to serve in a political role as deputy chief of staff in the Trump White House during the time of the Jan. 6 riot triggered blistering criticism from lawmakers and some former agency officials who described the appointment as a contravention of the agency's apolitical role.

Among the harshest assessments was delivered by John Magaw, another former Secret Service director, who in an earlier interview with USA TODAY described the arrangement as "horrendous." Ornato retired from the agency late last summer.

“That decision crossed the line into politics," Magaw said in July as the Secret Service drew the scrutiny of the special House committee investigating the Capitol riot.

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Enter Cheatle, a career agent who had briefly left government for an executive position at PepsiCo North America, overseeing facilities and personnel.

In announcing Cheatle's appointment as the 27th director of the agency last August, Biden referenced the challenge facing the service. He described Cheatle as "easily the best choice to lead the agency at a critical moment for the Secret Service."

"She has my complete trust, and I look forward to working with her," Biden said at the time, adding that the new director also had served on his protective detail when he was vice president.

And in her first address to the ranks, Cheatle appeared to emphasize a desire for the agency to avoid the unnecessary spotlight.

"We are tasked with a mandate that’s difficult, dangerous, and most often in the public view, and we carry it out together – quietly and efficiently, in the background of history," she said.

Asked about the agency's handling of Ornato's controversial White House assignment, Cheatle told USA TODAY: "I don't know that I would necessarily make the same decision," though she did not "fault" the agency's prior leadership team.

Cheatle also sought to slam the door on questions that had swirled about the agency's response to the Capitol attack, specifically the actions taken to protect then-Vice President Mike Pence and whether there were provisions to remove Pence from the Capitol that would have resulted in blocking him from carrying out the certification of Biden's election.

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"I was the assistant director of Protective Operations at the time, and I know the planning that went on for both the rally site ... on the (White House) Ellipse that day and for the vice president's visit to the Capitol," Cheatle said. "There was no nefarious intent to have anything stopped that day. Our folks, again, did their job."

Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., former co-chair of the House panel that investigated the Capitol attack, acknowledged his concerns about the challenges facing the agency.

"I’ve had concerns with the direction in which the agency has moved in, particularly under the previous administration, and I’ve discussed them with Director Cheatle, who has given me her commitment to putting the service on the right path," Thompson said. "We must ensure that the agency operates effectively, in an apolitical manner, and works to improve workforce morale and restore public trust in the agency."

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Hiring, training are urgent priorities as 2024 race looms

The heat of the 2024 presidential race is still months away, but the election cycle also spotlights persistent challenges for the Secret Service: staffing and training.

Last year, hundreds of agents working protection missions maxed out annual overtime and salary allowances, which will require the agency to once again seek congressional authorization to make up back pay for the unpaid time worked, according to service records.

In preparation for the 2024 campaign, which already includes protective details assigned to Trump and Biden (who is expected to formally announce a reelection bid), the Department of Homeland Security has requested an additional $191 million to ensure the campaign is "adequately resourced for the protection of major candidates, nominees, their spouses, and nominating conventions."

Already, the agency has identified 16 protective details to begin training ahead of the election season. Because details work on three-week rotations, the number does not represent actual candidates that would receive protection. But the agency is gearing up to accommodate several possible candidates who may require round-the-clock security, as determined by the DHS.

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The preparations are part of a sprawling election plan that in years past have drilled agents on scenarios ranging from urban combat to manning rope lines and securing stages.

Major presidential and vice presidential candidates automatically receive Secret Service protection within 120 days of the general election. But many candidates receive it much earlier in the campaign cycle.

The DHS budget proposal includes funding for 77 additional positions across the service. Yet finding candidates to fill those jobs has been a never-ending challenge for the agency and much of law enforcement.

For every 250 applicants for special agent positions, officials said, only one is typically hired after a process that includes background checks and polygraph examinations.

Much of the effort to evaluate and accelerate hiring will be led by Cynthia Sjoberg Radway, the service's chief operating officer. Radway's appointment marks the first time women have held the senior roles of director and COO at the same time.

"We're taking a hard look at our recruitment strategies," Radway said, adding that there is no plan to adjust past drug use prohibitions that have doomed many prospective candidates.

"Maintaining the integrity" of the selection process, Radway said, will not be compromised.

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A White House in Maryland

Nearly a decade ago, after an Iraq War veteran scaled the White House fence and burst through the mansion's front door, a special advisory committee recommended two major additions to physical security and training for the Secret Service: build a higher perimeter fence and "train in conditions that replicate the physical environment" in which agents and uniform officers work.

The new fencing is now a reality. But a proposed training centerpiece – the construction of a replica White House on the agency's suburban Maryland training grounds – has yet to be realized.

In a 2015 appeal before a House Appropriations subcommittee, then-Director Joseph Clancy said agents and officers were staging White House training on "a rudimentary, not-to-scale simulation of the north grounds of the White House, using bike barricades to act as the fencing."

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"There are no structures, vehicle gates, lighting, or other aides to enhance the training simulations," according to Clancy's written testimony, which then requested $8 million for the construction of a White House replica to "provide a more realistic environment, conducive to scenario-based training exercises."

The actual cost, which has yet to be determined, is expected to be well above the previous 2015 estimate, officials said, referring to costs to clear and grade the property just prepare for construction.

Magaw said a replica would be "very, very valuable" to the agency's training program.

"It would allow scenario training at all hours of the day and night to simulate actual events," the former director said. "It would make the current training complex complete."

Cheatle is moving to revive the project, viewing it as essential to agent and officer training and the security of the White House. Last year, Congress funded a feasibility study for the project, which will help determine the exact costs.

In its current virtual state, the plans provide for outside grounds and interior rooms that closely replicate the real thing. The project would represent a transformative addition to the agency's training complex, where Cheatle once served as the special agent-in-charge.

Said Cheatle, "No one has looked at this and said this is a bad idea."

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump indictment huge test at a Secret Service trying to shed politics