Listen to the article
While questioning whether Trump’s security left a nearby rooftop unprotected, Rory Steyn, a former presidential guard for Nelson Mandela, says the assassination attempt should be thoroughly investigated before making any judgments about possible lapses.
In an NSN interview, Steyn highlighted how easy it is to blame the U.S. Secret Service based on an iPhone or social media clip. Given the deep divisions in American society, he was not surprised by the assassination attempt. Steyn, now a specialist in major sports event security, paints a fascinating picture of how the protection “circle” of presidential security teams has expanded over time.
“A lot of facts are going to emerge over time, and hopefully, we will understand why this seemingly unprotected rooftop was not covered by some form of security.”
Steyn emphasised the importance of “dominating the high ground.”
“When you protect a head of state, one of the things you do is dominate the high ground. You deploy your counter-sniper teams, you have your own snipers, and they always get to the best vantage points and think like a sniper would. The fact that the rooftop appears to be unprotected is a valid point. But let’s not prejudge this,” he added.
Counter-sniper teams, Steyn explained, should take care of rooftops or anything else that would offer a convenient platform for a sniper to operate from. “Very often, it’s an open window, never mind something as obvious as a rooftop. Those rooftops should have been covered. The question is, what is the reason they weren’t?”
Instead of judging based on an iPhone or social media clip, Steyn cautioned that it should be understood why that rooftop was either not covered or if something was missed.
“There are too many opportunities for conspiracy theories, and I don’t want to contribute to that. I’m always one that says, wait and let’s get the facts,” he emphasised.
Steyn said he had high regard for the United States Secret Service , an agency he has worked with.
“It’s an agency that I have high regard for because they have massive budgets and can deploy hundreds of pairs of eyes, ears, and feet in the protection of their presidents,” he said. It is a huge federal agency with many resources and experience.
“We should be slow to judge until we have the facts,” he added.
It was a different world when Steyn and his team protected President Mandela.
“Our mantra as the protection team was to watch the hands because we would dominate the five-meter radius around our president. We were always watching people’s hands and their body language, looking at their faces. Were their eyes full of adulation as they invariably were with Madiba, or was their face showing something different? Most likely, if he were to be attacked, somebody would come at him with a handheld weapon, a firearm, a knife, an improvised weapon.”
The environment for presidential guards changed with the advent of suicide bombers.
“The person who would strap a vest full of Semtex to his or her body, that five-meter radius probably went out to about 25 to 30 meters. You had to deploy a lot of additional resources than just the protection team around the five meters,” Steyn commented.
The circle of protection teams is getting larger, evolving from watching hands to the potential threat of drones.
“Snipers, with the correct equipment, ammunition, and weather conditions, will always be a threat. The best snipers can hit their targets over a mile away, which is 1.6 kilometres away,” he explained.
Steyn said the assassination attempt did not surprise him, having just returned from a two-month stint in the U.S. which he perceives as a very polarised nation and a place where “Americans are almost becoming incapable of relating to one another.
“So, my initial reaction was, okay, it’s happened. Something was bound to happen. The tensions, the rhetoric, the levels of vitriol that we’re hearing are just too high, and something had to happen. It’s tremendously sad,” he said.
Steyn has no doubt that improvements will result from the attack.
“Somebody needs to ask, ‘What went wrong, and how do we plug those gaps?’ And I promise you they will do that. After 9/11, the U.S. introduced the TSA and all those airport security protocols. The U.S. has the intellectual and human intelligence, digital and other intelligence, to pivot. They have the budgets to implement what needs to be implemented.”
President Trump, he said, must be removed from this incident. It’s not about who was shot at and almost killed; “it’s the fact that a former president of the United States was attacked by a sniper. That is what we need to look at.”
Steyn said had President Trump lost his life, “it could have been the spark that lit the tinderbox.”
“We don’t want a political assassination to ignite violence and destruction anywhere in the world. We need to learn how to prevent such incidents better,” he said.
