Trump ousts New Secret Service Director; Trump VS. DHS Deep State; Anonymous Sources VS. Verified So
This past week the announcement was made that Secret Service Director “Tex” Alles was given the boot after two years on the job. The narrative by mainstream media is that this is part of President Trump’s Department of Homeland Security “shakeup.” This latest ouster of a director level position inside DHS was woven into the commentary that President Trump is at odds with DHS due to his frustration with DHS’ inability to secure the border. Is that true? Not really.
There are two stories here: 1st, why was the Secret Service Director relieved of duty and 2nd, how could the mainstream media have gotten this story at least half wrong on the DHS “Shakeup” and why it’s happening?
First, Why was the Secret Service Director relieved of duty and what does it all mean? With the Secret Service vital to America's national security, the director is vital to the Secret Service.
Before President Trump and Director Alles appointment, The Secret Service (USSS) was in the most dire straits since its creation in 1865 (154 years ago!). This is substantiated from "Best Places to Work In The Federal Government" that ranked the Secret Service as having the lowest morale of all Federal Law Enforcement agencies in the United States government. It was 305 out of 305 as of 2016 and is now 398th out of 415. While that should warrant major continued mainstream media new coverage, it hardly scratches the back pages.
Suicides, divorces, DUI’s, lost and stolen government property continue to be uniquely high in the Secret Service. Perhaps the most alarming fact: in 2016, former Director Joe Clancy revealed in congressional testimony that the Secret Service did NOT have an accountant that accounted for the entire agency! Director Clancy could not answer basic budgetary questions of "where is the money going?" that Congress had allocated, but the Secret Service decided to spend elsewhere. Where? No one knows supposedly. Considering the Secret Service has a multi-billion budget, this should concern every American.
For evidence of the agency’s morale, look no further to Ebay, where a special Secret Service challenge coin is listed for $150 and is titled “USSS B.O.T.B. 305, which stands for Secret Service “Bottom of the Barrel” because they’re ranked 305th.
In addition to those facts, a scandal in which it was reported that two Secret Service agents took pictures and selfies with Donald Trump III while he was sleeping in their care also lead the agency to garnering the new President’s ire. The agents gross unprofessional conduct lead to their punishment, a harsh verbal counseling-- which would naturally piss off any grandfather who entrusts the protection of his grandchild. I had heard that this rankled the way President Trump regarded the Secret Service. Between the facts surrounding the agency and their continued scandals, the ire is justified and needed.
Director Alles was supposed to turn things around. His appointment was a big deal inside the Secret Service. For the first time in decades, President Trump had appointed someone from outside the agency who didn’t come up within the agency's “made men." This term is a reference I make to the Secret Service’s mafia-like style of upper and middle-management and their regard for the law.
Here’s some of Tex Alles reported accomplishments:
President Trump's appointment stunned the agency, thrilling and yet infuriating some, because it was in keeping with the foremost the conclusion of the infamous USSS-PMP (Secret Service Protection Mission Panel) which agency insiders loathed for bringing transparency to the agency and revealing how flagrantly lacking the Secret Service was in it’s executive protection mission.
As revealed exclusively from my own source and copied entirely word-for-word here, Director Alles returned the Chief of the Uniformed Division to a rightful place of power. In the mid-90’s the Chief was stripped of real power and made “the Queen of England,” a position of power in optics only. This greatly helped morale and was supposed to signal what was to come in fixing the morale. Director Alles was reinstating the Uniformed Division to its rightful place in the strategic hierarchy of the agency which would both rebuke and help mend the rivalry between Secret Service agents and Uniformed Division Officers. Both agents and officers are essential to protecting The White House, the president, and all of the people the Secret Service protects. The rift was seriously hampering that mission and was a major factor in many of the most well known agency scandals, as was revealed in Secrets of the Secret Service.
Director Alles greenlighted the agency to conduct joint training exercises with both Officers and agents on the White House grounds which had never been done before. USSS refrained from on-site training at the White House due to concerns of “optics” and ego despite numerous scandals revealing the White House to be porous to “fence jumpers” for near a century!
The White House fence was also raised in some places. This was a rebuke to the White House historical society, and a win for the Secret Service Uniformed Division which had called for the raised fence.
Perhaps the biggest win: Director Alles added accountants to the Secret Service’s ranks who were tasked with wrangling the budget. As many inside the Secret Service knew the agency was rife with corruption, the fact that criminal charges or complaints against “made-men” never followed meant there was some serious dirt being swept under the rug. With the new accountants, the hope was that corruption would carry on no more and at least Congress could now be informed of how USSS spends the taxpayer’s money-- now the taxpayer can hope that Congress actually looks at the accounting!
But despite those wins, they were dwarfed by the Director’s failings or lack of action:
The agency still ranks the lowest for morale in the federal government.
The rift between the Secret Service Uniformed Division Officers and agents is still a major problem for the Secret Service and compromises the mission at every turn.
Recruitment and retention of officers and agents still have the agency at sinking ship status.
The agency’s personnel issues (or it’s issue that it lacks adequate personnel) draws the ire of DHS as Border Patrol and other agencies also have personnel retention, recruitment, and “poaching” issues. Poaching is the practice of agencies trying to steal recruitment of new recruits from other agencies that have done the legwork to hire them. At a time when the president has an “all hands on deck” attitude, any agency that doesn’t have its house in order, has its leadership on the chopping block.
Trump wants a director that is going to solve, fix, and end the agency’s issues. President Trump has made clear through his action and lack of hesitation in calling for resignation of ineffective leaders, that lack of action will not be tolerated, for which the mainstream media hints this is a nefarious "shakeup."
Any future director in DHS of the Secret Service that expects to calmly coast and save a sinking ship without rocking the boat of the “good ol’ boys” that comprise the Deep State and Swamp, will find themselves on the same President Trump chopping block.
But don’t cry for former-director Alles because he’s probably laughing all the way to the bank. On top of his Marine Corps pension he just added two more years at the Senior Executive government pay Scale (known as “S.E.S.”) under the F.E.R.S. retirement. Perhaps it's all well deserved, but his ouster and forced retirement will probably yield him a very generous taxpayer funded retirement. And for the men and women of the U.S. Secret Service struggling with the worst morale, divorce rate, suicide, and failings in one of the most vital national security missions, what was accomplished with his directorship? Not much, and worse still this was at time when so much needed to be done to save the mission and the country.
As of now, career Secret Service agent James Murray is taking over. Can we expect a career insider to radically save the agency, especially when the USSS-PMP report specifically called for an outsider. All my sources, say that Alles and Murray are very nice guys. But that's the problem; we don’t need “nice guys” who are interested in a smooth sailing popularity contest; we need get-shit-done take-no-prisoners leader.
As for the 2nd story, how could the mainstream media get this all wrong?
How could the MSM spin our president’s pursuit of “draining the deeps state,” making our government work better and more transparent as something negative?
For example, here’s how and why the Washington Post got this story so wrong: As they wrote, “DHS officials said Monday, speaking on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly of their frustrations with the White House.” In other words, the Washington Post and MSM got it wrong because of their reliance on unverified “anonymous sources.”
The Washington Post covered this story with the headline “Trump removes Secret Service director as purge of DHS leadership widens”. The WP three writers wrote, “President Trump continued to dismantle the leadership of the nation’s top domestic security agency Monday, as the White House announced the imminent removal of U.S. Secret Service Director Randolph D. “Tex” Alles, the latest in a series of head-spinning departures from the Department of Homeland Security.”
The mainstream media’s continued exorbitant reliance on “anonymous sources” should lead any savvy reader frustrated. What are we to make of media spin drummed up from sources that we cannot even verify if they exist at all?
In 2019 and the domesticated media market age, at least with sources like myself, Dan Bongino, and others, you the savvy reader are able to get sources straight from primary sources. So when we say “our sources” you know that we came into contact with those sources from our own professional contacts gleaned from our time behind the veil. Professional journalists, however, cannot discern between anonymous sources that are sincere and those that are playing them and their readers for fools.
So, in the past, any savvy consumer of news had to read and watch multiple mainstream sources. Today, however, if you’re following that style, you are the worst kind of unsavvy, because you think you’re savvy. Today, the way to be a savvy consumer of news, is to get your news from reliable mainstream sources; stop in every now and then to unreliable publishers of news to see what they’re talking about; and then regularly go to primary/secondary alternative news sources to get the real inside scoop WHERE THE WRITER IS THE SOURCE AND STANDS BY THEIR WORD AND THEIR EXPERIENCES. One such is example is myself. Other example is Dan Bongino, Allen B. West, Sheriff Clarke, Rob Smith, Brandon Tatum, and shout out to Matt Cubbler who I served with as an Air Marshal.
What do you think? Agree or disagree. Let me know.