Given its depiction in popular culture, one could be forgiven for believing that the Secret Service was an extremely competent organization dedicated exclusively to the protection of the President. No part of this characterization is accurate. The agency has long carried the dual mandate of ensuring the safety of high-ranking political officials, such as the President, while also investigating financial crimes (Ansley 1956). The agency has also achieved results which could charitably be described as middling, facing numerous high-profile scandals and mission failures across the past decade. The agency allowed an attacker to reach the White House during the Obama administration and failed in preventing an assassination attempt against Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania. Further, it has faced a series of ethics violations and smaller mission failures which have seriously impacted the agency’s reputation and public credibility. To any serious student of the agency, this is unsurprising. The United States Secret Service faces a number of severe structural, administrative, and organizational shortcomings. While reform efforts have been partially successful at addressing each, both cultural and structural factors have inhibited the effectiveness of these changes.

Section 1: Diagnosis

Politically, the Secret Service faces a declining reputation and a poor relationship with overseers, each reducing the likelihood of agency success. As detailed in a House committee report, the agency’s ethics failures, including agents drunkenly interrupting a crime scene investigation and soliciting prostitution while on assignment in Colombia, have severely damaged public and institutional confidence that the agency can complete its mandate (House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform 2015). Further, the agency’s reputation declined following serious security incidents such as the attempted attack on Obama and, presumably, the shooting of Trump (Senate Committee on Homeland Security 2015). While this decline in reputation may appear trivial, it is highly important for agency independence and performance, contributing both to Congressional scrutiny and to delegated resources (Carpenter 2014). As agencies lose reputation, they may also be delegated smaller sums of money and be overseen more harshly (Ansell lecture 9/10/24). The latter has certainly been the case with the Secret Service, subject to a wide variety of panels and committee hearings after its failures through the first half of the 2010s (Leonnig 2021). However, given the agency’s failures, stricter oversight is also likely necessary. This has been frustrated by the agency’s own unwillingness, in certain cases, to build relationships with regulators. Leaders in 2015 occasionally simply refused to provide Congress with testimonial, citing ignorance or unwillingness (Leonnig 2021). Congress already faces the core difficulties of information asymmetry (the Secret Service knows more than Congress about its work) and classification (review of Secret Service activities must be consistent with its classified nature) while overseeing the Secret Service, making oversight challenging (Zegart 2013). Each political factor has, in part, compounded agency problems, reducing flexibility, external accountability, and resources.

Further, the agency faces significant problems with its leadership, contributing to poor performance and disorganization. Leadership is essential for directing an agency’s activity, modeling its mission, and developing its “distinctive competence” at performing its mandate; this often requires leadership to be highly respected, competent, and active within an organization (van Bottenburg et al 2021, Ansell lecture 10/3/24). The Secret Service’s leadership lacked all three qualities. Leaders were not respected by their subordinates, with many openly expressing to an independent panel a desire for a change in director, making it difficult for leaders to achieve high performance even when their efforts were well-intentioned (Protective Mission Panel 2014). The same panel decried the Service’s leadership team as incapable (or unwilling) to engage in any real efforts at changing underlying patterns of poor performance through hiring, training, or administrative overhaul (Protective Mission Panel 2014). Further, leadership at the highest level have refused to actively enforce a culture of accountability. When high-level officials have been directly involved in or responsible for ignoring scandals, accountability has remained low. For instance, the Secret Service employees responsible for the drunkenness incident were senior officials who ranked highly within the organization and faced little internal accountability for their actions; internal affairs investigations were delayed until after the scandal had already broken publicly (House Committee on Organization and Government Reform 2015, Leonnig 2021). This is especially problematic, as it reduces buy-in from agents, a core part of any agency’s effectiveness but especially one which asks its agents to risk their lives for its mission (Bowen 2014, Ansell lecture 10/3/24). Leadership issues have undoubtedly contributed to the persistent struggles of the Secret Service.

Another cause of the Secret Service’s high-profile failures has been a culture that incentivizes under-resourced work, chills communication, and inhibits interagency collaboration. The incident in Butler resulted, in large part, from an attitude amongst agents that performing work with less resources was desirable, an attitude described as “do[ing] more with less” (Independent Review Panel 2024). This culture led to mass performance dysfunction and a tendency to decline resources to achieve higher status within the organization, an attitude deleterious to effectiveness that finds a historical parallel in the FBI’s failure to adapt to terrorism before 9/11 (Ansell lecture 10/31/24, Zegart 2007). Further, communication was stifled, especially amongst street-level bureaucrats. Fearing incorrectness, agents failed to communicate highly pertinent information related to suspicions about the shooter or his location (Senate Committee on Homeland Security 2024). Communication is essential for mistake avoidance and a critical component of on-the-job learning within organizations (Ansell lecture 11/21/24). No norm analogous to, for instance, the National Weather Service’s norm of “floating” potentially incorrect ideas for confirmation or disapproval existed in the Secret Service’s approach to Butler (Roeder et al 2021, Independent Review Panel 2024). As such, key information was not relayed to important figures and communication broke down. Further, the agency has a penchant for rejecting interagency collaboration. In the Butler case, the agency failed to relay strategic plans or key information to, and refused colocation with, local law enforcement (Independent Review Panel 2024, Secret Service 2024). Calls for better norms surrounding interagency collaboration after the January 6th riot, a crisis which demanded cooperation between the Service and the Capitol Police, were roundly rejected by Secret Service management (OIG 2024). Clearly, agency culture played an integral role in the Secret Service’s high-profile failures.

Finally, an overworked and undertrained staff, technological obsolescence, and conflicting mandates each contributed to systematic failure at the Secret Service. Especially in the early 2010s, many of these problems emerged due to resource constraints (Protective Mission Panel 2014). However, the agency was slow to hire staff to supplement a workforce required to constantly stretch its hours and suffered high attrition, each pointing to considerable mismanagement (Roth 2016). Both mismanagement and under-resourcing led to an overstretched workforce ill-prepared to meet its mandate, with agents required to work long overtime hours with few days off (House Committee 2015, NAPA 2021). Staff that did exist were undertrained, with some staff spending as little as 25 minutes on training per year (Protective Mission Report 2014). For HROs, training is essential, building professionalism, resilience, and expertise; another HRO, the FAA, requires continual training even following an intensive bootcamp (Ansell lecture 11/14/24, Vaughan 2021). Further, agency technology was deeply out of date, with vulnerable IT systems and obsolete communications technology (Leonnig 2021, GAO 2019). While many of the specifics regarding technological insecurities remain classified, testimony suggests this played a crucial role in the failure to detect a White House intruder in 2014 (Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Hearing 2015). Balancing the criminal investigation responsibilities of the agency and its protective responsibilities also contributed to overstretch. Staff assigned to the investigation division who were needed during high-protection events were often called away to continue investigative work (GAO 2020). The investigative division is theoretically important both for its core function and to provide agents with a break and the agency with capacity during high-need events (Harlow 2011). It appears to have utterly failed at the second mission, requiring investigative agents to work even longer hours (GAO 2020). Persistent problems owing to staff, technology, and mandate constraints deepened the organization’s inefficacy.

Section 2: Reform

Internal and external efforts to reform the Secret Service have been successful at resolving many of its identified vulnerabilities. After its high-profile 2010s scandals, the agency acted quickly toward reform, replacing its management team and building robust systems to seek internal feedback (NAPA 2016). This leadership was not entirely the “outside” and change-driven team envisioned by reform advocates but did make progress toward coordinating a variety of organizational reforms despite difficult circumstances under the Trump administration (GAO 2019, Leonnig 2021). The Service had, by 2019, made significant progress toward over half of the problems identified by the 2014 panel report (GAO 2019). While it did not take steps toward its initial goal of 25% of agent time spent on training, it did establish new benchmarks designed to heighten agent training (GAO 2022). It also adjusted its model for addressing widespread unpaid overtime, formally accounting for these hours in its budgeting process (GAO 2022). Further, the service increased its dedication to a culture of accountability. It created an independent office to guard against ethics violations, avoiding an insider culture wherein ethics violations were not reported due to retaliation fears, and disseminated information related to ethical best practices (Secret Service 2015). Changing organizational structure and culture can be difficult, especially when such a change is planned and implemented from the top, as buy-in from lower-ranking employees can be hard to achieve (Ansell lecture 11/7/24). However, the agency has also built in clearer mechanisms for communicating employee needs to management, creating a new web-based tool for employees low on the organizational chart to share feedback about the organization’s practices and direction (GAO 2019). Each of these changes was targeted directly at an agency vulnerability identified following the White House incident (Protective Mission Panel 2014). While it has experienced shortcomings—most notably, not yet substantively increasing the number of hours dedicated to agent training and maintaining somewhat archaic hiring practices—personnel reforms have been wide-reaching (GAO 2022). While its efforts remain unfinished, the Secret Service appears to have substantially reformed its practices regarding staffing.

Further, the Secret Service has seen success in fixing its budget, technological vulnerabilities, and reputation, each contributing to positive political and organizational changes. Many of these transformations were related to the augmentation of its budget by a 2015 reform bill (Leonnig 2021) Most notably, it began installing new perimeter security technologies around the White House and received a significantly higher budget to pursue recruitment (GAO 2019). While independent reviews still seem to have found certain technological vulnerabilities, underscored by its failure to approve internal technology modernization plans, it has, at the least, resolved its most pressing technological concerns and removed obsolete systems (GAO 2022). New staff hires increased dramatically, nearly doubling the targets established by the 2014 panel (GAO 2022). The agency also significantly professionalized its staff management, establishing clear merit-based guidelines for promotion and establishing an executive-level “Human Capital Officer” (GAO 2022). While many of these changes took place in a vacuum rather than through a cohesive change strategy, they were rather effective at resolving underlying resource constraints and staffing issues (NAPA 2016). Further, many of its reputational changes appeared to have been effective. Oversight pressure on the agency was significantly reduced despite its increased workload, and the agency’s steps toward preventing high-profile ethical missteps appeared to have increased Congressional confidence in its mandate (Leonnig 2021). This is no small task, as reputation lost is not easily regained; the agency’s deep commitment to change and positive reporting from independent third parties likely contributed to its success (Carpenter 2014). The agency’s reform efforts have significantly improved its political standing as well as some of its underlying organizational challenges.

Section 3: Evaluation and Conclusion

The Secret Service’s reform efforts have, nevertheless, been unsuccessful at resolving many of its most severe organizational concerns including an ineffective staff, a failure to work with other agencies, cultural norms, and mandate confusion. Despite its establishment of new training targets, actual training received by agents has not significantly increased at any point throughout the past decade (GAO 2022). This poses a severe problem: the Secret Service attributed the 2014 White House break-in to a lack of training and the 2024 Butler shooting to poor agent performance exacerbated by a failure to train agents (House Committee on Oversight and Government 2015, Independent Review Panel 2024). Training still does not resemble real scenarios, making agents more prone to in-field mistakes (GAO 2022). Additionally, high attrition has depleted its personnel nearly as quickly as the Service can hire them, with many citing workplace culture concerns or work-life balance concerns (NAPA 2021). Perhaps the most salient evidence against successful agency reform was the failure in Butler, where communication broke down and agents failed at either preventing harm to the President or proactively communicating to other law enforcement agencies (Independent Review Panel 2024). Each suggests that, despite its progress toward institutional reform, the agency has been unable to achieve core cultural changes, such as a norm toward openness, necessary to mobilize its “organic” organization toward success (Ansell lecture 10/31/24). Further, the agency clearly still does not systematically integrate lessons from its mistakes. It maintains a negative posture toward cross-agency collaboration, even decrying the effort as counterproductive after both January 6th and the Butler incident (OIG 2024, Secret Service 2024). This suggests cultural resistance may inhibit reforms that would enhance agency effectiveness, painting the Service’s future in a dark light. Finally, the agency still must balance conflicting mandates and has not taken serious steps toward resolving the strain this puts on investigative employees (GAO 2020). The Secret Service remains an embattled agency, despite its efforts at reform.

The United States Secret Service has significantly improved its practices in response to high-profile scandals, but organizational cultural problems persist which make reform difficult. The agency has failed at proactively ensuring communication either within its own ranks or with other agencies. Further, it has not managed to increase its training or reduce attrition, despite considerable new funding and leadership. This need not, however, suggest that the agency is irreformable. The Secret Service may yet achieve a high degree of efficacy, especially by following the recommendations of independent organizational experts who review their work. Nevertheless, the Service remains an agency with a variety of deep shortcomings that affect its ability to complete its mission. The Service’s mission is of the utmost importance and should be treated as such by internal leadership and external overseers. Until it has resolved its political, administrative, and organizational constraints, it should not expect to see real improvement over its performance at the White House in 2014 or in Butler this year.

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