When Bill Gage heard that a shooter tried to barge into the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and open fire inside the ballroom, one of his first thoughts was: That could have been me.
Gage was a Secret Service agent for 12 years, including as a special agent in its Washington, D.C., field office, and worked at the very same event multiple times. Much of what Gage saw Saturday night reminded him of the best of the Secret Service, including the officer who was shot while trying to stop the would-be assassin from reaching President Donald Trump.
But America’s growing political violence problem has made the Secret Service’s job much harder, Gage told me. Trump “is the most threatened president in U.S. history,” Gage said, and “the pressure is almost unbearable for a lot of agents, because they know what’s at stake.”
I asked Gage to explain what went right and wrong with security at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, what changes should be made if the event is rescheduled, as Trump has said he wants, what morale is like inside the Secret Service, and how much safer the new White House ballroom would really be. His responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length.
