Why couldn't security stop a shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner?

0:00Carol Leonnig:Support for Here and Now Anytime comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at mathworks.com.

0:16John Wesley Boyd Jr.:WBUR Podcasts. Boston.

0:20Carol Leonnig:It was very, very difficult for anybody to move or do anything to protect themselves other than dive under tables in an enormous room.

0:30Ben Riensche:How was a gunman able to breach a security checkpoint at the White House Correspondents' Dinner?

0:43Ben Riensche:It's Monday, April 27th, and this is Here and Now Anytime from NPR and WBUR Boston. I'm Chico Teuri. Today on the show, the Supreme Court hears a case about Monsanto's powerful weed killer Roundup, which some health experts claim causes cancer.

1:02John Wesley Boyd Jr.:I don't think there's been enough research and development in the harmful causes of what this chemical does to the human beings in the long run.

1:10Ben Riensche:And a provision that allows the government to spy on terrorism suspects expires this week. Lawmakers are split on whether to extend it. But first, the suspect in the White House Correspondents' Dinner shooting was arraigned today. Authorities say 31-year-old Cole Allen was armed with a shotgun, handgun, and several knives when he charged through a security checkpoint before he was stopped and arrested. One Secret Service agent was shot and not seriously injured. Today, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles is convening a security meeting about the shooting. Carol Lennig is a senior investigative reporter with MSNOW and shares the latest with Scott Tong.

1:52John Wesley Boyd Jr.:What do we know about the level of security Saturday night at the Washington Hilton?

1:57Carol Leonnig:You know, I spoke with a lot of former and current Secret Service agents late Saturday night after the event when we were, you know, subjected to shotgun fire outside the ballroom door and evacuated. And here are the things they pointed out to me. There's a playbook, if you will, for how to work security at the Hilton. And it hasn't changed a lot over the years. It was certainly heightened for this event at the Hilton in some small ways. But in many ways, it is identical to other presidential visits for White House correspondence dinners. And the threat climate is actually a lot higher. And Secret Service agents are concerned about that.

2:37Carol Leonnig:Three other things they were really worried about. One, that somebody was able to bums rush a magnetometer, the final screening checkpoint before you actually get into the ballroom. and that that checkpoint seemed to be a little complacent, that people who worked that were ready to kind of go home for the night and shut down that magnetometer. The dinner had started, and he was able to get through, which is really quite shocking. The second thing they were really worried about was whether or not the Hilton is actually kind of a death trap, because if shooting had broken out, it was very, very difficult for anybody to move or do anything to protect themselves other than dive under tables in an enormous room.

3:20Carol Leonnig:And the third thing was something I witnessed myself in that room, which was the evacuation of President Trump and the vice president was rather rapid. But the evacuation of many cabinet level officials and other people who get Secret Service protection that are part of the lines of succession in our government was awkward. It was awkward and clambering. You know, agents were climbing over the bodies of people on the floor. They were climbing like spiders, sometimes over desks. I'm sorry, over tables and chairs. And that huge room, they couldn't get to their people very quickly. Kash Patel, FBI director, was at a table next to me.

4:02Carol Leonnig:And he and I were talking after the apparent shooter had been subdued. And he wasn't taken out of the room. I think I left the room before he did.

4:14John Wesley Boyd Jr.:Well, Carol, I mean, a lot of us in Washington have been to events in that same exact ballroom. And for this event, there were so many people. Fundamentally, do the security pros tell you it was just too crowded? There are too many people in one space.

4:30Carol Leonnig:I think it's one of the things that's going to be all of the three things I mentioned to you, but that one, too, is going to be part of what's called a mission assurance review. The Secret Service typically launches one of these after an assassination attempt, which this is starting to look like it is an attempt to assassinate administration leaders and possibly Trump. and they begin that review with an idea of what did we do well what did we do poorly what do we need to change one way or the other just because it's not safe now remember the secret services number one goal is not protecting reporters at the white house correspondence dinner that is not their job but their job is protecting you know the president the vice president the line of succession.

5:18Yeah.

5:18John Wesley Boyd Jr.:Now, the suspect we're learning wrote in a note that he checked in for a room at the Hilton with weapons and that he wrote, quote, this level of incompetence is insane. His words, defenders of the security plan, or they say the priority was the ballroom itself inside a huge hotel, that it was multi-layered. Can you tell us more about folks who are defending how security worked. Yeah.

5:44Carol Leonnig:Director Sean Curran was speaking to reporters Saturday night and I was reporting on this in a ball gown. But he was pretty emphatic, like praising the Secret Service officer, you know, who took a shot in his bulletproof vest and tried to draw down on the suspect as was running away, the quick reaction and praised, you know, the the what he called the multilayered protective plan. Well, that is true. All of those things are true. That praise is worthwhile. But the problem is this was very close, too close for comfort for most Secret Service officials. That's something he didn't say. But I would imagine he feels that, too.

6:30Carol Leonnig:And the and and the perimeter, the multi-layers, the rings of protection around the president and other top administration officials, that's part of every event. You want those multiple layers to work successively so they never get to the last layer. Now, the last layer for Donald Trump was his security detail and the Secret Service agents at the doors of the ballroom. Those were manned slash guarded by agents every single door. So it's possible a guy with a shotgun could have shot them and gotten in.

7:08John Wesley Boyd Jr.:That's Carol Lennick of MS Now. Carol, thank you.

7:11Carol Leonnig:Of course.

7:14Ben Riensche:Coming up next, the Supreme Court hears a case in which people claim a weed killer causes cancer. That's after the break.

7:30John Wesley Boyd Jr.:Hi, I'm Erica Henningsen, and in The Midnight Rebellion, I play Dr. Elizabeth Green, a brilliant physicist who is not afraid to speak her mind. She is passionate, fierce, and she is a mom who cares deeply for her family. I can't wait for you to hear her story.

7:47Carol Leonnig:Listen to The Midnight Rebellion from WBUR, wherever you get your podcasts.

8:01Ben Riensche:The agrochemical company Monsanto is at the Supreme Court today. A plaintiff argues the main ingredient in the world's most used weed killer Roundup caused his cancer. And that Monsanto failed to warn him. People have sued Monsanto, arguing the product caused their cancer, and many have won. But tens of thousands are still pending, mostly in state courts. Today, the company is arguing that federal law preempts state laws. and invalidates the state cases that are still alive. In a bit, we'll hear from a farmer critical of Roundup's key ingredient called glyphosate. But first, let's hear from a farmer in favor of it.

8:39Ben Riensche:Ben Rinshi grows corn, soy, and wheat at the Blue Diamond Farming Company in Iowa. He's a volunteer member at an advisory panel to Crop Life America, which represents pesticide makers. Here's his conversation with Scott.

8:54John Wesley Boyd Jr.:Roundup's main chemical is glyphosate. I understand you use glyphosate, but not Monsanto's Roundup branded product. What is the benefit of using it? For me, as a farmer, I'm always worried about making sure everybody gets plenty to eat. To grow crops, we have to kill weeds. And weeds aren't an inconvenience like in your lawn where you have a few unsightly dandelions or crabgrass. Weeds can smother my crops out. They must be taken out of the crop. And you can do that by one of two ways. You can do it with pesticide or you can do it by moving the soil, tillage. Well, Roundup for me has allowed a cropping system where we don't have to disturb the soil in the highest rainfall months of the year.

9:41John Wesley Boyd Jr.:We are fed as a species by a very thin layer of topsoil that raises our crops. and opening that up to erosion so it can wash or blow away is kind of the same setup as another dust bowl. So if you can go out and spray weeds and have them be killed because of glyphosate, you're not putting the fragile topsoil that took eons to create a risk. If you had to stop using glyphosate, if it were taken off the market, what would that mean for you, for your farm? without pesticide. You know, you've got to ask yourself, how are you going to feed the world next year if you don't have pesticides? What is there out there?

10:24John Wesley Boyd Jr.:A month's extra food in the world? Sure. Six months? No. In the northern southern hemisphere, we've got to raise a crop every few months or someone starts going hungry. You know, this court case, as I understand it, singles out glyphosate as a carcinogen, that people weren't warned that it could be a carcinogen. And this raises some concerns for me because, you know, first they came for glyphosate, then they'll come for other chemicals we'll use. My alternative, if I don't have glyphosate, is I use a host of other chemicals and use higher rates of them. Well, as you know, more than 100 ,000 cases have been filed against Monsanto, which makes Roundup.

11:05John Wesley Boyd Jr.:One of the plaintiffs is D. Wayne Johnson. He's a former school groundskeeper in the Bay Area of California. and he was awarded tens of millions of dollars when a jury there found that Monsanto failed to warn him about the cancer risks. Let's listen to Johnson talking to CBS News.

11:23Ben Riensche:Oh, you're going to get it on you. You're going to get it on your skin. You know what I mean? It was never like, oh, I didn't even get any on me today.

11:30John Wesley Boyd Jr.:Do you then worry about the health risk to farmers like you? Well, whenever you handle a substance, a pesticide, you know, we use protective gear. We use gloves. We use goggles. We use an apron to put it on. But I've been handling it for over 50 years. And as much as my heart goes out to the people that have contracted non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, there's nothing in the case that I've seen that ties the glyphosate scientifically to these people getting cancer. I don't know the other lifestyle factors. The case is about they were failed to be warned. The EPA has tested glyphosate and used at the label rates.

12:12John Wesley Boyd Jr.:They wouldn't tell you that it's non-carcinogenic. So anyway, it's just smells and feels to me like this is about trial lawyers. It's a jackpot for them to get sympathetic juries to give large cash awards that they can dip into. Well, on the cancer question, we should note that the EPA a few years ago was required by a federal circuit appeals court to redo its carcinogen assessment on this cancer question, and that another body, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, part of the World Health Organization, found glyphosate is probably carcinogenic. So the studies, you know, continue to go.

12:51The question for you is, what do you imagine the implications to be if Monsanto

12:56John Wesley Boyd Jr.:loses this case and suddenly is still faced with all these state cases. Well, it's puzzling to me why the case is only against Bayer or, you know, the successor owner of Monsanto, because this has been post-patent since 2000. And so there's dozens of companies that produce glyphosate. Why is the suit only against Bayer? Are they just singling him out because they thought Bayer had the largest checkbook? And so when do lawyers extrapolate this out to every other chemical company and every other pesticide I use and need to produce the food. I worry that the lawsuit is like a virus and it spreads.

13:37John Wesley Boyd Jr.:We've been talking to Ben Reenshi, owner and manager of the Blue Diamond Farming Company in Iowa. Ben, thanks for taking the time.

13:45Ben Riensche:You're welcome. Now, let's hear from a farmer against the use of glyphosate. John Wesley Boyd Jr. is a farmer in Baskerville, Virginia. He's also the president of the National Black Farmers Association, which has sued Monsanto in the past. And while Boyd Jr. is not involved in today's Supreme Court case, he's still very unhappy about the product.

14:06John Wesley Boyd Jr.:I think that for the monies that farmers like myself have paid into the technology of the seed and chemicals, that they can come up with something more used-friendly for the soil and for human consumption. Do you have concerns about the health and medical implications of Roundup, of the main ingredient, glyphosate? I do, you know, for the long run. I don't think there's been enough research and development about the harmful causes of what this chemical does and human consumption to the human beings in the long run. So I'm very concerned about that. And these companies have managed to buy up so much companies in the past, Delta Pond and others.

14:53John Wesley Boyd Jr.:And they've managed to buy up all of the conventional type seed outlets that farmers like myself would much prefer to use. And that's what happened. So there's no conventional seed and farmers had to convert to use only what was readily available, which is their seed and their chemical. And that's something I've been totally opposed to. We should note that an organization called the International Agency for Research on Cancer, IARC, which is part of the World Health Organization, has found that glyphosate is a likely carcinogen. The U.S. EPA has found that it is not likely a carcinogen, though it has been told to go back and redo its scientific questioning on this.

15:34John Wesley Boyd Jr.:Do you use glyphosate yourself? Yes, I have used it. And I don't like to use the chemical. But to answer your question, yes, every farmer that produces corn, wheat, and soybean used or have used glyphosate. Yeah, and just if you can help me understand that here, is it that because you need to kill weeds, this is the only available product kind of out there? There aren't enough alternatives to do what you need to do? That is correct, and that's what these companies have done. They've used the courts to keep other companies out. They've used Congress and Capitol Hill and the high-powered lobbyists to defeat people like myself.

16:17John Wesley Boyd Jr.:And people don't understand when I sell my corn, wheat, and soybeans, when you come into the grain elevator, they don't say, does this commodity contain Gloucester-Fate or not? They put it into a bin and it's used for everything from cooking oil to cornflakes, everything that you buy in a supermarket. And that's why I was trying to get labeling. So at least American people would have a choice in buying an item that contained Glossifate in it. And we can't even get that done. So you mean you have pushed for a safety risk label for consumers to see when they're shopping? That is correct. And it has failed multiple times.