Ex Secret Service Agent Reveals How To Stop Political Shooting - Kenneth Valentine

0:00Kenneth Valentine:I served full-time with three sitting U.S. presidents, so it might give you a little bit of a pucker factor. There is a lot of quiet heroism that happens all over the world. Lots of opportunities to just keep the president safe. Fear-based leadership is the biggest sin. If you're making decisions that because you're afraid, I'm going to go left because I'm afraid of what will happen if I go right, well, that's probably going to be a bad decision. So President Trump, there was an attempt on him. it almost feels like you're watching a movie from the outside, that that's something that can still happen.

0:34Kenneth Valentine:You know, I think if my wife and I had not had that conversation, if I had just kind of gone under my own wisdom here, and I think when my boss called and said, hey, they're asking for you on the president's detail, what do you think? I think I'd have said no.

0:53Kenneth Valentine, thanks for being here.

0:56Kenneth Valentine:Yes, sir. Proud to be on your show. Yeah, I'm really, really excited for this. And loads and loads to talk about. We always start our podcast off the same way. So who are you and what problem do you solve? Who am I? And you want a truthful answer, I assume. Oh, yeah. The most truthful. Who am I? Yeah, yeah. Well, my name is Ken Valentine, and I'm an American citizen and a retired Secret Service agent. And the problem that I solve is really leadership problems. And that, you know, I'm trying to take the education, the training, the experience that I have. And I really want to just help people apply it to their lives and answer the question of what now?

1:37Kenneth Valentine:Well, where am I going? What am I doing? And why? And I love helping people with that. Beautiful. OK, so let's imagine then that what you do, you are a doctor for what you do. If someone's listening to this, what symptoms they need to have to make you a good doctor? Yeah. Well, the symptoms that I would be most likely and helpful to address would be, hey, what's the best approach to solving this problem? And how do I best set myself up for success going forward? so Kenneth I've really been looking forward to this one because I feel like you're going to have a million and one stories to share with us in the audience so you've stood next to presidents during some of the world's most dangerous moments I guess can you think of a situation where everything almost went sideways and how did you stay sharp in that chaos yeah well funny you you mentioned Staying Sharp, which is the title of my second book.

2:36Kenneth Valentine:So I can't let that go. I love that title and that notion of staying sharp. And yeah, I served full time with three sitting U.S. presidents and was there for a lot of interesting times and, you know, a few situations that, you know, might give you a little bit of a pucker factor. But, you know, most of the time it wasn't, hey, we've got an incoming missile, which way do we run? You know, I mean, it was never quite that much of a screaming, you know, kind of situation, but it tended to be the little things that would get us tripped up. You know, it would be the bad weather call where the helicopter can't fly.

3:20Kenneth Valentine:And so now what do we do? You know, we always have a contingency in mind, but, you know, we probably weren't planning on using that. Or, you know, I remember we were out with President Bush and all of a sudden he's just sick, you know, he's throwing up sick. And so now what are you going to do? And so what I love to say is that preparation meets opportunity. And if you prepare well, when opportunity comes, you'd be ready for it. And I think that's true in life. That's true in the secret service it's true probably in in a lot of professions that you know you you we all have idle time um we all have time that we're going to dedicate to our craft whatever it is but if you're diligent about that and you prepare for these things ahead of time think through these things and and do the work of of setting yourself up for success success tends to follow nice when When we were doing our research, we heard you once said real heroism isn't loud.

4:28So when you look back on your whole career, can you think of any of those silent moments of bravery that you might have witnessed?

4:37Kenneth Valentine:Wow, that's a great question. And of course, I don't remember saying that, but that's a good quote. I'll take it. You know, 9-11 certainly comes to mind. And there there have been other situations where where we had to make decisions and we had to act that don't get reported in the news, that don't make the headlines. And and, you know, you you end your shift of work or your your trip, wherever it might have been to and and think back on it and think, you know, that that could have gone a different direction. And it didn't, thankfully. But there have been a few like that. And I actually had trouble hearing you when you were talking when you gave that quote.

5:23Kenneth Valentine:But there's a there is a lot of quiet heroism that happens all over the world. And, you know, whether it's, you know, feeding the poor and the homeless, I think those kind of people are are heroes in a way. And then, you know, there are men and women that do heroic acts all the time that just aren't recorded, aren't heralded, you know, foster parents and, you know, people who are taking care of the sick, the aged, the, you know, all these people that are helpless otherwise. Talk about heroic. I mean, to me, that's real heroics. But in the Secret Service, we had lots of opportunities to just keep the president safe.

6:04Kenneth Valentine:And that was the name of the game is, is you've got to keep the president breathing and living in order to do the job that they've been elected to do. And so failure to do that would, would let down an entire country who are counting on you to do that. And so there were times where, you know, you got that pucker factor up and, you know, you kind of wondered, is it going to happen today? Is it going to happen now? And we would make decisions that would take us down a path that led to us not having to engage an enemy or, you know, not having to endure, you know, some kind of hardship that we didn't want to endure.

6:46Kenneth Valentine:Because trust me, we would much rather not fight than fight. We would much rather live to fight another day and not today. So if we can avoid that, if we can divert from that kind of action, then we'll do it every time. Kenneth, is the Secret Service something that you got into your career thinking, okay, these are the steps to get me there? Or is it something where you're kind of plucked from obscurity a little bit and someone saw something in you and selected you and kind of guided you down that route? How do you end up there? Yeah, that is a unique answer for everyone, I think, who's gone into that kind of service.

7:26Kenneth Valentine:And for me, it was a little bit of maybe both of what you described. I think I had a family history of service in law enforcement. And so my dad and my uncle were FBI agents. So I had that in my bloodstream, but the Kennedy assassination in the books and all the things out there that I read and saw had an impact on me. And then the Reagan assassination attempt had a big impact on me. I was in junior high school and we got on the bus the day of the Reagan assassination attempt. And and our bus driver played the the live radio broadcast of of what was happening for us and and told us what had happened.

8:08Kenneth Valentine:And somebody on the bus cheered, you know, and I just remember that thinking, how do you cheer for, you know, someone being shot? And it just it kind of fired me up on the inside to say that that shouldn't happen. And so I followed that, you know, the Reagan thing very closely. He went to the hospital. He had surgery. His fever spiked. I mean, he almost didn't make it. And I think as I grew and matured, my my dad really pushed me away from the FBI. I mean, he he was right. He was trying to push me away from law enforcement as a career. I remember at one point he said, well, I don't want you to do what I did.

8:48Kenneth Valentine:I want you to go be a success, you know. And so that was fatherly advice trying to push me in a different direction. But it just didn't leave my system. And when, you know, when I was of age and still pursuing this stuff, I think he got behind that effort at some point. But he had worked with some Secret Service agents and really liked the culture there. There's a big difference in Secret Service culture and other federal law enforcement agencies. And so he he pushed me toward people that he liked. And I think that was that was a good push. That was pretty wise. Nice. And then that's probably a nice natural thing to get your opinion on now.

9:25So President Trump, there was an attempt on on him, which is quite shocking, I think, for the rest of the probably for you as well in America. but it almost feels like you're watching a movie from the outside, that that's something that can still happen. So I imagine you're kind of nothing to do with that world anymore, but looking at that from the outside, what do you think went wrong in a way that that's still something that's possible in the modern world?

9:53Kenneth Valentine:Yeah, I tell you, that really made me angry because that, you know, there's nothing else you can say about that except that's an utter failure. Um, they, they managed to keep him alive, but it really wasn't their effort that kept him alive so much as, as, you know, a little wind or, you know, an unlucky shot by the guy. I mean, the, the, the, all the, all the preparation failed that day. And, and so I, I remember the day very well because I was in my mother's hospital room. She was about to have open heart surgery. And, and when I started getting messages on my phone, text messages saying, did you see that?

10:32Kenneth Valentine:Did you see that I really didn't believe that it was real. And so I've been criticized because I, I've, I've said publicly, my next thing was to, to take the TV away from the other person in the hospital room and turn it to a news channel and see if it's, if that's what they're reporting, because I just didn't trust the internet at that point for some reason. And I know that's almost counterintuitive because that's where most people get their, their information now, but I'm still kind of old school. And I was like, if it's not on a major news thing, I'm just not sure if I trust that still. And, and so I turned it to a news station.

11:09Kenneth Valentine:Sure enough, that's what, you know, it was real. There was video. I assumed that I assumed that it was a handgun from someone in the crowd and that they, you know, somehow someone with a handgun had slipped through the crowd and got a closeup shot. I mean, not in my wildest dreams did I imagine that, you know, a long range shooter had gotten a shot off at, at, at the former president. And so I've been very critical of the secret service of my former friend, you know, the director that, that, you know, wanted to assign blame possibly to anyone except the secret service. But in my opinion, when you've been given the mission and the privilege and the responsibility for keeping someone safe and they leave the stage bleeding from a gunshot wound and you failed, I mean, that that is just that's bedrock fact and truth right there that that you failed in that mission to keep them safe because now they're bleeding from a gunshot wound that should have never happened.

12:08Kenneth Valentine:And, you know, my goodness, and I've I've been very public and vocal about this. I can come up with about seven ways to have prevented that, that, that any secret service agent who's being diligent and following the protocol would have come up with that, that would have, could have, should have prevented that. And we should never have seen that. I think this would be fascinating for the, for the listeners. So just to see how your mind works. So how would, if you, if you were there when that happened or pre that, how would, how would you have prevented the assassination on Donald Trump? Yeah. Well, like I said, I came up with about seven ways that I think we could have done it.

12:48Kenneth Valentine:And I do want to be clear that the team that was with Trump, the traveling shift, we call them the shift that was with President Trump, they did a phenomenal job reacting. But, you know, our job once bullets are flying is to cover and evacuate. And they did a great job. They did a great job of covering especially. The evacuation was hampered because the stage was built with an approved, you know, handrail going downstairs. Well, it's only wide enough for one person. So, you know, they they're trying to leave the stage and they come up upon this, you know, approved, you know, OSHA standards approved thing.

13:32Kenneth Valentine:And it's like, no, that that should have been out of there. They should have had a nice wide stairwell to go down to get to the ground. And so you see you saw people jumping off the stage because there wasn't room for everyone to go down the stairs. They had to go one at a time. So that was a bit of a mess, but lesson learned, hopefully. but the prevention aspect is what you asked about Jack and and that's the most important part and that's the part we failed at and so hey we put we we get very creative uh when when the staff says we're going to build a stage right here in this field and it's going to be this high and we're going to put a podium on there and it's going to be this wide well then we start finding ways to prevent a shooter from being able to take a shot at that.

14:17Kenneth Valentine:And so you can have things that are close up that would help prevent that shot from being taken and then things far away. But in between, you've got a perimeter. And inside that perimeter, everyone has got to be clean. Everyone's got to go through a magnetometer. Everyone's got to be thoroughly, you know, vetted from being able to bring in weapons. And it seemed to me like there wasn't much of a of a perimeter established there. Uh, still not sure if he was inside or outside, whatever perimeter they seem to have established, but the, my, I can tell you my initial assessment was since we had counter sniper secret service, counter sniper, uh, officers on rooftops that they had done a full advance that they had a robust perimeter and then a buffer outside that perimeter that no one was allowed to get in and that, that they're looking way beyond the building where the shooter actually got the shots off because that should have been out of play.

15:16Kenneth Valentine:It should have, there should have been allowed no access to that area. That should have been a, a kind of like a no fly zone, you know, no pedestrians in there, no, no people in there should have all been law enforcement. You know, in addition to a robust perimeter, an enforced perimeter and a buffer zone. Look, there are plenty of times, plenty of events where we didn't, we had long range threats that we could not adequately neutralize without bringing in, you know, 50 sniper teams. And we just, we don't have 50 sniper teams. So, so what do you do? You get very creative. We'll park a school bus on that side.

15:58Kenneth Valentine:We'll put boxes on top of that. We'll put an American flag, you know, a big, you know, or a big, you know, some kind of political flag up there, move the stands and put people there as, as barriers, because what you're trying to do is not just stop someone from shooting, but so we really want to stop someone from getting a targeted shot off. And, and this kid was able to crawl onto a rooftop within an easy shot from our protectee, unbothered at all. You know, I mean, nobody even approached him, confronted him, searched him, nothing. And then he was able to get a targeted shot off. I mean, he did his very best.

16:40Kenneth Valentine:No doubt he had some kind of scope on that rifle and he was aiming at Trump's head. The president turned his head at just the right moment and escaped serious injury or death. But he was able to target that shot and that should never ever happen and what he should have been looking at was the back of a of a of a box truck container or a flag so that maybe you can get off shots but they're not targeted you know you you spray and pray uh and we can we can deal with you then but but not a targeted shot and that's what he got and it's really unacceptable i find it so fascinating to to listen to kenneth um it got me thinking in in 2025 a lot of people are outsourcing their thinking to ai so what what i heard you thinking about there was like critical thinking and thinking outside of the box so when you were part of the the secret service how how did you apply critical thinking on a daily basis to to kind of come up with these ideas well it critical thinking is critical, right?

17:47Kenneth Valentine:I mean, it is so integral and important to what we do. And, you know, the Secret Service, just like any other, I think, business organization or a company, there's a ratcheting up kind of system. And so you start at the very bottom, tagging along with senior agents, learning your craft, seeing things you've never seen before, and then having to make decisions about things that you've never even thought of before. And you go through a training academy that that tries to get you thinking along those lines. But you can't you can't read in a book how to protect the president at every venue. You know, I mean, it just doesn't work that way.

18:35Kenneth Valentine:They're there. Every single one of them is different. And so that critical thinking comes with experience. I think the requirement is there. The scenarios are going to change. But once you've developed the ability to think, well, here's my goal. How do I accomplish that in this environment? I'll never forget the first time I heard someone use the term environmental manipulations. And that's what we're doing. We're changing the environment to take away the advantage from the bad guys and give it to us. And that critical thinking is is developed, I think, you know, you've all we've all got the muscle in our in our system, but it gets developed over time and experience.

19:19Kenneth Valentine:And so I would say and we you start with kind of the basics of of an advance. And if, you know, the president's going to London, we send an advance team. And if you get included in that advance team because you've risen to that level, even then you're going to start with the simplest advance, you know, the simplest part of that advance that we have and build your way up to be in the advance agent in charge of that advance team. And that agent should have a lot of tools in their toolbox from, you know, critical thought processes and, you know, really should be on their game as far as, you know, what no curveball should be, you know, raise eyebrows at that point because you've been through enough to know that we can get this done.

20:10Kenneth Valentine:And we just have to be creative about it. We have to to do the environmental manipulations. We need to get people on board with with what we're thinking and make the changes necessary so that so that the story at the end of the day is not about a shooter getting a shot off at the president. But it's about, you know, what what these two countries are trying to do together or what the you know, what the president wanted to do. We always wanted the story to be about the president and not about us. And so we were always trying to set it up to where it just looked like it was easy. So I've done a lot of traveling around the US and I was I'm always quite struck by the different states almost feel like different countries.

20:55Right. So California feels very different than Texas. It feels like you're in a totally different country, which obviously for me, living on a little island in Europe, it can be quite strange. And what I'm struck by is having a president, so a leader of the entire country, almost feels like an impossible job to really kind of unite all those different states together. So what have you learned about what can be implemented to become a leader of all those different states, even when they've got kind of opposing ideas or there's kind of friction points? Yeah, well, I think you're right.

21:30Kenneth Valentine:I mean, you really hit the nail on the head. And and even going back to our country's founding, I don't I think the you know, as much as we would love to have 100 percent agreement on things, you're just never going to have that. And so I think they the the they've used that as a tool for good in some ways. I mean, you try to get a law passed through the U.S. Congress, it's nearly impossible. And it was designed to be nearly impossible because you brought in people from vastly different parts of the country. Even within a state, you might represent a more agricultural group of people versus an urban group of people in a city.

22:14Kenneth Valentine:And so, yeah, you have competing interests. You have different goals. I worked on Capitol Hill as a as a fellowship kind of thing. And and man, I was blown away at how complex all of that really is. And so I my assumption going in was this is like chess. You know, this is a this is a chess match. And I walked away saying this is a chess match in 3D. I mean, because they're thinking about things that that, you know, most people just don't think about. They're having to think three degrees deep on what they're doing on the surface. And so, you know, you asked about how do you how do you maybe garner that consensus?

22:58Kenneth Valentine:How do you, you know, take into account such diversity of thought and and all of that? And my answer to that is that I think in a micro way, we we do the same thing. I have five kids. I'm trying to lead a family that includes my my partner, best friend, my wife. And then these five kids are all so different. And what we have decided and what I kind of gained, even from the Secret Service, is that direction beats perfection. And so I that's what I said in my first book. I believe that with all my heart. In fact, I kind of need that to be true because I am not perfect and nothing that I've ever done was perfect.

23:43Kenneth Valentine:I said one time people got on to me a little bit. I said, even the best Secret Service advance is not perfect. And I, well, you can't say that. I'm like, no, that's the truth. I mean, there's no advance that we ever did that we came back and did a, you know, we do a hot wash afterwards and say, nope, we couldn't have done any better. You know, you can always do better. And so I, you know, I think about a president, what an impossible job to try to lead a consensus of people across time and space and such vastly different people groups across this country. And, you know, if I was the president, I would I would hope that that is true, that it is about direction and not perfection.

24:25Kenneth Valentine:And if you stop and try to nitpick and be perfect or worry about perfection, it's going to slow you down. And so I prefer to say, you know, head up, look towards your goal and move in that direction. And as long as you stay moving, as long as you know your goal and know why you're headed in that direction, then let the let the crap of life flow by and don't worry about it. You know, you just keep moving in that direction. Just keep taking those steps forward. And and I think that gets you to, you know, where you set out to be in the first place. Now, if you've got a terrible goal, that's your problem.

25:03Kenneth Valentine:But I think, you know, certainly politicians and dads and, you know, people who lead companies and all this, you know, perfection is the goal, but direction is the test. I really like that. Direction, not perfection. I'm going to be sharing that with my wife. I've got four children, so I'm catching you up. Oh, strong. I'm trying my best. yeah um what what do you think are the i mean you must have had this so much at barbecues and dinners and all sorts of what do you think are the top myths that come up that you're constantly saying it doesn't quite work like that behind closed doors uh you mean within the secret service yeah you know the the the greatest myth is that uh that the secret service some kind of spy agency and, um, you know, that we're, we're, we're doing any kind of intelligence work.

25:55Kenneth Valentine:And I, and I don't want to say we're not intelligent, but intelligence is, is very different. And the secret service, uh, the American secret service is just a knuckle dragon law enforcement agency. And I love it. I mean, that's, that's what I signed up for. I, um, the, the, the closest, the only part of our job that was intelligence based was the consuming of intelligence. You know, we would take it, but we didn't gather it. You know, we're just trying to get a job done. And we lock up bad guys within the U.S. for financial crime violations or, you know, threatening the president. But our, you know, and then our bigger mission is protecting those presidents.

26:38Kenneth Valentine:But a lot of people assume or think that it's some kind of spy agency and they confuse the CIA with the Secret Service or FBI. And it's like, no, we're just a little bitty protection agency that also does criminal investigations. And so that's the biggest, I guess, myth is that we're some sort of intel agency. You must have seen so many things throughout your career. Are there anything from a leadership standpoint that have just completely changed when it comes to your viewpoint or your opinion that you once used to believe something and then it's kind of switched the other way? You know, I saw a lot of terrific leadership within the Secret Service and could point out and name some great leaders that I had over the years.

27:25And, you know, each leader,