You won’t believe who else thinks something was amiss with the security plan at the White House Correspondents Association dinner: the would-be assassin, Cole Allen.
“What the hell is the Secret Service doing?” Allen wrote in a postscript to a manifesto that he sent to family members minutes before he tried to bumrush the show at the Washington Hilton on Saturday night.
ICYMI
Allen was reportedly able to check into the hotel on Friday with a shotgun, handgun and several knives in his luggage, and able to walk about freely as the hotel filled up with guests for the WHCA dinner, and related pre-parties hosted by media conglomerates.
“I expected security cameras at every bend, bugged hotel rooms, armed agents every 10 feet, metal detectors out the wazoo. What I got (who knows, maybe they’re pranking me!) is nothing,” Allen wrote, listing:
“No damn security.
“Not in transport.
“Not in the hotel.
“Not in the event.”
“The one thing that I immediately noticed walking into the hotel is the sense of arrogance. I walk in with multiple weapons, and not a single person there considers the possibility that I could be a threat,” Allen wrote.
The focus of the security was on what was going on outside the venue, “on protestors and current arrivals, because apparently no one thought about what happens if someone checks in the day before,” Allen wrote.
“This level of incompetence is insane, and I very sincerely hope it’s corrected by the time this country gets actually competent leadership again,” Allen wrote.
“Like, if I was an Iranian agent, instead of an American citizen, I could have brought a damn Ma Deuce in here, and no one would have noticed shit. Actually insane.”
“Ma Deuce” is slang for a Browning M2H .50 caliber heavy machine gun, which, yeah, they would have noticed him bringing in am 80-pound machine gun, but, his point is made.
An Iranian agent would have quietly smuggled in enough explosives to blow the Washington Hilton into the next millennium.
Allen, for his part, has a degree in mechanical engineering from Caltech, one of the top universities in the country, so, we’re just damn lucky he didn’t pack his suitcase with bomb-making materials, with the president, VP and the rest of the line of succession all under the same roof.
Allen’s undoing here, as it turns out, was overestimating the capabilities of the Secret Service.