The Secret Service is plagued by “deep flaws” and “systemic issues” with its security protocols — and needs “fundamental reform” or there will be more assassination attempts like the one against former President Donald Trump in July, an independent review panel warned in a scathing report made public Thursday.

“The Secret Service does not perform at the elite levels needed to discharge its critical mission,” the four-member panel wrote in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that accompanied the report, describing the agency as “bureaucratic, complacent, and static even though risks have multiplied and technology has evolved.”

The group had been tasked by President Biden with examining the July 13 attempt on Trump’s life during a campaign rally in Butler, Pa. The 52-page report was sent to Mayorkas Tuesday.

“The Secret Service as an agency requires fundamental reform to carry out its mission,” the letter to Mayorkas concluded. “Without that reform, the Independent Review Panel believes another Butler can and will happen again.”

The report highlighted six key issues with the security strategy for the Butler rally, many of which have been flagged by other reviews of the protective agency’s shortcomings. 

First was the failure to secure the AGR building, where gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, managed to climb up on the roof and squeeze off eight shots at Trump, 78, as he addressed supporters.

Second, the Secret Service failed to address line-of-sight concerns the building posed. When Trump returned to Butler for a second rally Oct. 5, the agency stationed semi-trailers between the stage and some of the adjacent buildings to deter would-be assassins.

The third issue was a series of communication snafus, caused in part by the “split structure” of having two command posts at the rally, one for Secret Service and one for local law enforcement. Another issue was the “chaotic mixture” of communication methods, which included cell phones, emails, text messages and radios.

The panel also criticitzed the Secret Service for both failing to “encounter Crooks, despite him being first spotted … more than ninety minutes before he began shooting” and failing to notify the former president’s security detail about the suspicious person either before Trump took the stage or when Crooks ascended the AGR building’s roof.

Finally the Secret Service’s Counter Unmanned Aerial System was criticized for failing to detect that Crooks had deployed a drone hours prior to the rally.

The independent panel also slammed the site agent tasked with coordinating security work for the rally with the local Pittsburgh field office. The agent had graduated from the Secret Service’s training academy in 2020 and only joined Trump’s detail last year.

“[That agent] had engaged in minimal previous site advance work or site security planning and certainly nothing to the level of the July 13 Butler rally,” the report noted.

“This inexperience may have been exacerbated by the timing of the agent’s arrival in the Service, which coincided with the peak years of COVID with attendant restrictions and reduced operational tempo in the Service.”

In addition to the specific failures on July 13, the panel determined that the Secret Service suffered from nine deeper issues.

Throughout its report, the panel underscored that the Secret Service has a “zero-fail mission” and was unsparing in its criticism of the protective service, painting a picture of an organization that struggles with self-reflection.

“July 13 represents a historic security failure by the Secret Service which almost led to the death of a former president and current nominee and did lead to the death of a rally attendee,” the report stressed.

“Even a superficial level of reflection should yield insights regarding lapses and potential remediations. But many personnel struggled to identify meaningful examples of either type of observation — what went wrong and what could be done better in the future to prevent a similar tragedy from reoccurring.”

The panel laid out over a dozen different recommendations to bolster the Secret Service including establishing an integrated communications structure with a single command post at major events

All outdoor events should be “observed by overhead technology” and have line-of-sight concerns addressed.

The panel also called for much more robust training on “speaking up” about problems as well as re-training on extraction methods and a clearer policy detailing chain of command during event prep.

The report also suggested the Secret Service establish a “new leadership team with significant experience outside the Service,” improve its auditing system and ensure that its resource allocation for protectees is risk-based rather than overly “reliant on a protectee’s title.”

The Secret Service vowed to “carefully examine the report and recommendations,” but underscored that it is already undergoing reforms to ensure a repeat of the Butler, Pa. rally doesn’t happen again.

“We are not waiting to act. We have already significantly improved our readiness, operational and organizational communications and implemented enhanced protective operations for the former president and other protectees,” acting director Ronald Rowe said in a statement.

Some of those changes are publicly known, such as the decision to erect bullet-proof glass in from of Trump’s podium during outdoor rallies. The protective agency claimed there have been additional changes under the hood as well, such as working to better integrate with local law enforcement.

“I am immensely proud of the dedicated US Secret Service workforce,” Rowe added.

Mayorkas echoed much of that in his response to the report and said that the DHS will take action to reform the Secret Service.

“These actions will be responsive not only to the security failures that led to the July 13, 2024 assassination attempt but, importantly, to what the Independent Review Panel describes as systemic and foundational issues that underlie those failures,” he said in a statement.

The Butler shooting killed rallygoer Corey Comperatore and wounded Trump and two other spectators, James Copenhaver and David Dutch. Thursday’s report was dedicated to Comperatore, Copenhaver and Dutch as well as their families “in the hope that no one again suffers the tragedies you have endured.”

The panel included former George W. Bush administration deputy attorney general Mark Filip; Janet Napolitano, the former Homeland Security secretary under Barack Obama; Bush administration assistant for homeland security and counterterrorism Frances Fragos Townsend, and David Mitchell, a veteran of more than five decades in law enforcement in Maryland and Delaware.

There are numerous other reviews underway of the Secret Service’s failures as well as the July 13 attack, including by a bipartisan House task force, multiple congressional committees, the FBI and the Secret Service itself.