Two viewer questions about event security drew from John Kiriakou a pair of observations about basic protective practice, made without reference to any theory of the killing itself.
The drone question
A viewer asked why security for outdoor events does not use drones for surveillance. Kiriakou’s reaction was immediate agreement that it was a good question, and Ted Rall called it a good one too.[1]
The assessment that followed was brief and unanimous. It is cheap. It is easy. “There’s no reason not to,” Kiriakou said.[1][2]
Rall qualified the point by wondering how much security there really was at the event, noting that the subject was not being protected like a president and that he did not blame anyone for that.[2] Kiriakou’s answer began by conceding the qualification and then setting it aside: “But still, Ted.”[2]
The building
His substantive objection concerned a specific structure. The building from which the shooter was reportedly firing, Kiriakou said, “closed down for renovation in April and was supposed to be locked up tight.”[2]
From that he drew the question he clearly regarded as unanswerable: “Did it not occur to anybody in the campus police department to just, you know, sweep the building, walk up to the roof, just make sure nobody’s up there?”[2]
The complaint is about a routine, not about a conspiracy. A closed building on the perimeter of an event is a known category of risk, and clearing it is a task requiring one officer and a staircase.
The precedent
Rall supplied the reason the failure ought to have been foreseeable, pointing out that a gunman on a roof had figured in a very recent and very prominent case at Butler, Pennsylvania, and that by now this should be standard operating procedure.[3] Kiriakou did not dispute it, and the conversation moved to the physical evidence recovered at the scene.[3]
Note on scope
Kiriakou’s remarks here are confined to protective practice. Elsewhere in the same broadcast he explicitly refused a conspiratorial reading of the killing, cutting off a man at lunch who wanted to attribute the shot to a foreign intelligence service, and he treated the marksmanship involved as unremarkable rather than professional.