(CNN) — An independent panel of former law enforcement officials appointed under Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has recommended a complete overhaul of Secret Service leadership after reviewing the security failures of the agency that led to the near-assassination of Donald Trump in Pennsylvania this summer.

In one of the agency’s most scathing critiques to date, the panel lambasted the Secret Service for its culture of “doing more with less” and the general lack of “critical thinking” that permeated agents during and before the Butler affair. rally where Trump was shot and one attendee was killed.

“The Secret Service has become bureaucratic, complacent and static, even as risks have multiplied and technology has evolved,” the committee wrote in its report released Wednesday.

The panel – led by Mark Filip, assistant attorney general under President George W. Bush; Janet Napolitano, secretary of Homeland Security under President Barack Obama; and others – recommended that the agency’s leaders be replaced by outsiders who could change the culture of the Secret Service, including the “current sense of complacency within the service.”

“Many of the issues the Committee has identified throughout this report, particularly with respect to ‘deepest concerns,’ are ultimately attributable, directly or indirectly, to the culture of the Service. A refresh of leadership, with new perspectives, will contribute to the Service’s resolution of these issues,” the panel wrote.

The agency is currently led by Acting Director Ronald Rowe, who – although not directly named in the report’s recommendation for a change of direction – came from within the agency’s ranks and was appointed after the resignation of director Kimberly Cheatle following the near-assassination.

The report sharply criticized the agency for failing to properly secure the Butler rally site, including failing to establish line-of-sight roadblocks, failing to secure the group of buildings the shooter accessed, failing to respond not to reports that the shooter was a suspicious person over the course of a day. an hour before Trump was shot, and myriad other failures by the agency and local law enforcement.

These failures, according to the panel, were due to a lack of critical thinking among Secret Service security personnel that day.

Another recommendation from the panel included the need for the agency to shed some of its other non-security responsibilities, including its investigative work, some of which focuses on financial crimes for which the agency has been created.

“The Committee expresses extreme skepticism that many of the Service’s non-protective (investigative) missions contribute significantly to the Service’s protective capacity and is concerned that they may distract from it,” the statement said. report.

The panel also noted the Secret Service’s failure to adequately increase Trump’s security after learning of an assassination threat from a “foreign state actor” against the former president, as well as his already highly publicized as a former president and current Republican front. candidate for the 2024 election. CNN previously reported that authorities obtained intelligence about an Iranian plot to assassinate Trump in the weeks before the former president’s attempted assassination at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania in July.

Other agency failures identified in the report included the lack of experience of those leading site security for the rally that day.

“The site officer tasked by the Trump team with coordinating with the Pittsburgh field office in conducting pre-site work and planning site security for the Butler rally has only graduated from the “Service Academy that in 2020,” the panel noted, “had only been on the Trump site.” detail since 2023, and had engaged in minimal pre-site work or site security planning and certainly nothing at the level of the July 13 Butler gathering.

The panel also addressed communication issues at the Butler gathering between the Secret Service and local law enforcement officers, who reported the shooter’s suspicious movements and activities — such as watching the scene with a rangefinder — while throughout the day.

The panel noted that although the Secret Service claims to be working to create a more integrated communications system, the federal government is aware of these problems and has found solutions to these problems, which were recognized decades ago following the terrorist attacks of September 11.

While the panel praised the agents for acting to protect Trump after he was shot and quickly eliminating the shooter, the report added that “courage and selflessness alone, however honorable, are not enough to fulfill the mission of flawless protection of the secret services.”

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