Secret Service DEI/DIE: What did the Post know and when did they know it?

The Washington Post lets slip that it sat upon whistleblowers' complaints about Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle, who resigned today, until after the President had been shot.

Via @LionBlogosphere on Twitter, I see that the Washington Post reports today:

Secret Service Director Cheatle resigns in aftermath of Trump rally shooting

By Maria Sacchetti, Carol D. Leonnig, Nick Miroff and Shayna Jacobs

Updated July 23, 2024 at 5:00 p.m. EDT|Published July 23, 2024 at 10:41 a.m.

But way down in the 36th paragraph, we learn:

When Biden named Cheatle as his Secret Service director in 2022, some inside the agency opposed her appointment, according to a half-dozen written complaints that Secret Service agents sent to The Post around that time and in the two years since.

Now that’s interesting. Did the Post notify its readers?

The linked Washington Post article from the day of her appointment, however, doesn’t mention the whistleblowers’ complaints. Interestingly, its URL reads:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/24/biden-first-woman-secret-service/

So, apparently the Post’s initial spin was to emphasize DEI: finally, a woman has been appointed director of the Secret Service!

But at some point it was remembered that Obama had hired Julia A. Pierson in 2013 for the same job and fired her in 2014 after a couple of security lapses involving Obama’s safety. (Under various euphemisms, DEI has been going on for a long time.)

So, the 2022 Post headline now reads:

Biden names second woman to head the Secret Service

Still a DEI spin, just a more ho-hum one.

The Post continues on today:

In the complaints, her critics pointed to Cheatle’s lack of experience working in a senior post on a presidential protection detail — considered by many to be the pinnacle of agency service — and saying later in her tenure that she was excessively focused on hiring and promoting more women agents.

Cheatle had served on Vice President Biden’s security detail back in the day, so Joe knew her and evidently thought well of her, perhaps more so than did her superiors, who had denied her a top tier job in the President’s detail.

Presidents are entitled to pick their own Secret Service directors. After all, the President has, literally, the most skin in the game.

Still, I was reminded of the utility to the Big Guy of having someone in that dual protective/investigative role who had less earned the directorship through overwhelming competence than someone who owes Joe a favor for promoting her over her head … when I read a 2023 Washington Post article that mentions Cheatle:

Secret Service closes White House cocaine probe without suspect

Sure, it could have been any one of the countless anonymous Deputy Undersecretaries who brought the bag of cocaine into the White House.

But to then lose his stash? That sounds like a very special White House denizen. As Lady Bracknell would have said: “To bring cocaine into the White House, Hunter, may be regarded as malfeasance; to lose it looks like carelessness.”

… “Someone left cocaine in one of the most secure buildings on the planet, and the Secret Service quickly determined it was impossible to find the culprit, even though a known cocaine addict lives there,” [Senator Tom] Cotton said in a statement. …

Cotton recently wrote Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle asking for more information on the agency’s security procedures for the White House. “If the White House complex is not secure, Congress needs to know the details, as well as your plan to correct any security flaws,” Cotton wrote.

You can see the advantages to a canny old politician like Joe Biden of the Diversity frenzy of the early 2020s: you can appoint people who wouldn’t get the job unless they are indebted to you, and, as long as they have some DEI Pokemon Points, the Washington Post isn’t going to be so sexist or racist as to question your choice.

Did the Washington Post call the public’s attention to these whistleblowers concerns about Cheatle’s competence and her prioritizing of diversity? Or did it hush up the complaints delivered to it?

I review the evidence in the paywalled latter half of my post.