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What to know about the Secret Service's Counter Sniper Team
WASHINGTON (AP) — A U.S. Secret Service sniper killed the would-be assassin of former President Donald Trump in a split-second decision, taking out the man perched on an adjacent rooftop.
Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle has publicly praised the sniper’s quick work on Saturday. But the Counter Sniper Team is now subject to a review by the Office of the Inspector General, which aims to determine how well the team is “prepared to respond to threats at events.”
The Secret Service was already subject to a more general probe from the Inspector General as well as congressional subpoenas regarding the shooting at the Trump campaign rally, in what has become the most intense scrutiny the agency has faced since President Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981.
Here’s what to know about the agency’s elite sniper group.
Sniper team is ‘very elite and difficult to get into’
The Counter Sniper Team was established in 1971. It provides intelligence and observations of potential threats from far away in an effort to protect U.S. presidents, vice presidents, first ladies and others, according to a 2020 report by the Government Accountability Office on federal tactical teams.
Those who join the team have already worked for the Secret Service for at least two years, according to the agency’s website. They must undergo 11 weeks of counter sniper selection and basic training, along with a color vision test. Counter snipers must have excellent eyesight and hearing.
“It’s very sought after, it’s very elite and difficult to get into,” Pete Piraino, who spent 23 years with the Secret Service, including five years in the presidential protective division, told The Associated Press on Thursday.
They typically work in pairs
The counter snipers are on the look out for threats from far away, even beyond the established security perimeter, said Piraino, who is now vice provost for academics and a criminal justice professor at Tiffin University in Ohio. They often work outdoors, focusing on rooftops and the windows of surrounding buildings.
They typically work in teams of two — one serves as a spotter while the other trains their rifle’s sight on the same area.
“They’re trained to scan an area, remember what they see and come back to scan it again and see if there’s any change,” Piraino said. “It’s not just a matter of picking up their binoculars and looking around. They are trained very thoroughly and specifically with rangefinders and their equipment.”
If they don’t qualify, they don’t work
The counter snipers, code named “Hercules,” can respond to a threat from a distance with their .300 Winchester Magnum rifles, according to Ronald Kessler’s 2009 book, “In the President’s Secret Service.” And they have to prove they can do so on a monthly basis.
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“Counter-Snipers are required to qualify shooting out to a thousand yards each month,” Kessler wrote. “If they don’t qualify, they don’t travel or work.”
The snipers shoot with a rifle called a JAR, said Paul Eckloff, a retired Secret Service agent who served on details protecting three different presidents during his 23-year career.
“You’ve never heard of it because the Secret Service makes them,” Eckloff said.
It stands for “just another rifle” and they’re built specifically for each counter sniper by the Secret Service’s armorer to take into account things like the length of the shooter’s arms, wrists and trigger finger.
Eckloff wouldn’t disclose how many counter sniper teams there are but noted that it’s a finite resource and they could always use more.
What happened?
Police learned of a suspicious character outside the fairgrounds in Butler, Pennsylvania, before Trump took the stage. Minutes into his speech, shots were fired.
A counter sniper shot and killed Thomas Matthew Crooks in the seconds after he opened fire from a rooftop some 150 yards (135 meters) from the stage. Secret Service agents threw themselves on top of the former president before hustling him off stage.
Stephen Colo, who retired from the Secret Service in 2003 as an assistant director, told The AP on Sunday that presidential candidates and former presidents don’t typically get the same level of protection as the sitting president.
Colo said he was surprised that the agency had staffed the event with a counter sniper team because there are not many of those highly trained operatives and they are usually reserved for the president.
Kessler told the AP that the Counter Sniper Team should not be the focus of all of the scrutiny and investigations. He said the Secret Service members working closer to Trump should have called off the speech and moved him to safety as soon as they heard reports of a suspicious person in the crowd and then on a nearby rooftop.
“They should have just evacuated as soon as there was any hint of danger,” Kessler said.
Trump was not seriously injured and two days later he arrived in Milwaukee, with his right ear bandaged, to the adulation of his supporters at the Republican National Convention.
The shooting had more serious ramifications for others at the rally. Former fire chief Corey Comperatore was shot and killed and two other people were wounded.
Cheatle, the Secret Service director, told ABC News on Tuesday that the sniper who shot Crooks made a “split-second decision.”
“They have the ability to make that decision on their own. If they see that it’s a threat and they did that in that instance,” she said.
“And I applaud the fact that they made that decision and didn’t have to check with anybody and thankfully neutralized the threat.”
___
Finley reported from Norfolk, Virginia.
CLEARWATER, Fla. (AP) — Hulk Hogan, a mustachioed, headscarf-wearing icon in professional wrestling who turned the sport into a massive business and cultural touchstone, died Thursday at age 71, Florida police said.
In Clearwater, Florida, authorities responded to a morning call about a cardiac arrest. Hogan was pronounced dead at a hospital, police said in a statement on Facebook.
Hulk Hogan, whose given name is Terry Bollea, waits in the courtroom during a break in his trial against Gawker Media in St. Petersburg, Fla., March 9, 2016. (AP Photo/Steve Nesius, Pool, File)
Hogan, whose real name was Terry Bollea, was perhaps the biggest star in WWE’s long history. He was the main draw for the first WrestleMania in 1985 and was a fixture for years, facing everyone from Andre The Giant and Randy Savage to The Rock and even company chairman Vince McMahon.
He won at least six WWE championships and was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2005.
World Wrestling Federation heavyweight champion Hulk Hogan, left, and Mr. T. appear at a news conference on March 18, 1985, in New York’s Madison Square Garden. (AP Photo/Corey Struller, File)
“One of pop culture’s most recognizable figures, Hogan helped WWE achieve global recognition in the 1980s. WWE extends its condolences to Hogan’s family, friends, and fans,” WWE said.
Hulk Hogan fires up the crowd between matches at WrestleMania 21 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, April 3, 2005. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson, File)
“Hulkamania,” as the energy he created was called, started running wild in the mid-1980s and pushed professional wrestling into the mainstream. He was a flag-waving American hero with the horseshoe mustache, red and yellow gear and massive arms he called his “24-inch pythons.”
In recent years, Hogan has waded further into politics.
At the 2024 Republican National Convention, Hogan merged classic WWE maneuvers with President Donald Trump’s rhetoric to vociferously endorse his longtime acquaintance.
“Let Trumpamania run wild! Let Trumpamania rule again! Let Trumpamania make America Great Again!” Hogan shouted into the crowd.
He ripped off a t-shirt emblazoned with a picture of himself on a motorcycle to reveal a bright red Trump-Vance campaign shirt underneath. Then-presidential candidate Trump stood to applaud the move.
In 2016, a Florida jury awarded Hogan $115 million in his sex tape lawsuit against Gawker Media and then added $25 million in punitive damages. Hogan sued after Gawker in 2012 posted a video of him having sex with his former best friend’s wife. He contended the post violated his privacy.
Hulk Hogan poses during the MTV Video Music Awards Forum at Radio City Music Hall, Aug. 30, 2006, in New York. (AP Photo/Jason DeCrow, File)
Hogan smiled and wore black throughout the three-week trial.
“Everywhere I show up, people treat me like I’m still the champ,” he said of the support from fans.
Hogan first became champion in what was then the World Wrestling Federation in 1984, and pro wrestling took off from there. His popularity helped lead to the creation of the annual WrestleMania event in 1985, when he teamed up with Mr. T to beat “Rowdy” Roddy Piper and “Mr. Wonderful” Paul Orndorff in the main event.
He slammed and beat Andre the Giant at WrestleMania III in 1987, and the WWF gained momentum. His feud with the late “Macho Man” Randy Savage – perhaps his greatest rival — carried pro wrestling even further.
Hogan was a central figure in what is known as the Monday Night Wars. The WWE and World Championship Wrestling were battling for ratings supremacy in 1996. Hogan tilted things in WCW’s favor with the birth of the Hollywood Hogan character and the formation of the New World Order, a villainous stable that put WCW ahead in the ratings.
He returned to the WWE in 2002 and became a champion again. His match with The Rock at WrestleMania X8, a loss during which fans cheered for his “bad guy” character, was seen as a passing of the torch.
He was perhaps as known for his larger-than-life personality as he was his in-ring exploits. He was beloved for his “promos,” hype sessions he used to draw fans into matches. He often would play off his interviewer, “Mean” Gene Okerlund, starting his interviews off with, “Well, lemme tell ya something, Mean Gene!”
He crossed over into movies and television as well. He was Thunderlips in the movie Rocky III in 1982.
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White reported from Detroit. AP writer Safiyah Riddle contributed from Montgomery, Alabama.
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Forty-eight people were confirmed dead Thursday after a plane crashed in Russia’s Far East region.
The country’s Emergency Situations Ministry said search crews found the An-24 passenger plane’s burning fuselage on a hillside south of its planned destination in the town of Tynda, which is located near the Russia’s border with China.
Regional Gov. Vasily Orlov said that all passengers and crew on board the aircraft were killed in the crash. He also announced three days of mourning.
Images of the reported crash site circulated by Russian state media show debris scattered among dense forest, surrounded by plumes of smoke.
LONDON-BOUND PLANE CARRYING MORE THAN 200 PEOPLE CRASHES AFTER TAKEOFF IN INDIA
An An-24 aircraft of Angara Airlines lands at the airport of Irkutsk, Russia April 13, 2014. (REUTERS/Marina Lystseva/File Photo)
An initial aerial inspection of the site had suggested that there were no survivors, Russia’s Interfax news agency said, citing unnamed sources in the emergency services. Its sources also said that there were difficult weather conditions in the area.
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The transport prosecutor’s office said the plane attempted a second approach while trying to land when contact with it was lost.
Smoke rises at the crash site of an Angara Airlines An-24 passenger plane near Tynda in the Amur Region, Russia on Thursday, July 24, 2025. (Reuters/Federal Air Transport Agency)
Forty-three passengers, including five children, as well as multiple crew members were onboard the plane as it traveled from the city of Blagoveshchensk on the Russian-Chinese border to the town of Tynda, Orlov said.
An infographic titled “Antonov An-24 passenger plane crashes near Russia’s Tynda” created in Ankara, Turkiye on July 24, 2025. (Mehmet Yaren Bozgun/Anadolu via Getty Images)
The flight was operated by Siberia-based Angara Airlines.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The latest talks in Istanbul were followed by more prisoner exchanges, but yielded no breakthrough in ending the war.
Russian forces are pushing to create “buffer zones” along the border with Ukraine, the Kremlin has said, as fighting rages on in the wake of a third round of peace talks that again failed to yield any progress towards a ceasefire, in a fourth year of war.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov made the comments during a briefing on Thursday, signalling that Russia had no intention of de-escalating its war on Ukraine following a brief meeting Wednesday between delegations in Istanbul that lasted just 40 minutes.
Negotiators in the Turkish city discussed further prisoner swaps, but remained far apart on a ceasefire and a proposed face-to-face meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy, sought by the latter.
At a news conference in Istanbul following the talks, Vladimir Medinsky, the head of the Russian delegation, said an exchange of prisoners had been carried out on the Ukraine-Belarus border, with about 250 people returned to each side.
More than 1,000 Ukrainians returned
Zelenskyy confirmed the exchange, saying in a post on social media that Wednesday’s prisoner swap – the ninth stage of an exchange process agreed to by the parties in Istanbul – meant that more than 1,000 Ukrainian prisoners had been returned under the agreement.
“For a thousand families, this means the joy of embracing their loved ones again,” Zelenskyy said, adding that many of the prisoners had been in captivity for more than three years.
“It is important that the exchanges are ongoing and our people are coming home,” he said.
“We will continue doing everything possible to ensure that every one of our people returns from captivity.”
Drone and missile attacks
Following the brief meeting in Istanbul, Russia and Ukraine continued their air attacks against each other, with Russian drones and missiles targeting Ukrainian territory overnight and casualties reported in Russia.
Russia launched 103 attack drones and four missiles at Ukraine overnight, killing three people in the Kharkiv region, Zelenskyy said in a social media post on Thursday. More than 10 others were wounded in Cherkasy, including a 9-year-old child, he added.
He noted that, just a day earlier, Ukraine’s delegation in Istanbul had reiterated its “proposal for an immediate and full ceasefire”.
“In response, Russian drones struck residential buildings and the Pryvoz market in Odesa, apartment blocks in Cherkasy, energy infrastructure in the Kharkiv region, a university gym in Zaporizhzhia,” he said.
“We will make every effort to ensure that diplomacy works,” he added. “But it is Russia that must end this war.”
Yesterday, at the meeting in Istanbul, the proposal for an immediate and full ceasefire was reiterated to the Russian side. In response, Russian drones struck residential buildings and the Pryvoz market in Odesa, apartment blocks in Cherkasy, energy infrastructure in the Kharkiv… pic.twitter.com/Ax9Q0xEM6z
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) July 24, 2025
In Russia, emergency officials in the Krasnodar region on the Black Sea said debris from a falling drone struck and killed a woman in the Adler district near the resort city of Sochi, while a second woman was seriously injured, the Reuters news agency reported.
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