The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the FBI are now saying that, although they have intensively monitored Americans who went to Ukraine to fight against Russia in the past two years, somehow Ryan Wesley Routh, the man whom authorities believe planned to kill Donald Trump at the former President’s golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Sept. 15, slipped through the net.
On Sept. 24 Politico reported: “The Department of Homeland Security in 2022 launched an interagency effort to scrutinize Americans returning from Ukraine’s war zone. The previously unreported effort aimed to identify Americans who might turn violent upon their return, according to five people familiar with the plans. Officials worried the Russia-Ukraine war would attract American extremists who would learn combat skills on the battlefield and then attack their fellow Americans when they returned.”
In 2022, Routh went to Ukraine. According to Time magazine, Routh spent “most of” the past three years in Ukraine, trying to recruit foreign fighters for Kiev. One soldier in Ukraine described him as “basically homeless,” sleeping at the barracks or bases of Ukrainian military units. According to articles, he presented plans to Ukrainian officials, and was known to the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Some thought he was crazy. On the other hand, on Sept. 17 the New York Times recounted in “Suspected Gunman Said He Was Willing To Fight and Die in Ukraine,” that “In a telephone interview with the New York Times in 2023, when Mr. Routh was in Washington, he spoke with the self-assuredness of a seasoned diplomat who thought his plans to support Ukraine’s war effort were sure to succeed,” demonstrating the Times’s astute evaluation of character and sources for its reporting.
A nurse named Chelsea Walsh, who had been in Ukraine in 2022, made reports to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (a division of DHS), the FBI, and Interpol, in which she said: “The authorities have definitely dropped the ball on this. They were warned,” as AP described it. She had met Routh in Kiev in 2022, when he was there trying to recruit foreign soldiers to fight for Ukraine. She saw him grow increasingly angry and unhinged, kicking a panhandler, threatening to burn down a music studio that slighted him, and speaking of his own children with seething hatred.
One would think that American intelligence—CIA, DIA, NSA—which frequented these milieux and/or intercepted phone conversations of people in such circles in Ukraine, would have noticed, several times, someone with these characteristics, especially who lived “most of” the past three years in Ukraine. The FBI and Department of Homeland Security explained that Routh “slipped through the cracks.”
Perhaps Routh did not fall, but was, rather, pushed through the cracks. Maybe, however, the world is finding out that, particularly when it comes to assassinations, the FBI, DHS and other three-letter agencies are not all—or any—of what they are cracked up to be.
