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Notes -
I wouldn't expect the Secret Service to have first-rate anti-biological warfare on hand, whatever that might mean. I don't think they'd have some amazing CIWS turret that can shoot mortar rounds out of the sky. That's probably for the White House and sitting presidents. They probably don't have fantastic ECM capable of blocking the best kamikaze drones or grenade droppers, Russia and Ukraine can't seem to block drones reliably.
But I would expect them to have an agent on that rooftop to deal with gunmen. Dealing with gunmen isn't an amazingly high-end skill, it doesn't require creative super high-tech solutions, just friendly men with guns. This isn't exactly a built-up area. It doesn't require much preparation time to put someone on that roof.
Dealing with gunmen is their core priority, I would've thought the Secret Service would have that locked down given history.
Either they're very, very incompetent or there's some funny business going on.
Don't get me wrong, it is absolutely within their core area of responsibility here. If I had to spitball, I'd say the most-likely threats in general that take the bulk of the planning are probably as follows: Crowd member pulls a pistol/concealable, sniper from altitude, bomb threat. Obviously this attempt is on that shortlist. To be clear, I listed the other things as reasons why at least some Secret Service personnel are doing things other than guarding against these core threats from a manpower perspective. I use the word "outsourcing" on purpose, as the same usually practical or (short-term) logic for doing so is usually very short-term compelling.
I'm definitely going to be waiting for and reading closely the official report, or what info is released (secrecy is obviously important to defense, and the Secret Service does deliberately play up its abilities; though a checklist for what's normally done would answer the question well, we probably won't get one -- we will hear from someone who looked at it, though). I wonder if there were some cops on or around the roof of the building, maybe on the other side? and the Secret Service said "oh that's fine/sufficient". Or if they used to have more sniper teams but cut personnel down to one or two. Or if they expected cops to put a sniper up there, and the cop got sick or was too fat to climb up or something. It could even be something as simple as the Secret Service saying to the State Police "okay, this building is your responsibility" and assuming they would take care of it, and then they just... didn't. That's common in organization behavior, the "not my problem" mentality is something not even the Secret Service is immune to. Like, if they show up on site and there's no sniper on that roof after all, maybe they only travelled with equipment for the one team behind Trump, or assumed in their response model that the sniper team would be fast enough to respond (which maybe almost was the case? We think at least some of the response shots came pretty fast, through ATM we have about zero clue who fired the shots that killed the assassin, which is pretty important info).
The thought has also crossed my mind, in the 'plausible' realm here, that the Secret Service doesn't like placing too many cops with guns near or looking at the protectee. Because one might get the call of the void and take the shot. So it's at least plausible that state police didn't set up a sniper position on that roof because of that reason, a hesitance to put unknown people in the "trust envelope", so to speak.
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