Days ahead of the rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Dinner, taking place Friday night, Secret Service officials warned nationwide threats have reached an unprecedented level — with agents opening roughly 10,000 protective intelligence cases since January, a nearly 40% increase from the same period last year.
“The numbers are numbers that this agency and certainly I have never seen in my 24-year career,” U.S. Secret Service Director Sean Curran said Wednesday.
Officials who briefed reporters also said the agency has carried out nearly 10 times as many mental health-related interventions involving those making threats to protected individuals or venues, compared to last year. That includes both voluntary and involuntary commitments and efforts by agents and officers to work with relatives and mental-health providers to stabilize people in crisis.
Secret Service officials attributed the uptick to a combination of online threats, lone actors, ideological grievances, foreign threats and cases involving mental-health concerns. Officials say most threats now originate online, rather than through handwritten letters or other traditional forms of communication.
“The environment has become very volatile, and that’s just across the board,” Curran said. He added, “The threat picture and environment is as large as I’ve ever seen it.”
The agency treats reported threats as potentially credible threats until investigators can determine whether a person has the intent, means and ability to carry out targeted violence, according to the Secret Service officials.
A person doesn’t have to make a direct threat to draw the agency’s attention. The threat assessment process relies on behavior, rather than a specific demographic profile. Agents look for potential warning signs like obsessive fixation, escalating grievances, stalking, harassment, paranoia, delusions, suicidality, significant behavioral changes and an unusual interest in violence.
Washington Hilton security during first 2026 White House Correspondents’ Dinner
Curran defended the security plan used at the Washington Hilton during the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, where an armed individual was stopped at a screening checkpoint outside the event.
When pressed by CBS News, he said the magnetometers were approximately 120 yards from the podium and argued that stopping the individual at the checkpoint demonstrated that the security system worked as intended.
“We have to start and end our perimeter somewhere,” Curran said. “If it were up to me, I’d love to end it at the bridge, but that’s going to inconvenience a lot of people,” he added in an apparent reference to the Francis Scott Key Memorial Bridge in Washington, DC.
“We’re talking almost 120 yards from magnetometers to the podium,” he added. “That’s over a football field.”
Curran said the Secret Service anticipates that potentially dangerous individuals may reach screening locations, which is why checkpoints and specialized response teams are positioned there.
“We do expect bad people to show up,” Curran said. “It’s just a reality of where we are.”
He added: “We do expect things to happen at the magnetometers, unfortunately, but that’s why they are there. And that’s where it happened, and that’s where it ended. So it did work. The system worked.”
Curran said the Secret Service must balance standoff distances and other security requirements against the effects of closing streets, hotels and businesses around an event.
Asked about preparations for Friday’s rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Dinner, which will be held at the Washington, D.C., Waldorf Astoria, Curran said the agency was not approaching it as a “redo,” but as a separate presidential visit requiring a new assessment.
“If the president goes to the same site 100 times, we will send an advance team there 100 times, because things change,” Curran said. “The environment changes. The actual footprint will change.”
Iran threats
Asked by CBS News about the new Air Force One, Curran declined to discuss specific protective measures connected to threats from Iran or decisions involving presidential transportation, saying the agency would not disclose its operational methods.
“We’re never going to get into methods or means and how we do business,” Curran said. “I don’t want to tip our hand to the enemy.”
Secret Service deputy director Matt Quinn said the well-known Iranian threat against President Trump is only part of the intelligence incorporated into the agency’s planning.
“I don’t think it’s any secret that it’s been in the media that Iran has publicly said they want to kill President Trump,” Quinn said, adding the Iranian threat and additional information the agency cannot disclose are factored into Secret Service protective planning “all the time.”
Drones: “The threat’s real”
Quinn said the Secret Service is highly concerned about the potential use of drones against protectees and protected sites.
Asked how concerned the agency is about drones, Quinn responded: “Very.”
“The threat’s real,” he said. “We look at Ukraine. We look at just basic intelligence. It’s a matter of time before it comes to the United States.”
Quinn said the agency is deploying advanced drone detection and mitigation systems at the White House and at other protected locations.
“No one in the federal government or law enforcement is doing more to proactively get after the drone threat than the Secret Service,” he said.
Quinn said the White House is currently “very safe” from a drone attack but acknowledged that detection and mitigation technology must continue to evolve as drones become more difficult to identify and disrupt.
“The threat continues to get tougher and tougher,” Quinn said, citing fiber-optic-controlled and “dark” drones. “It’s a constant chase to keep up with it.”
Curran said counter-drone assets travel with the president, and some of the systems have been used on American soil for the first time.
“We will use anything and everything,” Curran said. “There’s nothing that we aren’t willing to do.”
Quinn acknowledged that the agency previously failed to provide the appropriate level of counter-drone resources when Trump was a former president.
“At that time, a former president wasn’t getting the resources that they potentially should have been getting,” Quinn said. “I just own it for the Secret Service. That’s not happening anymore.”
Operational demands for massive events
Secret Service officials said the agency has conducted nearly 3,000 protective visits during the calendar year, including domestic and international travel by its protectees and protection for visiting foreign heads of state.
Agents recently screened approximately 100,000 attendees, employees and guests at MetLife Stadium for the World Cup championship; secured the July 4th celebration on the National Mall; protected a UFC event at the White House; and handled a presidential appearance at Madison Square Garden during the NBA championship series.
Officials said much of the work occurs before a protectee arrives and includes protective intelligence assessments, counter-surveillance operations, technical security measures, logistics and coordination with federal, state and local partners.
Curran said improving communication with field personnel has been one of his central priorities. Major protective operations now routinely use unified command posts where the Secret Service and partner agencies work together and share information in real time, Curran said.
“We’re all talking,” Curran said. “We’re all in the same room, ensuring that what one person hears, everybody hears.”
Advanced threat interdiction: Stopping attackers before they reach the White House
Secret Service officials said the agency has established an “advanced threat interdiction” capability designed to identify and stop potential attackers before they reach the White House, presidential events or other protected locations.
The agency is using technology and its legal authorities to locate both people who make threats and individuals connected to previous cases, and to determine whether they may be traveling toward Washington or another protected site.
They said their aim is to push the agency’s security aperture outward and intercept a threat before it reaches the immediate perimeter of a protected location.
Officials said tips from relatives and members of the public remain critical because individuals planning violence may not make a direct threat or otherwise come to the attention of law enforcement.
They said it was a concerned family member’s report that was a key factor in uncovering an alleged plot targeting a UFC event at the White House. The family member had noticed concerning behavior, online statements and the accumulation of weapons, officials said.
The agency receives potential threat information through a variety of sources: social-media analysis, federal and local law enforcement, fusion centers, government agencies, relatives and concerned citizens.