Security expert analyzes response in White House Correspondents' Dinner shooting

PHOENIX - The investigation is ongoing into 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen, the suspect in the shooting at the White House Correspondents' Dinner on Saturday. 

What we know:

Bernard Zapor, a retired Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, Tobacco, and Explosives (ATF) special agent in charge and a faculty associate at Arizona State University, has 26 years of federal law enforcement experience. He said events like the dinner are challenging, with a lot of planning ahead.

Upon watching the video of the California man rushing through the magnetometer, Zapor said officials handled the situation well, and that sometimes authorities will get tips before, or with clues on social media. 

"They never plan it as if something might happen. They plan it as if something is going to happen," Zapor said. "They're doing a lot of work and a lot of scouting ahead to see if there's bread crumbs out there of people or groups that are a potential threat."

Big picture view:

At the event, he says security aims to lessen the number of people that could get in and magnetometers would be the last screening as well as verification of credentials.

"It's a layered approach, and it involves concentric, more restrictive rings of security as it gets closer into where the threat profile would be," Zapor said. "Somebody runs a barricade like that, it very well could be a diversion tactic to something bigger that's planned somewhere else."

The backstory:

U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C., Jeanine Pirro said Allen checked into his hotel the day before the April 25 shooting at 3 p.m. The next day, she said he was aware of President Trump in the ballroom at 8 p.m. and at 8:40 p.m. tried to rush the ballroom.

The Trump administration posted a video showing the moments the gunman sprinted past a security checkpoint, with no agents stopping him, until he was already past. 

Pirro believed the Secret Service, and other officials, had an appropriate response, given that Allen went down almost immediately. 

Dig deeper:

The investigation, Zapor says, involves a warrant, looking into where he lived and worked, his social media, and what kind of weapons he used and where they came from.

"It's going to start to develop a picture of potentially leading to what motive and intent was," Zapor said. "It's going to give them people to contact. It's going to give them locations and the documents themselves yield some information," Zapor said.

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Allen's manifesto says he intended to target President Trump and administration officials.

"Say they're preaching something or spewing some kind of anger about something, and you don't want the investigative team to start getting distracted down one road when there's a lot of other information here," Zapor said.

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Even though Zapor feels like President Trump has enough security now, he said he did not during the other assassination attempts.

"Even though he was formerly POTUS, his threat profile remained the same and I think it was a mistake to give him a candidate-level protection," Zapor said.

What's next:

Allen is facing a few charges, including attempting to assassinate the President of the United States, transporting a firearm across state lines, and discharging a firearm during a crime of violence.