This week, it was announced that former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is the first GOP presidential candidate this year to be assigned a full-time protective detail from the Secret Service. (Herman Can briefly had Secret Service protection before ending his campaign.)
Created by Abraham Lincoln to investigate currency counterfeiting (signing the authorizing legislation on the day before he died), the U.S. Secret Service remained part of the Department of the Treasury until 2003, when it became part of the new Department of Homeland Security. It became the protective security force for the President after William McKinley was assassinated in 1901.
Ronald Kessler is the author of several best-selling books on law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, the CIA, and the Secret Service. The Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner interviewed Kessler about his 2009 book, In the President's Secret Service: Behind the Scenes with Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents They Protect, and asked him why he wrote it and what surprises he found in his research.
‘Startling’ revelations
Kessler “wanted to find out what the presidents are really like and what better way [to do that] than to interview Secret Service agents,” he explained, noting that members of the Secret Service “are very secretive, even more secretive than the FBI or the CIA.”
Still, over more than forty years as a journalist, Kessler had developed sources within the agency and he was able to uncover information that was “pretty startling.”
His book goes back to the Eisenhower years but really picks up during the Johnson administration.
Lyndon Johnson, he said, “was totally out of control, a real maniac. He would sit on the toilet and defecate in front of aides.” During press conferences on his Texas ranch that included female journalists, he would “urinate in front of them.”
In addition to these intimidating actions, Kessler noted, Johnson “would have sex with his secretaries, even in the Oval Office” while “the press covered it up at the time.”
Phony and genuine
Jimmy Carter, he said, “was known as the phoniest president by the Secret Service. He would pretend to carry his own luggage in front of the cameras but actually the luggage was empty.”
Ronald Reagan, on the other hand, “was genuine,” Kessler said, and he “liked to schmooze with the agents.”
Captains of Air Force One during the Reagan administration told Kessler that “every time Reagan got into the plane he would come into the cockpit and greet the captain. Jimmy Carter did that once in his whole four-year term.”
‘Bizarre tale’ of Bush 41
Among the more surprising tidbits that Kessler picked up was a “bizarre tale” from the George H.W. Bush administration.
President Bush was visiting Enid, Oklahoma, Kessler explained, and the Secret Service followed its normal protocol by checking with local law enforcement about any kind of threats that might have surfaced in the vicinity.
The local police “said there’s this psychic in town who has been incredibly reliable in the past and has actually led us to bodies of murder victims.”
This psychic, they said, had had a vision that Bush was going to be assassinated by a sniper at an overpass when he came to Enid.
Although they found it embarrassing to do so, the Secret Service followed up with the psychic and asked her if she had any other details.
To their surprise, Kessler recounted, she knew where the limousine that would transport the President was housed, even naming the precise hangar at a nearby Air Force base.
She also predicted that “when Bush gets out of the plane, he’s going to be wearing a sport jacket.”
The Secret Service agents thought “that was crazy” because the President would “be wearing a suit.”
But “sure enough,” Kessler continued, “when he got out of the plane, he was wearing a sport jacket. As a result of that, they changed the motorcade route so it would not go under any overpass and, of course, he was safe -- and he’s reading about it for the first time in this book.”
Kessler also cautioned that, through his research, he learned that the U.S. Secret Service has been "cutting corners," which resulted in breaches of security like the infamous White House party crashers, Michaele and Tareq Salahi.
Comments