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In the President's Secret Service by Ronald Kessler (A book review)
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Hartford Books Examiner is somewhat of a conspiracy buff, and so he recently picked up Ronald Kessler’s In the President’s Secret Service (Crown, $26) in the hopes that it would provide some insights into long unanswered questions about the deaths of presidents past. Subtitled Behind the Scenes with Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents they Protect, the book gives the initial impression of being a serious offering and resonates with the air of insider knowledge.
Quickly, however, the reader becomes privy to the dichotomy that the book presents: Namely, it can’t decide if it wants to be serious or salacious. For instance, the introduction eludes to Secret Service practices that put both agents and the high-ranking officials in their care at risk (using President Obama’s Inaugural processional as the backdrop for a potential assassination attempt), but the next few chapters spend more time detailing the philandering ways of former presidents Kennedy and Johnson than addressing the supposed thesis of the book. (And let’s not forget that JFK was felled by assassins’ bullets.) The sources from the Secret Service, then, appear more as mouthpieces for gossip than anything else.
Much of the book’s content is presented in this tabloid-esque manner—and, indeed, many of the revelations have already been made public in such forums. Who would be surprised to know that former first lady Hillary Clinton is described as having an “explosive temper” off camera? Or that presidential daughters Jenna and Barbara Bush, code-named Turquoise and Twinkle, were notoriously difficult to protect due to their lifestyle choices? Or that threats against the President have risen dramatically since Obama took office? Elsewhere, figures are trashed for being lazy (Carter), cheap (Ford), strange (Nixon), unpunctual (Gore)…
Somewhat more compelling (and topical) are the chapters chronicling attempts on the lives of Harry Truman, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush. (So much has been written about the Kennedy assassination that the few references in Kessler’s book are hardly worth mentioning.) Reagan was the only one to be injured (and it was the instinctual response of a Secret Service agent that likely saved his life), but the story of the attack on Truman, who was staying at Blair House, is more epic. Still, the material is a retread of history that has been written before and will no doubt be written again.
The book does present an interesting history of an agency that has been shrouded in mystery since its inception. It’s a shame, though, that readers have to muddle through such trivial matters to find it. Here’s a quick tutorial: The Secret Service was commissioned as an entity of the Department of the Treasury on July 5, 1865, with the initial task of suppressing counterfeiting. It was not until 1902, after the assassination of President William McKinley, that Congress informally requested that the agency provide protection for the president, and the Secret Service assumed full-time responsibility for the Commander in Chief a year later. (Since then, they have also been charged with protecting spouses and family members of the president, as well as the VP and his family, candidates for those offices, and visiting figures of prominence, such as the Pope.) Although the role of providing protection remains the most visible, the agency’s focus remains fraud and counterfeiting.
The true importance of Kessler’s work can be found in the concerns he raises about Secret Service practices that put the lives of agents, and their protectees, unnecessarily at risk. For instance, management often forces agents to work exceptionally long shifts rather than hiring new people, which results in frequent burnout and lethargy. Additionally, said agents are spread so thin that they often are not privy to essential training (or retraining). Other causes for concern are that agents are often strong-armed by candidates or the White House into shutting down magnetometer screening devices at public events (which could ultimately result in assassination) and that the weaponry employed by the Secret Service is outdated. In fact, the reader comes away with the impression that it’s not so much a question of if as a question of when the next attempt will be made…
Ironically, though, this information can easily be lost like some lone nut in a crowd. Kessler , who was granted unparalleled access to the Secret Service (he claims to have spoken to more than 100 current and former agents), spends more time documenting tawdry escapades than enlightening readers as to the history and current plights of the agency, and that’s a shame. While In the President’s Secret Service is compulsively readable, it’s also mostly forgettable.
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