In an irony of history, on April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln signed legislation creating the U.S. Secret Service, the agency today that is best known for protecting America’s president; that night, Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth.
As the Civil War neared conclusion, counterfeit paper currency was rampant. The initial legislation authorized the newly created Secret Service to investigate crimes involving creation and distribution of counterfeit currency. The Secret Service was created as a bureau under the U.S. Treasury Department to combat this growing threat to the nation’s economy. (The Treasury Police Force, established in 1789 to secure the Treasury’s currency printing operations, was merged into the Secret Service in 1937.)
On March 1, 2003, the Secret Service moved from the Treasury Department to join twenty-two other agencies in the Department of Homeland Security, created by Congress in response to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 (P.L. 107-296).
The core missions of the Secret Service include (1) protecting the nation’s president, top leaders, and visiting world leaders and (2) investigating and preventing crimes against the country’s financial and critical infrastructure. The Secret Service employs about six thousand people—including more than twenty-four hundred special agents, twelve hundred uniformed division officers, as well as other professional, technical, and administrative staff.
Protection Responsibilities
The special agents and uniformed division personnel conduct the primary law enforcement responsibilities of the Secret Service. Historically, the uniformed division’s roots date back to the beginning of the Civil War, with a few military members and Metropolitan Police Department officers protecting the White House grounds. In 1922, President Warren G. Harding created the White House Police Force. In 1930, after an unknown intruder entered the White House dining room, President Herbert Hoover convinced Congress to combine the Secret Service agents protecting him with the White House police. President Hoover wanted the Secret Service to control all facets of presidential protection.
Now, the Secret Service uniformed division, using a variety of special units such as countersniper teams, canine explosive detection teams, bicycle patrols, motorcycle units, and a magnetometer unit, protects the following:
- White House complex and other presidential offices
- President and immediate family
- Vice president and immediate family and residence in the District of Columbia
- Treasury building and annex
- Foreign diplomatic missions in the Washington, D.C., area and throughout the United States and its territories and possessions
However, the Secret Service is best known for its highest-profile assignment: protecting the president of the United States. After the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901 (the third U.S. president killed in thirty-six years), Congress informally requested that the Secret Service protect the new president, Theodore Roosevelt, who also carried his own irearm on occasion. In 1902, the Secret Service assumed full-time responsibility for protecting the president, with two agents, but it was not until 1906 that congressional legislation mandated presidential protection as a permanent responsibility for the Secret Service.
Today, the Secret Service is authorized by law to protect the following:
- President and vice president and their immediate families
- Former presidents and their spouses for ten years
- Children of former presidents until age sixteen
- Visiting heads of foreign governments and other distinguished foreign visitors to the United States
- Official representatives of the United States performing special missions abroad
- Major presidential and vice presidential candidates within 120 days of a general presidential election
“Protectees,” a term used by the Secret Service to designate key protection responsibilities, such as the president and first lady, have details of special agents assigned to them. Advance teams survey sites that will be visited by protectees to determine resource needs, local support, emergency medical facilities, and evacuation routes for emergencies. They also coordinate with local law enforcement, ire/rescue, and emergency medical partnering agencies to implement protection plans and a wide range of protocols. Other assignments include establishing a command post with communications capabilities, reviewing intelligence information, establishing checkpoints, and limiting access to secured areas.
The Secret Service also investigates threats against the president and other high-level officials. The protective intelligence program is used to identify groups, individuals, and emerging technologies that may pose a threat to protectees, secure locations, or events. The Secret Service also provides training for local law enforcement in conducting threat assessments and investigating and preventing targeted violence.
In 1998, President Clinton issued Presidential Decision Directive 62 that established federal roles to provide security at newly designated National Special Security Events (NSSEs). At these major special events, the Secret Service becomes the lead agency for security design, planning, and implementation. The Secret Service, in conjunction with the Department of Homeland Security and other federal law enforcement agencies, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation and state and local law enforcement, has developed strategies and plans to secure the NSSE facilities and protect the attending dignitaries and public. NSSEs in 2004 included both the Democratic and Republican national conventions and the G8 Summit held in Georgia. The NSSEs also include coordination with state and local law enforcement and advance security planning in areas such as motorcade routes, perimeter security, communications, credentialing, air space security, and training. Recently, the Secret Service has also invested resources in combating cyberthreats to major national event security.
Investigations Responsibilities
The Secret Service also has an extensive mission in investigating counterfeiting, inancial crimes, computer crimes, and identity theft. The Secret Service has exclusive jurisdiction for investigating counterfeiting of U.S. obligations and securities—currency, Treasury checks, and food stamps (Title 18, United States Code, Section 3056). Counterfeiting currency was used as a ”weapon of war” in the American Revolution, Civil War, and World Wars I and II (Bowen and Neal 1960). Enemies would dump counterfeit currency into the economy to ruin public faith in the currency and destroy morale.
The Secret Service also investigates crimes associated with financial institutions such as frauds related to banking transactions, electronic funds transfers (EFTs), telecommunications transactions, and credit cards. In 1998, Congress passed the Identity Theft and Assumption Deterrence Act (P.L. 105-318) that added identity theft investigations to the Secret Service’s responsibilities. In recent years, identity theft has grown rapidly. The Secret Service also has an organized crime program that investigates money laundering.
See also: Federal Police and Investigative Agencies; Homeland Security and Law Enforcement; Money Laundering.
References:
- Bowen, Walter S., and Harry E. Neal. 1960. The United States Secret Service. Philadelphia: Chilton.
- Columbia Pictures. 1993. In the Line of Fire. Movie starring Clint Eastwood as a Secret Service agent protecting the president from an assassin.
- National Geographic. 2005. Inside the U.S. Secret Service. Television documentary. https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=62&v=BHkvtmEyas8.
- Neal, Harry Edward. 1971. The story of the Secret Service. New York: Random House.
- S. Secret Service. http://www.secretservice.gov/.