Ian
priscilla 1Inside the Secret Service
January 29th 2010 14:29
What would life be like as a Secret Service Agent?
This article at Life Magazine attempts to answer that question after talking to some former agents.
The Secret Service was founded in 1865 to battle the flood of counterfeit currency washing over the country near the end of the Civil War. It wasn't until 1902, a year after the assassination of President William McKinley, that the Service began, as part of its official mission, to protect the president, vice president, their families. (Ironically, the legislation creating the Secret Service was on Abraham Lincoln's desk the night he was murdered by John Wilkes Booth.)
The agency's rigorous, frequent training keeps agents prepared for virtually any contingency—including, of course, the one unthinkable scenario. He characterizes much of the training as "going through realistic situations that have been specifically designed to create instinctive reactions to a single second's madness." Almost two weeks of every two months is spent at the agency's training center in Beltsville, Maryland, which features city blocks lined with facades of office buildings and hotels; roads for motorcades; and a Boeing 707 for running through airplane-based scenarios.
With American flags fluttering, the Presidential State Car—since 1983, a Cadillac limousine—is a national icon and an emblem of power. And in the case of President Obama's edition (every president gets a new ride), the machine is also an absolute beast. In fact, that's the nickname the Secret Service slapped on it before the inauguration in January, when Obama's limo made its formal debut. The Beast has its own air recirculation system to protect the president in the case of a chemical attack. Its doors are now sheathed in 8-inch-thick military-grade armor. Even the bulletproof windows are five inches thick. "The limousines of yesteryear were designed to provide protection and to get the president out of any situation," Ken Lucci, CEO of Ambassador Limousine Inc. and owner of two Reagan-era limos, told CNN. "Today, they [the Secret Service] expect a prolonged attack, and they expect an attack that is a lot more violent than [with] a weapon you can hold in your hand. It literally is a rolling bunker."
A lot of their work is extremely boring. You stand in a field for ten hours. You stand in a stairwell for twelve hours. You stand out in the cold, and the heat, and for the most part you have to be quiet, and just watch, and listen. You develop a way of watching. We all go through the same training, but we develop our own styles of scanning, assessing. We watch for someone who looks uncomfortable, or out of place. Dressed wrong for the weather. Someone unsmiling when everyone else is laughing and waving. And then, every once in a while, you catch someone staring at you. Maybe they're just curious about the job, or you happened to lock eyes at the instant their gaze moved briefly from the center of attention. But it's strange, and it definitely raises flags—even if a moment later it's clear that it meant absolutely nothing.
The Secret Service is not made up exclusively of agents wearing suits, ties, shades, and earpieces. In fact, as the agency's "dual mission" is to both protect VIPs as well as safeguard the nation's financial infrastructure (e.g., take down counterfeiters, fiscal gangsters, ID thieves, etc.), most agents spend as much time in SWAT-style gear as in white shirts and wingtips. The agents above—members of an elite division within the agency called the Counter Assault Team, or CAT—are prime examples of the agency's more heavily armed elements. They're not beside the president when he works a crowd, but in stairwells, on rooftops, in alleyways.
This article at Life Magazine attempts to answer that question after talking to some former agents.
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