United States Secret Service Quotes
He was later assassinated.
This was Reid’s description of the behavior of some Secret Service Agents bringing prostitutes into a secure area in in Colombia. The facility was established for the preparation of a Presidential visit. A number of Secret Service Agents were fired as a result.
Precursor to CIA. During WWII Donovan’s OSS, the FBI and the State Department had the three civilian intelligence organizations while each of the 4 Armed Services had their own intelligence services. Rarely did any of these 7 organizations communicate with any of the others. In the case of the OSS, the FBI and the military services tended to try and obstruct many of their operations. This was the first call for what became the CIA.
Defending torture and other violations of civil rights by the Secret Service during the Civil War:
This historical quotation gives us an interesting picture or Secret Service practices and First Family Security in 1937. Unlike all the first ladies before her and most after her, she was a very active political figure and regularly received threats. Yet she not only drove alone on occasions, but published that fact to the world in this column. Also, although an extreme liberal, she had little trouble carrying a gun and learning to use it. Her father and her Uncle Theodore Roosevelt both were very comfortable with guns. What is surprising is that the Secret Service did not provide more protection for her. At that time gun ownership had not yet become a political issue, and Mrs. Roosevelt, a committed liberal, thought nothing of “packing heat” at a personal level.
There had been a proposal to consolidate the secret service and the FBI into a single organization. What is fascinating, over and above her very sophisticated reasoning, is that fact that the First Lady not only takes a position but writes about it in her daily newspaper column, but she did this while the Congress and her husband the President were weighing the issue. This is another example of Mrs. Roosevelt’s unique role in American politics. To many feminists, they find the fact that the President could and would function with his wife making all these public, independent and uncoordinated judgment, almost unique in political history. He was an admirable role model of a relationship with a wife from a gender equality point of view.
Pinkerton worked out a plan to spirit Lincoln through Baltimore where he had to change trains.
Joking about the "incompetence" of Vice President Dan Quayle. Kerry later apologized for the joke.
The Secret Service at the time was embarrassed by agents assigned to Presidential Security getting intoxicated and philandering with women in foreign countries where they were supposed to be scouting potential security breaches in anticipation of a Presidential visit.
The Secret Service was then the only Federal police force. Some members of Congress were protecting constituents who were involved with these crimes and some were themselves owners who were committing the crimes.
There was no formal Secret Service protection for the president in 1864. The Marshall of the District of Columbia was an old friend of President Lincoln's and he assumed some responsibility for his security. When he heard that the president was planning on attending the theater accompanied only by Senator Charles Sumner and the elderly Prussian minister, the Marshall was disparaging of their defensive abilities.
President McKinley had just been assassinated in Buffalo, NY. Roosevelt traveled to Buffalo where he took the oath of office. The Buffalo authorities, not wanting to have a second Presidential assassination ordered a detail of police to guard the new President. Remarkably, even a detail of 4 policemen guarding the President was seen by Roosevelt to be an unacceptable precedent. None-the-less, Presidential security was strengthened and formalized for the first time. Roosevelt, personally, carried a revolver—and new how to use it—so was not terribly cooperative with his secret service details, who he would literally run away from and trick them to tumbling over sand dune cliffs on his long Island estate. Despite this, Presidential Security was established during his administration.
An independent, civilian intelligence agency reporting directly to the president Both the military and the FBI opposed any “new” intelligence agencies to compete with their efforts. President Roosevelt did not accept their argument being a great believer in multiple sourcing about everything. The OSS went on to produce a large proportion of the major WWII intelligence successes in spying, analysis and covert action with minimum assistance from the military and the FBI.
Mrs. Roosevelt was the eyes and ears of FDR who, limited by polio, could not get around easily.
