Today, the name of the U.S. Secret Service is synonymous with its key role of providing protection to the president. Yet, the question of the president’s safety has not always been taken so seriously and, indeed, for well over one hundred years of the republic’s early history was largely left to chance.
The Secret Service was originally established in July 1865, only three months after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. However, it was initially formed as a branch of the U.S. Treasury, tasked with preventing counterfeit currency which proved a huge problem in the wake of the Civil War. The agency continues to play a significant role in financial law enforcement today.
Many of the early presidents appear to have recognized the need for personal security, but it was largely left to each individual to make the necessary arrangements on an ad hoc basis. Franklin Pierce (1853-57), for instance, employed a full-time private bodyguard named Thomas O’Neil, with whom he had previously served during the Mexican-American War. No formal measures were taken to provide round-the-clock protection for the incumbent president, even following James Garfield’s assassination in 1881.
The Secret Service first began to take on an unofficial protection role during Grover Cleveland’s second term in office in the mid-1890s. The United States was enduring one of the worst economic depressions in its history at the time, leading to civil unrest. In 1894, Ohio businessman, Jacob Coxey, organized a huge protest movement of unemployed workers with the intention of marching on the American capital. Cleveland had already received several death threats and, amid concerns regarding his safety during the protest, he requested that the Secret Service provide him with round-the-clock protection.
His successor, William McKinley, was provided with similar 24/7 protection from the Secret Service during the 1898 Spanish-American War. However, for most of his presidency the responsibility of ensuring his safety was jointly held by the Secret Service and the Washington Police Department.
A Los Angeles Times feature, from August 1900, provides an invaluable insight into security arrangements at the time. According to the report, “Charles Tharom, a Swede, who is known as ‘Frenchy’ to the White House employees” served McKinley in a dual role as both his personal valet and bodyguard, adding that Tharom was also in the employment of the Secret Service.
McKinley was the first president to travel by car, which posed an entirely new security risk. The Los Angeles Times report refers to another Secret Service agent, George E. Foster, who was tasked with “guarding the life of President McKinley at all times when he is not at the White House…Foster travels in the same car, stands on the steps when the President appears, and is always on guard at the door of the car”.
Tragically, these security measures proved insufficient to prevent a third presidential assassination the following year. In March 1901, McKinley was inaugurated for a second term of office. Just six months later he paid a two-day visit to the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. On the first day, he made a well-received speech on the importance of pursuing trade agreements with other nations. The president then returned the following afternoon to carry out a pre-arranged public meet and greet in the Temple of Music, a large auditorium specially erected for the six-month duration of the Exposition.
McKinley’s personal secretary, George B. Cortelyou, expressed reservations regarding the president’s safety at this open reception and even suggested that it be cancelled altogether. McKinley was insistent, however, that it go ahead as planned and so two extra Secret Service agents were drafted in to assist his usual bodyguard, Foster, as well as a significant number of detectives from the local Buffalo police department. According to McKinley’s later biographer, Margaret Leech, the Pan-American Exposition’s head, John G. Milburn, insisted on standing to the left of McKinley as he made his way down the long line of well-wishers, taking the place usually occupied by Foster. This meant that, instead, the Secret Service man was compelled to stand opposite the president in the aisle.
A 28-year-old self-confessed anarchist named Leon Czolgosz was one of those waiting in line and when it came to his turn, he had time to pull out a revolver and shoot the president in the stomach at point-blank range. McKinley didn’t die instantly and indeed, initially, seemed to respond well to treatment. However, following the onset of gangrene, his condition rapidly worsened and he died eight days later, on September 14, 1901. Czolgosz was executed in the electric chair at New York’s Auburn Prison the following month.
McKinley’s death prompted a huge public outcry regarding security and his successor, Theodore Roosevelt, became the first president to be offered full-time protection by the Secret Service. Roosevelt memorably described their constant presence at his side as a “very small but very necessary thorn in the flesh”.
One of the President’s earliest protection officers, William Craig, became particularly close to the Roosevelt family, only to be killed, whilst on duty, in a tragic motor accident. Following Craig’s death, the President penned a moving tribute, describing him as a man “of whom I was fond and whom I greatly prized for his loyalty and faithfulness”.
Later that same decade, Congress passed the Sundry Civil Expenses Act for 1907, which specifically sanctioned, for the first time, the use of taxpayer funds to provide Secret Service protection for the president. The arrangement was only finally formalized six years later, however, in the early days of the Woodrow Wilson era, when Congress authorised permanent protection of the president through the Treasury Department Appropriations Act of 1913.
Thomas Sugrue’s 1946 book, Starling of the White House, provides an interesting perspective on the ongoing development of the Secret Service’s protection role from the early years of the Wilson administration right through to the World War II era through the experiences of an agent named Edmund Starling. He began his service in 1914 and rose through the ranks to become the man in charge of the White House protection officers during the 1930s. Starling recalled how during his training he was told that the president “can’t order you to go away and leave him alone. That you must never do. His safety is your responsibility”.
The Secret Service’s protection duties gradually widened over time. Aware of the need for heightened security during World War I, Congress authorised the provision of permanent protection to the president’s immediate family. In 1951, further legislation was passed to extend this right to the vice president and president-elect.
This postwar review of the Secret Service’s role was prompted by an attempt on President Harry S. Truman’s life in November 1950. From late 1948 to March 1952, Truman and his family lived at Blair House, situated just across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House, whilst the latter underwent extensive reconstruction work. In a sign of the changing times, the project included plans for an underground bunker intended to provide a place of refuge for the president in the event of a nuclear war.
The immediate threat to Truman’s life, though, came from an entirely different source. At a time of heightened tension between the U.S. and Puerto Rico, two pro-independence activists planned to shoot the president at home in Blair House. The assassination attempt was foiled by the bodyguards on duty that day, but one officer, 40-year-old Leslie Coffelt, was killed during the incident, becoming only the second Secret Service agent, after William Craig, to lose his life in the line of duty while protecting a US president.
Tragically, the Secret Service was unable to prevent the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas 13 years later. The subsequent report by the Warren Commission found no issue with the conduct of the agents present that day, commenting that “their actions demonstrate that the President and the Nation can expect courage and devotion to duty from the agents of the Secret Service”. However, the report did highlight several major concerns regarding advance planning and concluded that the agency was understaffed and underfunded.
In response to these findings, the Secret Service drastically overhauled its protection procedures. The agency’s budget was also significantly increased, enabling the addition of many hundreds of new personnel to the ranks. In the wake of Robert Kennedy’s murder whilst on the presidential campaign trail, only four years after the death of his brother, Secret Service protection was gradually extended to include all former presidents and their immediate families, as well as presidential and vice-presidential candidates.
Thankfully, no American president has lost his life at the hands of an assassin since John F. Kennedy, although some would-be assailants have come perilously close to achieving their objective, notably during the Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan administrations. The Secret Service’s role remains as essential as ever and continues to evolve, incorporating not only its traditional function as the presidential bodyguard but also as the agency tasked with countering the new threats to the president’s safety posed by modern developments in the fields of cyber-terrorism and chemical weapons.
Sources: The Tribune Chronicle
Featured image: Library of Congress via United States Secret Service
