In The President'S Secret Service: Behind The Scenes With Agents In The Line Of Fire And The Presidents They Protect

In The President'S Secret Service: Behind The Scenes With Agents In The Line Of Fire And The Presidents They Protect

After conducting exclusive interviews with more than one hundred current and former Secret Service agents, bestselling author and award-winning reporter Ronald Kessler reveals their secrets for the first time.Never before has a journalist penetrated the wall of secrecy that surrounds the U.S. Secret Service, that elite corps of agents who pledge to take a bullet to protect the president and his family. Kessler portrays the dangers that agents face and how they carry out their missions--from how they are trained to how they spot and assess potential threats. With fly-on-the-wall perspective, he captures the drama and tension that characterize agents? lives and reveals what they have seen, providing startling, previously untold stories about the presidents, from John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson to George W. Bush and Barack Obama, as well as about their families, Cabinet officers, and White House aides.Amazon.com ReviewRonald Kessler on the Updated Paperback Edition of In the President?s Secret ServiceSecret Service agents are like human surveillance cameras: They see everything that goes on behind the scenes involving the president, first lady, vice president, and their families. At the same time, they are a bulwark of democracy. If a president is assassinated, it nullifies democracy.In a new chapter to the paperback edition of In the President?s Secret Service: Behind the Scenes with Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents They Protect, I reveal that threats against President Obama have become so disturbing that a secret Presidential Threat Task Force has been created within the FBI to gather, track, and evaluate assassination threats that might be related to domestic or international terrorism.The task force operates within the FBI?s National Security Branch. It consists of twenty representatives from pertinent agencies, including agents from the FBI and Secret Service and operatives from the CIA, the NSA, and the Defense Department, as well as analysts.The hardcover edition reported that threats against Obama rose by as much as 400 percent compared with when President Bush was in office. While threats fluctuate, the level continues to be high enough to call for the threat task force.At the same time, the Secret Service, which let party crashers into the White House in November, has been spinelessly acceding to requests of the Obama administration officials for Secret Service protection in instances where there are no threats against them. No one outside of the government has heard of most of these officials, but they have one thing in common: They enjoy being chauffeured free of charge by the Secret Service.This expansion in protection has occurred at the same time that the Secret Service has cut corners because of understaffing and with a management culture that is complacent about potential risks, thus jeopardizing the president?s safety.Those Secret Service deficiencies led to Michaele and Tareq Salahi?s intrusion at the White House state dinner for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The breach occurred because of a deliberate, conscious decision by uniformed officers to ignore the fact that the Salahis and Carlos Allen, a third intruder, were not on the guest list. Those decisions are an expected consequence of the agency?s practice of cutting corners.The corner-cutting also include: not passing crowds through magnetometers or shutting down the devices early at presidential events; cutting back on the size of counter-assault teams and bowing to demands of staff that the teams remain at a great distance from protectees; not keeping up to date with the latest, most powerful firearms used by the FBI and the military; not allowing agents time for regular firearms requalification or physical training, which the Secret Service covers up by asking agents to fill out their own test scores. Undoubtedly, the uniformed officers who decided to wave the Salahis into the state dinner we