The United States Secret Service (USSS) is a
federal law enforcement agency that is currently part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. With a reported one third of the currency in circulation being
counterfeit at the time, the Secret Service was created on July 5, 1865 in
Washington, D.C., to suppress counterfeit currency. Today, the agency has two specific areas of
responsibility:
· Financial
Crimes, covering missions such as prevention and investigation of counterfeiting of U.S. currency
and U.S. treasury securities, and investigation of
major fraud
· Protection,
which entails ensuring the safety of current and former national leaders and
their families, such as the President, past presidents, vice presidents,
presidential candidates, visiting heads of state, and foreign embassies (per an
agreement with the U.S. State Department's Bureau of
Diplomatic Security (DS) Office of
Foreign Missions (OFM), etc.
The Secret Service assumed full authority for
presidential security in 1902. In the
area of protection, the President’s security is his security detail’s number one
priority. As the saying goes, any member
of his security detail is prepared to take a bullet for him.
This situation has happened twice. On November 1, 1950, two Puerto Rican
Nationalists opened fire on Private Leslie Coffelt at Blair House in Washington, DC, in an attempt to assassinate
President Harry S. Truman. Private Coffelt was mortally wounded, but
also killed one of the attempted assassins, Griselio Torresola. The other accomplice, Oscar Collazo,
was wounded, but he survived his injuries, and spent 29 years in jail before returning
to Puerto Rico in 1979.
On March 30, 1981, John Hinckley, Jr., attempted to
assassinate President Ronald Reagan as he was leaving the Washington Hilton Hotel
in Washington, DC. Special Agent Tim McCarthy
stepped in front of President Reagan and although he took a bullet to the
abdomen, he later made a full recovery.
To date, Private Coffelt is the only member of the Secret Service to be
killed in a Presidential assassination attempt.
In addition to the two
failed attempts in during which Secret Service agents were shot, four
Presidents have been assassinated:
·
President
Abraham Lincoln – 1865
·
President James
A. Garfield – 1881
·
President
William McKinley – 1901
·
President John
F. Kennedy - 1963
There have been a number of
other attempts, including:
·
January 30, 1835
- A man pointed two guns at President Andrew Jackson and pulled the
triggers. Miraculously, neither fired
·
October 16, 1909
– Texas Ranger Private C.R. Moore and private security specialist Frederick Russell Burnham captured and
disarmed a would be assassin within a few feet of President William Howard
Taft, who was in El Paso, Texas to attend a Summit with Mexican President, Porfirio Díaz
·
October 14, 1912
– three years after President Theodore Roosevelt left office, he was running
for President again as a Third Party candidate, and was shot while running for
re-election. The bullet remained in him
until his death in 1919
·
November 19,
1928 – while in Argentina, President Herbert Hoover escaped an assassination
attempt by Argentine anarchists, led by Severino Di
Giovanni. He was arrested
before he could place the explosives in President Hoover’s railcar.
·
February 15,
1933 – Giuseppe Zangara fired five shots at President
Franklin Roosevelt, killing Chicago Mayor, Anton Cermak.
The attempt occurred less than three weeks before the President would be
sworn in for his first term
·
In the summer of
1947 – shortly prior to the creation of the state of Israel, the Zionist group Stern Gang
sent a number of letter bombs to President Harry S. Truman and high-ranking cabinet
members. The letters were intercepted in
the White House mail room, and the Secret Service diffused them
·
April 13, 1972 –
Arthur
Bremer carried a firearm to an
event, intending to shoot President Richard Nixon. After being repelled by security he
left. Several weeks later he shot and
seriously injured Alabama George Wallace
·
February 22,
1974 – Samuel Byck, planning to kill President Nixon by crashing a
plane into the White House, hijacked a plane by force. He shot the pilot and co-pilot, but could not
take off because the wheels were blocked.
An officer shot him through the window; he in turn committed suicide
with his pistol.
·
September 5,
1975 – Lynnette (Squeaky) Fromme, a Charles Manson follower, drew a pistol on
President Gerald Ford when he reached to shake her hand at the California State Capitol (Sacramento). She had four bullets in the magazine, but
none in the chamber. She was quickly
detained.
·
September 22,
1975 - Sara Jane Moore fired a revolver at
President Ford from 40 feet away, in San Francisco, California. A bystander grabbed her arm, and the shot
missed the President. She was sentenced
to life in Prison, and paroled in 2007, a year after President Ford’s death by
natural causes.
·
May 5, 1979 – Raymond
Lee Harvey was arrested by the Secret Service 10 minutes before President Jimmy
Carter was scheduled to give a speech at the Civic Center Mall in Los
Angeles. Harvey claimed to be part of a
plot to assassinate President Carter, and named Osvaldo Espinoza Ortiz as a
co-conspirator. Officials eventually
dropped charges against the pair due to lack of evidence
·
April 13, 1993 –
Fourteen men believed to be working for Saddam Hussein smuggled bombs into Kuwait
to assassinate President George H. W. Bush during a visit there to speak at Kuwait
University. Kuwait police
foiled the attempt when they found the bombs and arrested the suspected
assassins.
·
January 21, 1994
– Ronald Gene Barbour plotted to kill President Bill Clinton while he was
jogging. Mr. Barbour returned home to
Florida after a week without having fired a shot, as the President was on a
state visit to Russia. He was later
arrested and spent 5 years in prison.
·
September 12, 1994
- Frank Eugene Corder flew a stolen single
engine Cessna into a tree on the White House lawn. He was killed in the incident.
·
October 29, 1994
– Francisco
Martin Duran fired at least 29 shots with a semi-automatic rifle at
the White House. He thought he was
shooting at President Clinton. The
President was inside the White House.
Three tourists, Harry Rakosky, Ken Davis and
Robert Haines tackled Duran before he harmed anyone. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison.
·
1996 – During a
visit to Manila to visit the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), Lewis Merletti, Director of the Secret Service
re-routes the President’s motorcade before driving over a bridge, after intercepting
a message that an attack was imminent.
An investigation determined later that there was a bomb under the
bridge. Later, intelligence briefs
revealed that the mastermind behind the bomb was a terrorist living in
Afghanistan named Osama
bin Laden
·
May 10, 2005 –
In Tbilisi, Georgia, Vladimir
Arutyunian threw a live Soviet-made grenade toward the podium where George W. Bush was speaking. Because the device was wrapped tightly in a
handkerchief, it did not detonate immediately, even though the pin was
pulled. Arutyunian
escaped that day, but was captured after killing an Interior Ministry agent in
July 2005. He was sentenced to life in
prison.
·
August 2008 –
Cousins Tharin Gartrell and Shawn Adolf and their
friend Nathan Johnson allegedly planned to assassinate Barack Obama during his
acceptance speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. However, officials insist there
was no substantial threat.
·
October 22, 2008
- Paul Schlesselman and Daniel Cowart, two white supremacists, plotted
to drive their car toward nominee Obama and raise their guns and open
fire. They were arrested before acting
to execute the plot. They pleaded guilty
to federal charges related to the plot in 2010, and were sentenced to 10 and 14
years in prison, respectively.
·
April 2009 – A
man of Syrian origins plotted to kill President Obama at the Alliance of Civilizations Summit in Istanbul, Turkey in April 2009.
The man confessed of his involvement in the plot, and that of three
alleged accomplices.
·
April 2013 –
Another attempt was made when a letter laced with ricin was sent to
President Obama
And I hasten to add, these
are just those attempts that have been reported. It is clear, that the Secret Service has many
challenging jobs. Protecting the
President is just one of them; though likely the most high profile.
Taken in that light, it is
no surprise that Julia Pierson, the Director of the Secret Service until last
week, resigned under bi-partisan pressure.
The organization has had a long and mostly distinguished history of
providing Presidential protection. Yet,
it’s been a difficult, and scandal-filled few years.
Ms. Pierson was hired to
clean up and repair the agency’s muddied reputation. After 17 months, the consensus on Capitol
Hill was, she failed. In the end, a recent
fence jumper, made his way all the way across the White House lawn, into the
facility, all the way to the vicinity of the Green Room. This was apparently the straw that broke the
camel’s back. But that was by no means
the only issue.
A man stopped his car near
the White House and fired several shots at the structure, some of which hit the
building. There was considerable
confusion about what actually happened, and as a result, it took several days
to confirm there had actually been shots fired.
One of the Obama’s daughters was at home at the time, yet the Obama’s
were not told until even later.
Add to that an instance in
which the President while visiting Atlanta was on an elevator with an individual
who was found to be carrying a gun. All
in all in a world filled with anxiety over terrorists and others who would do
harm to Americans in general, and the President, in particular, these gaffes
and lapses were rightly deemed too much to bear. So Ms. Pierson paid a steep price. Hopefully, the chance will help ensure that
the President does not pay the ultimate price.
After all, it’s important to remember, “TheUnited States Secret Service: The President’s Vest!”
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