September 14, 2017 • 53 mins
The U.S. Secret Service began after a mandate from President Lincoln called for a service to combat counterfeiters. Since then, they have become more well known as the agency that guards and protects the president and the first family, along with that of former presidents. Learn all about the ins and outs of the this not so secret service in today's episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry Rowland that
makes this stuff you should know. Continuing Law Enforcements saga,
(00:22):
this has got to be it. It's you say that
every time. I don't think this is it. Well, this
is the one that I U is one of my picks.
And I stressed up until like an hour ago that
we had done this, even though I looked like twenty times. Yeah,
I know, I I. Um, I thought that too when
I first saw it, but the article so new, there's
(00:42):
no way we did. And then, um, I think what
it was Chuck was probably the counterfeiting episode. Yeah, you
probably got that one really crossed over a lot. I
think you're right. We did do a good one for
everybody who's not familiar on counterfeiting. I don't remember exactly when,
but go check it out because it was good. Um.
And the reason why the two things would have crossed
(01:03):
over is because when most people think of Chuck the
Secret Service, which we're talking about today, they think of,
you know, dudes, big dudes in suits stark suits, sunglasses,
got the wire in their ear. Every once a while
they put their finger in the ear to look cool.
You know, I thought that's just if they had, you know,
your wax building up. Maybe that's the other ear. Um,
(01:25):
And that they're usually running alongside the president as he
or eventually she um is driving down the road, right, Yeah. Sure,
But the Secret Services test with doing way more than that,
and that's actually protecting the president or the vice president
of the first Lady or certain other people. That's actually
secondary to their main role. And that role actually came
(01:48):
decades after the Secret Service was first established. Yeah, I
mean I think secondary. I took issue in the article
when I read that, But I think secondary in terms
of allocated uh personnel, right, but for sure primary and importance. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
for sure, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, I
(02:09):
think protecting the president's life is more important than catching counterfeiters, right,
But a much much smaller allocation of people are actually
on that protection force. Yeah, and I think that's I
get the impression that that's the glamorous um assignment, you know,
like protecting the president specifically. It's probably pretty pretty plumb.
But um, that that again, that's that's not what the
(02:33):
bulk of people in the Secret Service are doing at
any given point in time. All right, So should we
go back in time a bit? Yeah? Two, Uh the
close of the Civil War, of the American Civil War specifically, uh,
and this was an eighteen sixty five and very with
a great deal of keeping irony. Uh. I did not
(02:53):
know this. This maybe the fact of the show. President
Abraham Lincoln um officially signed the legislation to create the
Secret Service, um the evening that he was killed dead, Yes,
that day, right, he signed it and then went to
the Ford Theater, I believe. Yeah. So ironic in one
(03:13):
sense that you know, obviously you can't look at that
and say, you know, it has no irony whatsoever. But
not ironic when you look at what he was signing
at the time, which was not hey, we need somebody
to protect presidents, because that didn't come along until uh
well just um, like less than thirty years later, is
that right? Twenty nine? Yeah. Um, informal protection started with
(03:38):
Grover Cleveland, but after McKinley's assassination nineteen o one was
when they said, hey, maybe we need to really just
codify this agency and I'll tell you about irony. It
turns out that when McKinley was assassinated, there were three
Secret Service agents flanking him at the time. Yeah, I
(03:59):
read up about that one. That's one I wasn't too
familiar with. I wasn't either, but it was pretty fascinating. Um.
And then it was an anarchist, correct, an anarchist in Buffalo,
New York, who said who came for the assassination and
stayed for the hot wings? I also read about Garfield.
(04:20):
Garfield didn't get any mentioned in here. Um, he he was.
He definitely served to make the Secret Service kind of
become part of presidential protection, and that he was the
second of three sitting presidents to be assassinated technically while
the Secret Service was in existence. So when that that
(04:42):
assassination plot against Grover Cleveland was uncovered, they were like,
all right, oh right, we really need to do something
about this. Yeah, I think we should cover assassination and
assassination attempts in full, because they're just far more than
I Then I thought, like, once I was looking into this,
I forgot that Clinton had a couple of of not
(05:03):
so serious attempts. The one guy that you know, shot
at the White House. And then the other dude tried
to fly a stole a Cessna, remember that, and tried
to fly it into White House. I forgot about that,
and both of them, by all accounts, were assassination attempts.
Just I would call them clumsy, that's yeah. But yeah,
(05:24):
there's been a lot more than I thought. So maybe
we should just knock that out one day. Let's do it.
I can't believe we haven't already. But today, if we're
talking Secret Service, just by the numbers, about six hundred
people work there. About those or special agents. Another hundred
(05:45):
are what's called uniform division officers, and then a couple
of thousand plus and change of admin types, tech support,
just people who keep the agency running and UM there
apparently there have been women there since nine so I
thought was somewhat progressive. UM. And then as of today,
(06:10):
there's the first outsider in the the hundred year history,
or no, in about a hundred years. I guess there
have been outsiders previously, but the first non Secret Service
agent to to rise to UM director level has been
appointed by Trump. Actually a guy named text text Als
(06:31):
General former Marine Corps General Randolph Texts. Owls is it
als al's ales Alice alice is another way to say it. Uh.
And you mentioned women, and of course, very famously Julia
Pearson briefly lead the agency when Obama was in there.
But as we'll see later on, there were quite a
number of kind of things that happened in a row
(06:54):
that we're very embarrassing for the Secret Service Agency. So
she she forced out or resigned or kind of what's
the difference. I think what's the difference is the impression
I have so UM, I think her tenure kind of
coincide at she kind of takes the brunt from what
I understand, of the blame for something that that was
(07:17):
part of a culture that has long been around part
of your Secret Service, UM. And apparently one of the
big problems is that it is in a thoroughly understaffed
executive branch agency, like the the people who are at
tasked with protecting the president and the president's family and
(07:38):
the vice president vice president's family. UM, they are thoroughly overworked,
and they also have a long standing party culture too,
and as a result, you have a lot of burnout
and very low morale. Apparently chucked. There was a survey
done of three hundred and five federal agencies and two
thousand and sixteen and the Secret Service rated dead last
(08:02):
for employee satisfaction. Yeah, I mean that that says at all.
They're not somewhere in the middle. They were number three
oh five, right, So apparently at the time of this
survey they were hot. They were operating with five hundred
fewer people than they were authorized to hire, so they
were there. It's clearly an overwork department, yes, very much. So.
(08:26):
Apparently they've added several people since several Yeah, like seven
I think seven people, yeah, seven or eight hundred people. Uh.
And I think that's partially because they just were woefully
and understaffed, and partially because the current president has more
family than um past presidents for sure, um more adult
(08:48):
children and their kids, and more travel going on to
weekend places all over the country. So that's just gonna
require more staffing, right, which is you know, probably good
they needed to higher up anyway. So you want to
talk history, chuck history the Service. I know, we kind
of went back to eighteen sixty five, so let's stay there.
(09:09):
We've been doing all this from eighteen sixty five the
whole time. It turns out that's right. So that what
the reason why the Secret Service was initially created was
to combat counterfeiting, right, And I think we said in
our our Counterfeiting episode, UM, there was just a ton
of counterfeit bank notes in circulation in the States at
the time, because if you were a bank or if
(09:31):
you were just some guy who had a bunch of
money and could gain the trust of people, you could
issue your own currency there for a while, so it
was really easy to print money at the time. Yeah,
it's um, the stat here is hard to believe, but
of all the money was fake, all the money. That's
just ridiculous. Yeah, so Lincoln knew that was a problem.
(09:53):
UM started up the service in eighteen sixty five, and
just a couple of years after that. So you know what,
why don't we expand your duties UM to like fraud, smuggling,
UM mail robbery and stuff like that, and and we'll
stick around for some of the older stuff. But since
then it's just sort of been expanded. It seems like
(10:17):
a lot to me to include other things. But I
don't know how the government runs sometimes as far as
like well we need someone to monitor like fishing scams online,
so it seems like the Secret Service is kind of like,
let's just give it to them. But I'm sure that's
not correct. You know, I thought the designation of stuff
(10:37):
was pretty odd as well, for sure, But um, that
is kind of how it's gone. It's they there as
long as it has to do with law enforcement. The
Secret Service feels pretty good about giving a crack at it.
Yeah for sure. So, Um, besides the counterfeiting and all
that stuff today, Uh, not only do they have to
(10:57):
protect the president and vice president, they have to protect
their families, um, all the former presidents and there are
a lot more living former presidents now, which is another
reason they need more people. Um. Medical science is fault
from all the spouses, um, all the children under sixteen
when you're a candidate running for president, like a major one,
(11:19):
I doubt if well, I'm not going to make fun
of anyone on the campaign trail that. I don't know
if Jeff Busch had had a detail or he actually
he may have. Jeff Bush is probably born with the detail, yeah,
because he's he's linked twice over to the presidency, but
not where accounted. Um. And then uh, all the spouses um,
(11:42):
foreign heads of state while they visit and basically from
what I gather, they can be assigned to protect anyone
at any time if someone thinks it's necessary. So I
think you're right about that last part that if a
president says, hey, I want you guys to protect this
person while they're here, that's fine. But from what I saw,
(12:04):
I think it was a New York Times rundown based
on um budgets. They they seem to say, No, it's
basically like the Secret Service protects the president, the vice president,
of their families, um, former presidents, that kind of thing,
and that things like a foreign head of state would
be covered by the Diplomatic Security Service of the State Compartment.
That there's a ton of other federal security agencies that
(12:27):
are running around Washington that people confuse for the Secret Service,
but the secior Service, their mission is actually pretty pretty
um uh narrow as far as protection goes. Yeah, and
imagine they all are in touch with one another two
just to make sure everyone butts, everyone's butts are covered.
They're probably like, hey, how far can you pee? Oh no,
(12:48):
let's see how far you compete, or they like, you know,
we got a lot of dignitaries coming in and you
guys got over a Secret Service and like, man, uh,
all we have left is Ronnie and you don't want
any guarding anybody. You know. He's good with phishing scams
and that's it. Uh So the other thing it kind
of surprised me is, um, big events. They are these
(13:08):
things called National Special Security Events and uh they're under
Department of Homeland Security. Now, so this can cover things
like the Super Bowl. If there are enough you know,
uh important people at an event like this, then the
Secret Service might be there. Yeah, which I mean makes sense.
(13:29):
And I'm sure like the local law enforcement just loves
the Secret Service coming in and bossing them around, you know,
but they do because it's the Super Bowl a k a.
The Big Game, that's right. Um, And then you were saying,
also it seemed like give it to the Secret Service
whenever you look at their history. A couple of good
examples of that are the Treasury Police. The revenuers basically
(13:53):
got folded into the Secret Service, and I think nineteen
seven and um, they took over the White how Police
Force in right, So there's a lot of law enforcement
underneath this this uh the title of Secret Service. Uh yeah.
Another thing that I had never even heard of Electronic
(14:15):
Crimes Tasks Forces. Yeah, I think that's kind of new. Yeah,
the e C t fs. And this is after eleven
and the Patriot Act, and they said, hey, you know what,
we need to create these e C t fs UM
basically to prevent attacks on America UM through cybercrime. Yea.
(14:36):
So these are I mean think they're what thirty nine
of them all over America and Europe, working together with
other countries, other financial Crimes task forces. And this is
the stuff that you know, doesn't get any of the glory,
you know, huh, it's all supposed to be pretty This
is kind of hush hush to begin with. UM, I think,
unless it goes wrong, right, But they seemed I looked
(14:59):
into they see to kind of focus on UM forensics
like going over computers or devices for evidence or whatever. UM.
They investigate data breaches and network intrusions. They do cyber intelligence,
so I guess they gather intelligence from networks, but also
from like some of those devices they're doing forensic work on.
(15:21):
It's probably some of the more important work being done,
to be honest, it really is. They're basically tasked with
guarding the financial sector of the US, and I assume
probably some of foreign countries, especially in Europe too. But
then they're also doing real like low level stuff too,
like credit card theft, identity theft um. So they're basically
anything any crime that can be done using a computer
(15:44):
or computer network. They seem to be fighting with the
e C t f S. Yeah. Should we take a break, Yeah,
all right, let's do that, and we're gonna talk a
little bit about the sexiest assignment of the mall. Alright,
(16:21):
Chuck you uh, you said the we would hear about
the sexiest position of the mall. What is that? The
PPD the Presidential Protection Division, So this is the one
that everyone thinks of a secret service when you see
Ronald Reagan being covered up and shoved in the back
(16:41):
of a limo when Jerry Ford moved to Springfield. Yeah,
or like you mentioned, jogging alongside the limousine, we're jogging
alongside a tubby blow Bill Clinton, yeah, or riding horseback
alongside Ronald Reagan. Oh yeah, that's right. I forgot he
used to do that sometimes. That's one of the things
(17:03):
this article points out is you gotta you gotta take
up the hobbies of the president and Clinton very famously,
you know, trotted along various wooded paths, and then Reagan
would have the Secret Service round up union organizers and
then he'd ride over him with his horse. Well, apparently
there's a lot of horseback riding that goes on, but
(17:25):
Reagan's was pretty intense. Like he was a real horse guy.
The guy was a cowboy movie cowboy come to life. Yeah,
so he apparently you had to really learn to ride
if you're on Reagan's team, I got you know, it's
not just like trotting along like Clinton probably liked to do. Right. Yeah.
Do you remember that Saturday Night Live when Clinton was
(17:45):
first elected and it was Phil Hartman playing him. He
was out jogging and he just he kept stopping into
McDonald's on his jogging. It's a big joke. But wouldn't
you wouldn't you, like, as a Secret Service agent, want
to just be like, you know, be a lot safer
and easier for everybody if you just hit the treadmill.
Yeah right, and watch television as your as your main hobby. Right, Well,
(18:08):
I think that's kind of going on now. Um, all right,
so this is the one that you talked about having
a really high burnout rate because it's um. Well, first
of all, there's the stress of I can die and
am willing to die for on my on my job. Yeah,
and apparently there's like this, did you hear that there's
a myth that they have to take an oath to
(18:30):
take a bullet for the president? I had never heard
that as specifically an oath, and I was glad to
know that that was true or untrue? Right, it was untrue. Yes,
there is no such out right. No, it's apparently if
you are a secret service agent, you just know that
that might be part of the job, and you're when
(18:52):
you show up that day, you're willing to do it. Correct,
it's supposedly, um. But beyond all the stresses of dying
on the job like that, um, the the schedule itself
is just really tough. Um. And I've seen a lot
of different breakdowns of the on and off schedules. So
I don't know if this one is the gospel truth.
But the one in our article at least says two
(19:13):
weeks of a day shift, two weeks of a midnight shift,
two weeks of an evening shift, and then two weeks
of training. So I guess training is just continuous. Yeah.
What's weird though, is I had seen, at least back
in the sixties, training was code for fill out these
forms that say you did all this physical fitness. So
if there was like, uh, if there was two weeks
(19:35):
of training, it seems like that. It's almost like, I
don't know if it is anymore, but that would have
been like a two week break, which frankly, I don't
really blame them for that kind of schedule. Yeah, they
go and they undergo the same training regiment as Major
League Baseball umpires. Right. But the thing is, Chuck, is
it's like, if you're tasked with protecting the president, everyone knows,
(19:56):
like any organizational psychologist, anybody can tell you that when
you do different shift work, you're going to mentally suffer foundly. Right,
So why are we putting the people who are protecting
the president and and um, you know, the first Lady
and and the vice president. Why are we putting them
through that kind of mental torture that doesn't make any sense?
(20:19):
Is it really just a staffing thing? Well, I mean,
what's the answer. Then someone's got to take the midnight shift, sure,
but that person should be like you got the midnight
shift for a year. Yeah, so you can your sleep
pattern can change, and then you could be like you know,
when you when you rotate out to the to the
day shift or the morning shift or whatever, you might
(20:41):
have a two week transition period or so who knows,
maybe you get two weeks off or something between. I
don't know. There's gotta be a better way than this.
This just is grueling. Well, I do know too, that
that permanent midnight shifts can um leave the weirdness. Oh yeah,
Like that's what they did with Ronnie, right, That's why
Ronnie's so unreliable, because you know, on the fourth month
(21:01):
of his midnight shift, things got strange, he got kind
of pasty. I should I shouldn't have said Ronnie, because
now Ee's gonna think I'm thinking Reagan. No, everybody knows,
we call him Gepper. Um. So you if you are
on that detail of the sitting president, like you're the
(21:22):
cream of the crop of the PPD. Yeah, which is
kind of a double edged sword because you want somebody
with a lot of experience who's proven himself for herself,
um over the years. But at the same time you're
also starting to run up against age and slower reflexes. Um.
And so if you if you look at some of
(21:46):
the agents who are around the president, you're gonna see
somebody who's probably in their forties, if not over forty.
Uh And that's that's just you know, if you could
have a guy or girl who's like twenty seven thirty even,
they're probably going to be faster on the draw than
that forty year old five year old. But they also
(22:07):
might not know to notice certain things that the forty
five year old would, right, because they're on Snapchat exactly.
They're like l O L president just fell over for
some reason. Uh b r b he needs help. Um,
if you are, you can still be on the pp
D though, and not actually be on the detail of
protecting the president in that moment, Like if you can
(22:30):
be on the pp D and be on the assessment team,
like any any sort of well, first of all, anyone
who's ever made a threat on the president in any way,
whether it's Twitter or like a letter that shows up
at the White House, they are thoroughly investigated in person.
Oh yeah, for sure, I hadn't realized. Uh. And any
(22:54):
any kind of advance um work they have to do,
like if the president's traveling UM, which you know happens
all the time. There's always some sort of advance um
intelligence going on about where the president's going, the town,
if they're visiting a restaurant, if they're staying in a hotel, um,
all kinds of like background checks are going on with
(23:15):
every employee that works there. Yeah, and like if the
president follows a bit of a pattern, you know, like
going to the same place like a win or White
House or a Western white House or something like that,
like that place is covered, it's checked out, it's probably
guarded all the time. So they'll do advance once and
then maybe updated here or there. But what's post is
(23:36):
the real headache and nightmare for the Secret Service is
when they're going to places they haven't been before or
haven't been in a while, and so they've got to
do all of this incredible analysis and planning. They've got
to figure out, Okay, well, this is the route the
president is going to take through the hotel. Uh, and
then if this happens, then here's the escape route. If
(23:57):
an incident happens, you know, in the next corridor, here's
the scape route. Here are two alternate routes to the
original route. Um. And look, there's a pretty good place
for a sniper to be, so we need to keep
our eyes up there. If there's a fire, we need
to leave here. Um. This that's just like one place.
And then like you said, they also do background checks too,
so that any employee apparently who has any kind of
(24:19):
criminal record, um. At say like a hotel that the
president is going to be staying and they're not allowed
to work while the president's there, which is like half
the staff of every hotel. I would guess that that
could be kind of problematic for some hotels, you know,
not to say that their staff of criminals, but at
the very least, well it said even like yeah, minor,
minor stuff like they're gonna say, you tell Ronnie to
(24:42):
stay home, and the manage would be like I thought
Ronnie was with you, and then Ronnie's and the presses
enter and the financial system collapses. The president, if they
stay in a hotel there, they will own three floors
of that hotel in full um, the one the president
is on, one above it, and the one below it. Um.
And apparently it's I read one little insider thing on
(25:05):
when the president stays at a at a hotel that
they normally don't. It's just a nightmare for the hotel. Yeah,
in every way, yep, you know, and for the people
who were staying there, especially if it was sudden, you know,
because um, you don't have a reservation there anymore. True,
Like ts, sorry, what else could you do? You could
(25:26):
be on the video in the video department of the
p p D because they film all this stuff pp
D a V club. Basically, Uh, every motorcade is filmed
or videoed. Obviously I say filmed because I'm old. Um,
anytime the president's traveling like that, all this stuff is
on tape again, not on tape reels because like there's
(25:55):
a Prouder film, like you need to have this stuff
in case of an attack or an assassination attempt. Um,
so you can you know, rewind and watch the crowd. Right,
it's just handy, but it's kind of reactive, whereas like
the advanced people are proactive and trying to prevent an
incident from ever taking place. Right, did you mention the details?
(26:18):
They are specific to like people who are permanently guarded.
So there, if you're a Secret Service agent, you might
be assigned to like a field office, and if the
president comes to your state, you might be called up
to go work what's called the standing position, which is
literally just standing around. Right, So if you're if it's
(26:40):
a hotel room, this article uses a pretty good example.
If it's a hotel that the President is staying at,
the advanced team who goes right before the president arrives
with the President will say clear to steer a stairwell,
checked it for anything, cleared it, and then you come
in and you stand there and make sure nothing changes
to that stairwell. No one else comes in. Uh, no
one drops anything off, there's nothing like that. That's your job,
(27:03):
right then, that's probably a pretty common assignment for somebody
who works protection in the Secret Service, right Yeah. But
if you are protecting, say the first Lady, you're going
to be part of a detail that is a crew
of people whose job it is to protect the first Lady,
and they get to be pretty close apparently U or
(27:23):
it can happen, I guess you mean emotionally, romantically, no,
emotionally surprised that hadn't been a wrong come yet. It's
like Three's Company, but in the White House. But it's
funny you mentioned that stairway detail like, that's literally the
worst job you can get as a p A on
the film set. Yeah, that's pretty bad. It's called lock
(27:43):
up where you're like three blocks away just saying no, three,
you can't go around this corner, right, And there's always
a guy like me who's like, uh, you can't legally
keep me from walking on the sidewalks public sidewalk. J
I was the worst lock up guy when I was
a p A because I would always just be like,
all right, you're totally right. People choke you look them
through again. I'm like, dude, what am I gonna do,
(28:05):
like physically restrain somebody. I always felt so bad when
we were shooting our TV show. Yeah, when people were
redirected from their normal path. You know, we look at
the bright side. You didn't have to feel bad for
too long. That's there's also the food detail. Um, and
even in the White House with the very much trusted
(28:28):
White House uh cooking staff, there's someone in the kitchen
from Secret Service watching over that stuff. Yeah, making sure
seven didn't have any kind of break and is now
trying to poison the president. Correct. Apparently if you want
to order a pizza though, as the president, like literally
I don't want the White House pizza. I want the
(28:48):
pizza from whatever. Uh, you can do that, but they
say that they send it to, um a different address.
They send it to the Naval Observatory usually just to
kind of throw them off the scent. Seems smart, but
certainly not fool proof. No, you know, but I guess,
(29:10):
especially now that you just told everybody, I guess it
couldn't poison every pizza going to the Naval observatory though,
because they would be outed. I don't know, like some
evil organization like Specter probably could. Yeah, that's true. Good point. Um,
this is a pretty is that a good point? I think?
So this is a pretty expensive process to the fiscal year.
(29:35):
That is uh seven d and fifty million dollars on
just protective operations, which is about half of its overall budget,
which is a you know, I mean, it's worth it, obviously,
but that's a lot of dough going towards the very
smallest thing that you do. When half your money is
spent on that, then uh, you're gonna run out of money, right, Yeah,
(29:57):
And they did actually um the fiscal year a gooes.
We're recording actually before the end of the two thousand,
seventeen fiscal year. But the Secret Service said, UM, we're
gonna run out of money like right around the end
of the fiscal year, and we still have three more
months of operations that we have to do, So what
do you want to do? You know? And apparently there
(30:20):
was also I was I was reading in the Washington
Post about um a dispute over money about actually terms
of a lease when um this the Secret Service tried
to rent out office space in the headquarters in Trump
Tower that the Trump organization UM said you should go
(30:41):
find office space elsewhere because they couldn't come to terms
on a lease somehow, And so the Secret Service moved
down to a trailer on the sidewalk in front of
Trump Tower, which I guess they found out that they
burned through all their money and they were like, you
guys go to a trailer on the sidewalk. Yeah, that's
probably the most expense of property in the world that
has a trailer on their front lawn. It's pretty funny, um,
(31:05):
And we should mention we joked about the dark glasses
that was actually do sort of function. Um, they're not
just trying to look cool, they're trying to um keep
their eyes hidden for what they're looking at. Yeah, you
know what was that one agent's name and uh um
taxi driver in the line of fire. No, no, it
(31:26):
has nothing to do Secret Service Matrix. The matrix. Oh
this is Smith, right, the main bad guy I think so. Yeah.
I thought he did a good job rocking the glasses
and everything. So that literally had nothing to do with
anything but him looking cool and glasses. Right, Okay, you
want to take a break, Yeah, let's do. I think
I just threw us off. We probably should and regroup.
(32:00):
H all right, Chuck. We talked a little bit about
other stuff that the Secret Service gets down on UM counterfeiting,
(32:20):
male fraud. Those are some throwbacks, but then they've got
the whole new cyber crime thing with like fishing and
stuff like that. But they also have UM to combat
this crime. They've accrued some pretty cool stuff over there
over the years, not the least of which is an
ink library. Yeah. This I think is for me the
(32:42):
coolest part of this show. So this article types of
ink I saw eleven thousand, four hundred. That's believable. Yeah.
So the idea is they literally have collected since the
nineteen twenties, what they think is every kind end of
ink and every kind of pin that is ever been made. Yeah,
(33:06):
that's the goal at least so they can use that. UM.
I think when like when Bick makes a new pin,
they will send them their ank and stuff. Otherwise they
have to collect it. And this is who I didn't like.
You know, if they ever get a letter about any
kind of crime that is under their per view, they
have a database to compare it to UM. And not
(33:28):
just with things like ransom notes and threatening letters. Apparently
they'll use that kind of stuff for if somebody's forged
a baseball signed by Babe Ruth or something. I said,
Oh interesting, Um, if it's like a really high profile
crime that has to do with ink, they'll they'll freelance
for somebody. Interesting. Yeah, and they use gas chromatography. It's
(33:51):
not just like this one looks black. Oh, this one's black.
I figured out who did it. Um. But the the apparently,
if you're a field agent going around own the world,
the Ink Library guys will ask you to like grab
some pens while you're in you know, Cartagena. Oh really,
it's like a standing request. They also have an information
(34:15):
database for handwriting too, the forensic information system for handwriting
database or phish Yeah, decent acronym yes see, yeah, but
it breaks our one rule of acronymic, which is just
kind of forgetting about another word. So it looks cooler
right yeah than fished, right right exactly, Or it could
(34:38):
be the Phish database. I guess that's true fish. So
this is basically just a handwriting database, and I imagine
there's a lot of overlap here with FBI and CIA,
don't you think, um what else? Ninety four they added uh,
providing Evidence and Assistance to Missing and Exploited Children. Yeah,
I thought that was pretty cool. Uh. And their big
(35:00):
bag though, was really um counterfeiting in bank fraud. Um.
They executed twenty one more than arrests um for stuff
like that and recovered it. They recover a lot of
money every year too, right. Yeah. There was one bust
in two thousand and sixteen and Lima, Peru, where they
(35:20):
recovered like three million in counterfeit US dollars and fifty
thou counterfeit euros. Not bad, which I think was their
biggest single bus to date. It's a lot of a
lot of mula. It is a lot of fake moula.
So do you what if you want to be what
if Josh wants to be in the Secret Service? I
don't think that's gonna work out for me. Well, it's
too late first, they Yeah, you have to be between
(35:44):
twenty one and thirty seven. You have to do a
pp screen. Yeah. Um, they don't want you to have
any visible tattoos or piercings, which I imagine that's probably
getting harder and harder these days. Yeah, it's probably not
a good look to have, like the presidential detailed guy
having those big ear ring gauges. Right, So what those
(36:06):
are called gauge? Yeah, you know, like one of those
big two inters. Can you fit a hot dog through it? Yes?
I can. You're hired. Uh No tattoos, a piercings? What else?
You gotta pass that polygraph? You gotta take a physical. Um,
gotta get that Secret Service Uh top security clearance? What
(36:26):
can take? It can take geez nine months to get that. Yeah,
and I looked into that. Depending on what level of
security you're looking for, it says nine nine months here,
but I saw they could do it in like sixty days.
But depending on how thorough they go, like they're either
going to go back five years or ten years into
your past. They're gonna interview your coworkers, your neighbors, your friends,
(36:48):
your pastor whoever, and they're gonna ask him all sorts
of personal questions like is uh is this guy a freak?
You know what I mean, like a freak freak? Um?
Does he you like to get wasted? Uh? Does he
love America? What country? Does he like as much of
not more than America? Which is stuff like that? Like, seriously,
(37:08):
they're gonna they they're gonna look into what your foreign
preferences are. You know, Ronnie, he was always going on
about Spain. Yeah, I couldn't get enough that explains it.
His whole catchphrase was oh ay. So if you go
through all that, you take a written test, you have
an interview. If you pass all that junk, the new
you are sent to lovely Glencoe, Georgia, right here in
(37:31):
our our home state, to the Federal Law Enforcement Training
Center for ten weeks of training. Uh. This is down
down near the Georgia coast where it's hot and humid
and muggy. Yeah, but if you want some good shrimp,
it's a good place to train, I imagine. So. Um,
so you know, ten weeks of hardcore training, then an
(37:52):
eighteen week course at a place called the James S.
Rowley Center in Beltsville, Maryland, which is basically Camp X. Yeah,
kind of the special Special Agent Basic Training Center. Um. Yeah,
and that's the one where it's probably i mean they
teach you how to shoot guns. I'm sure you already
know at this point. I doubt if it's like I
(38:13):
never held one of these emergency medicine that's a big one. Um.
I saw that they travel with the president with um
a full full supply of the president's blood, which makes sense.
I never really thought about that, like as many leaders
(38:33):
are as in the president right then, I don't know,
I mean it said, uh, they said what they they're
trained in what's called ten minute medicine, which is they
never want to have the president more than ten minutes
away from a trauma center. And uh, not only that,
when the president is traveling, they have an agent at
the nearest hospital already who has gone through the operating
(38:55):
room and emergency staff. So they have these bags of
blood if a transfusion is knee did and um, you know,
basically in that just that ten minutes, they need to
be able to keep the president alive, Yeah, which was
a big deal. When Reagan was shot. Yeah, you want
to talk about that, Yeah, I mean he he was
shot in the chest. It was it was bad yeah,
(39:15):
by John Hinckley Jr. Right, Yeah, or as our articles
just says, a crazed assassin. Yeah. I thought that was
really weird, Like maybe the author was like, I'm not
putting his name in print, I'm not giving him any press.
It definitely seemed weird to not say who it was.
And Hinckley was trying to impress Jodie Foster so that
she would fall in love with them and they could
move into the White House if I remember correctly. Right. Yeah,
(39:37):
So to do that, right, you had to get Reagan
out of the way. And Reagan was coming out of
the Washington Hilton Hotel hed just given a speech. This
is in I think, uh, January one. It was early
in night one, and um Hinckley walked up and just
shot him at least twice I think got him once
in the shoulder and then once in the chest. It
(40:00):
might be confusing with another assassination. He definitely got him
in the chest, like you said. And there was this
agent named Jerry Parr, who was I think like fifty
at the time. Um, and he immediately threw I think
he threw his coat over Reagan. Threw Reagan into the limo,
landed on him and shut the door and told the
limo driver to drive. And Reagan UM was like, I
(40:24):
think you broke one of my ribs throw me into
the limo, did you know that? And he said that's
the bullet, sir, right. But yeah, that's when Parr was like, oh,
you got hit. So he told the limo to go
to the hospital instead of the White House. Yeah, I
think he was. Um had blood coming out of his mouth,
which was the surefire telltale sign that he had. There
(40:47):
was a lung punctured apparently when you're bleeding from the mouth,
and so he knew, no, no, no, we we need
to go straight to the hospital and not too whatever
medical staff we have at the White House. Ye, saved
his life, he did it. He actually became convinced from
what I saw that um uh, he had been chosen
by God to save Reagan's life. And he became like
a pastor after that. Oh yeah interesting yeah, well, um,
(41:13):
the speaking of limos, the driver of that limo is
trained I mean the presidential limo is bulletproof, flat tire proof,
um as bomb proof as it can be. And the
driver is trained. It's like a you know, it's like
a trained stunt driver, right, and it's a Secret Service driver, right, Yeah,
(41:35):
And they need to be able to they're trained to
do those like super cool looking one eight moves to
get the heck out of there, to drive backwards at
high speeds, and um, all the other stuff that you
see stuntman stunt drivers do these, the Secret Service limo
drivers can do so. On the other end of the spectrum,
speaking of limo drivers from the Secret Service, um is
(41:57):
JFK's assassination. Um. I read this in this article didn't
even mention that, right. It's like in the Secret Service
successes and failures not even mentioned at all. So I
read this article on it from Vanity Fair that was
called could the Secret Service have saved JFK? Go read it?
(42:18):
Totally worthwhile read. But they um, apparently the Secret Service guys,
not all of them, but a handful of them. We're
out partying like all night, uh the night before into
the morning, um, and showed up after three or four
maybe five hours of sleep in some cases, uh, ready
(42:39):
for duty. And if you look at it through that lens,
apparently you can see how yeah, it looks a lot
like being hungover and maybe even still a little drunk.
Definitely affected their responses. And one of the guys, um
was the limo driver who UM really like took it
personally immediately that he had failed. But he he did.
(43:03):
He didn't swerve, he didn't speed up, He just tapped
the brake a little bit and actually, if anything, gave
um Lee Harvey Oswald a clear second fatal shot. UM.
And they think that it was because of this culture
of like drinking and partying that was just endemic at
the time, UM, and that it actually led to JFK's potential.
(43:27):
Potentially he his life could have been saved, is what
the article says. Obviously could have died from the neck wound,
but they didn't do enough in retrospect to protect against
that second fatal shot. That definitely did it. Yeah, it's
worth reading man. Well, I mean, you talk about the
party atmosphere, and I think early on some listeners MND
(43:48):
have thought you were kidding around. But that's really the
case apparently, UM. And it probably has a lot to
do with just how understaff and overwork they are that
they kind of unwind. Um. They have been known to
unwind and pretty epic fashion. Um. And and recently and
in the last like five or six years, have been
some pretty high profile blemishes on the agency. One in
(44:12):
two thousand twelve when a bunch of agents a hundred
and seventy five I went to Columbia um before Obama visit,
and twelve of them were caught taking prostitutes back to
their hotel. And apparently the same kind of thing happened
the year before in El Salvador Um. And then wasn't
there another kind of big party bust or something? Yeah Amsterdam?
(44:36):
Oh right, well, of course, yeah, there were three agents
were found passed out drunk, one of them in the
hallway of the hotel that the President was staying at
the below and um, they got sent home and put
on leave for that. And they came like right on
the heels well two years later after the first scandal
(44:56):
in two thousand twelve, and that was on the heels
of Oscar or take a hernandez um shooting at the
White House. Why he did that, well, I mean he
claimed he was Jesus I hadn't. I hadn't had a
chance to look up at on that one, and I
just didn't know what his motive was. Yeah, I mean,
(45:17):
by all accounts, I think he was mentally ill. He
claimed like he made a video for Oprah Winfrey incident
to her claiming he was Jesus. And it's funny if
you look at the guy, he looks like Jesus. Well,
I mean, whatever your conception of Jesus is, I don't know,
but the kind of the classic Jesus um figure that
you see a lot, the guy kind of looked a
(45:38):
lot like him, like more more than you do. Let's say,
I could I could see that most people do look
more like Jesus than me. But he he fired a
semi automatic weapon rifle at the White House quite a
few shots. And this was just kind of bungled. The
investigation was bungled. They had no clue what was happening,
(46:01):
what was going on. It took four full days to
realize that he actually hit the White House. And that's
when a housekeeper said, you know, there's broken glass and
cement on the floor in here. Remember, Michelle Obama was
really upset. I can imagine that this happened. They weren't
home at the time, but I think one of the
daughters was um. And this is, you know, after the
(46:23):
same thing. It happened in the Clinton administration. Yeah, I
don't remember that at all. The Clinton one. Yeah, that
was another guy that just you know, shot at the
White House. Basically, yeah, I think he did it from
the street, but this guy actually got through. Oh wait,
was this one from the street too? I think it
was from the fence, Okay, but no, the guy that
got through was a guy with a knife. Yes, made
(46:46):
it through several lines of security, through the fence and
made it all the way to the north portico, which
is basically the front door of the White House, with
a knife before he was finally apprehended. Said he was
caught sprinting towards the front door with a knife. But yeah,
that was And again, the capital or the White House
police are part of the Secret Service too, And these
(47:07):
are the people who look like you know, paramilitary police
officers patrolling the White House. They're part of the Secret
Service police. Wow. So yeah it was. There were a
bunch of controversies that rocked the place, which is why
one some people are like, oh, it might be good
that this Marine Corps colonel who has no connection to
(47:28):
the Secret Services coming in maybe bring in a fresh perspective,
because I guess there was a study that found that
it was an insular culture that has historically been resistant
to change. As the Congressional investigation, so who knows, but
they've done a lot of good too. Agreed. I can't can't,
(47:51):
just don't want to just end on the controversies, but man,
there's been some doozies. Are you got anything else? Yeah?
I got just a couple of more little things that
if you look up like coolest Secret Service secrets. There's
just an abundance of articles, um, from mental flaws to
breeders digest and I compiled a couple of these and
(48:12):
we've gone over most of them, but this one I
thought was neat Um. Secret Service isn't actually in the
Oval office most times, UM like inside the room. They're
right outside. But they have installed weight sensitive pressure pads
throughout the Oval office, so they know where the president
is at all times. Oh wow, that sounds like it's
(48:33):
made up, but it's supposedly true. I could see that. Um,
when the President delivers the State of the Union, they
hold one member of the cabinet behind hidden at Mount
Weather in case someone bombs the entire thing. That's like
that show Designated Survivor that I've never seen never What
(48:54):
is that? It's like, uh Keia not Kena Reeves Key
for Sutherland show where he's like a cabinet member who
who like, I think that very thing happened and like
there was bombing and it killed everybody and now he's president.
That's all I know. Uh what else? The headquarters of
Secret Service in Washington, d C. Does not have trash
(49:16):
cans anywhere near it on the sidewalk, okay, because you know,
put a bomb in there. Apparently Reagan carried a gun,
his own gun. I believe that right. He carried a
thirty eight in his briefcase and apparently uh Vice President
Bush didn't even know about it. Wow, really, that's what
it says. He found out the hard way. And then uh,
(49:40):
when he crossed drawnnee and some policy yeah, President Ronnie,
not oh yeah the gipper. Yeah, not Secret Service Ronnie.
When he crossed the gipper. Uh. And then finally, um,
apparently the code word for when there's a big private
investigation going on at the White House. They they're renovating
a room, so the First family gets out of the
(50:01):
house and they don't really know what's going on. And
so it said over the years, whenever you hear like
Clinton Obama renovated the treaty room, Clinton renovated Room Bush
renovated the briefing room. Clinton's was the music room. Apparently
those were all um private investigations going on. I don't understand. Well,
I mean, I guess they just they need to set
(50:24):
up shop in the White House and too even not
alert the first family that that's going on. They'll quote
renovate unquote a room. Wow. That sounds a little hinky
to me, though. It does like I would guess that
the president is a prize of just about everything that's
going on, including investigations. Yeah, there may be some more
clarity on that that someone will know an email us
(50:46):
about where did they come from Reader's digest Now I
think that, Uh well, boo, that was huff po a
bunch of commies. Yeah. Really, they'll say anything to make
the president look bad. Pe Well, don't take it seriously. Okay,
do you got anything else now? Uh no, sir? Okay, Well,
(51:06):
if you want to know more about the secret Service.
Go check out this article on how stuff works. And
since I said go check it out, it's time for
a listener mail. I'm gonna call this one of two
on Satanism that we're gonna read. I want to thank
you guys for the Satanism episode. I myself am a
Satanist and remember the Satanic Temple. I appreciate you voicing
(51:26):
my faith in objective and fair manner, but I do
take issue with you calling us hippies. Feel your summation
the various TST programs and that's the Satanic Church or
a temple uh to accurately represent much of what we
strive to do. But I wish you had taken the
time to go over the our core beliefs like you
did the Church of Satan. And then he sent them
to me, so I'll just read them, and he said,
(51:47):
here's a fiver for each of you. What wish um.
One should strive to act with compassion and empathy towards
all creatures. The struggle for justice is an ongoing and
necessary pursuit should prevail over laws and institutions. One's body
is invite, inviolable, subject to one's own will. Alone. The
(52:08):
freedoms of others should be respected, including the freedom to offend.
A belief should conform to our best scientific understanding of
the world. Uh, we should never care to distort scientific
facts to fit our beliefs. That's a good one. People
are fallible. If we make a mistake, we should do
our best directify it and resolve any harm. And finally,
every tenant is a guiding principle designed to inspire nobility
(52:30):
and action and thought. Yeah, so he said, the takeaway
basically is what we try and reflect as a focus
on scientific inquiry, nobility and action and thought and respect
for oneself and others. And he closes out by saying,
Haile satan and his name is Caleb Tarat Tuta Tera Tuta.
(52:53):
Sorry but I thought it was Caleb Tarantula, and I
was like, that's a great name for a Satanist, like
Peter Grim or if you want to get in touch
with this, like Caleb did, you can tweet to us.
I'm at josh Um Clark and at s Y s
K podcast on Twitter. You can hang out with Chuck
at Charles W. Chuck Bryant on Facebook dot com or
(53:14):
at Facebook dot com slash stuff. You should Know. You
can send us an email to Stuff podcast how stuff
Works dot com and has always joined us at our
home on the web. Stuff You Should Know dot com
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it how stuff Works dot com.
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry Rowland that
makes this stuff you should know. Continuing Law Enforcements saga,
(00:22):
this has got to be it. It's you say that
every time. I don't think this is it. Well, this
is the one that I U is one of my picks.
And I stressed up until like an hour ago that
we had done this, even though I looked like twenty times. Yeah,
I know, I I. Um, I thought that too when
I first saw it, but the article so new, there's
(00:42):
no way we did. And then, um, I think what
it was Chuck was probably the counterfeiting episode. Yeah, you
probably got that one really crossed over a lot. I
think you're right. We did do a good one for
everybody who's not familiar on counterfeiting. I don't remember exactly when,
but go check it out because it was good. Um.
And the reason why the two things would have crossed
(01:03):
over is because when most people think of Chuck the
Secret Service, which we're talking about today, they think of,
you know, dudes, big dudes in suits stark suits, sunglasses,
got the wire in their ear. Every once a while
they put their finger in the ear to look cool.
You know, I thought that's just if they had, you know,
your wax building up. Maybe that's the other ear. Um,
(01:25):
And that they're usually running alongside the president as he
or eventually she um is driving down the road, right, Yeah. Sure,
But the Secret Services test with doing way more than that,
and that's actually protecting the president or the vice president
of the first Lady or certain other people. That's actually
secondary to their main role. And that role actually came
(01:48):
decades after the Secret Service was first established. Yeah, I
mean I think secondary. I took issue in the article
when I read that, But I think secondary in terms
of allocated uh personnel, right, but for sure primary and importance. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
for sure, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, I
(02:09):
think protecting the president's life is more important than catching counterfeiters, right,
But a much much smaller allocation of people are actually
on that protection force. Yeah, and I think that's I
get the impression that that's the glamorous um assignment, you know,
like protecting the president specifically. It's probably pretty pretty plumb.
But um, that that again, that's that's not what the
(02:33):
bulk of people in the Secret Service are doing at
any given point in time. All right, So should we
go back in time a bit? Yeah? Two, Uh the
close of the Civil War, of the American Civil War specifically, uh,
and this was an eighteen sixty five and very with
a great deal of keeping irony. Uh. I did not
(02:53):
know this. This maybe the fact of the show. President
Abraham Lincoln um officially signed the legislation to create the
Secret Service, um the evening that he was killed dead, Yes,
that day, right, he signed it and then went to
the Ford Theater, I believe. Yeah. So ironic in one
(03:13):
sense that you know, obviously you can't look at that
and say, you know, it has no irony whatsoever. But
not ironic when you look at what he was signing
at the time, which was not hey, we need somebody
to protect presidents, because that didn't come along until uh
well just um, like less than thirty years later, is
that right? Twenty nine? Yeah. Um, informal protection started with
(03:38):
Grover Cleveland, but after McKinley's assassination nineteen o one was
when they said, hey, maybe we need to really just
codify this agency and I'll tell you about irony. It
turns out that when McKinley was assassinated, there were three
Secret Service agents flanking him at the time. Yeah, I
(03:59):
read up about that one. That's one I wasn't too
familiar with. I wasn't either, but it was pretty fascinating. Um.
And then it was an anarchist, correct, an anarchist in Buffalo,
New York, who said who came for the assassination and
stayed for the hot wings? I also read about Garfield.
(04:20):
Garfield didn't get any mentioned in here. Um, he he was.
He definitely served to make the Secret Service kind of
become part of presidential protection, and that he was the
second of three sitting presidents to be assassinated technically while
the Secret Service was in existence. So when that that
(04:42):
assassination plot against Grover Cleveland was uncovered, they were like,
all right, oh right, we really need to do something
about this. Yeah, I think we should cover assassination and
assassination attempts in full, because they're just far more than
I Then I thought, like, once I was looking into this,
I forgot that Clinton had a couple of of not
(05:03):
so serious attempts. The one guy that you know, shot
at the White House. And then the other dude tried
to fly a stole a Cessna, remember that, and tried
to fly it into White House. I forgot about that,
and both of them, by all accounts, were assassination attempts.
Just I would call them clumsy, that's yeah. But yeah,
(05:24):
there's been a lot more than I thought. So maybe
we should just knock that out one day. Let's do it.
I can't believe we haven't already. But today, if we're
talking Secret Service, just by the numbers, about six hundred
people work there. About those or special agents. Another hundred
(05:45):
are what's called uniform division officers, and then a couple
of thousand plus and change of admin types, tech support,
just people who keep the agency running and UM there
apparently there have been women there since nine so I
thought was somewhat progressive. UM. And then as of today,
(06:10):
there's the first outsider in the the hundred year history,
or no, in about a hundred years. I guess there
have been outsiders previously, but the first non Secret Service
agent to to rise to UM director level has been
appointed by Trump. Actually a guy named text text Als
(06:31):
General former Marine Corps General Randolph Texts. Owls is it
als al's ales Alice alice is another way to say it. Uh.
And you mentioned women, and of course, very famously Julia
Pearson briefly lead the agency when Obama was in there.
But as we'll see later on, there were quite a
number of kind of things that happened in a row
(06:54):
that we're very embarrassing for the Secret Service Agency. So
she she forced out or resigned or kind of what's
the difference. I think what's the difference is the impression
I have so UM, I think her tenure kind of
coincide at she kind of takes the brunt from what
I understand, of the blame for something that that was
(07:17):
part of a culture that has long been around part
of your Secret Service, UM. And apparently one of the
big problems is that it is in a thoroughly understaffed
executive branch agency, like the the people who are at
tasked with protecting the president and the president's family and
(07:38):
the vice president vice president's family. UM, they are thoroughly overworked,
and they also have a long standing party culture too,
and as a result, you have a lot of burnout
and very low morale. Apparently chucked. There was a survey
done of three hundred and five federal agencies and two
thousand and sixteen and the Secret Service rated dead last
(08:02):
for employee satisfaction. Yeah, I mean that that says at all.
They're not somewhere in the middle. They were number three
oh five, right, So apparently at the time of this
survey they were hot. They were operating with five hundred
fewer people than they were authorized to hire, so they
were there. It's clearly an overwork department, yes, very much. So.
(08:26):
Apparently they've added several people since several Yeah, like seven
I think seven people, yeah, seven or eight hundred people. Uh.
And I think that's partially because they just were woefully
and understaffed, and partially because the current president has more
family than um past presidents for sure, um more adult
(08:48):
children and their kids, and more travel going on to
weekend places all over the country. So that's just gonna
require more staffing, right, which is you know, probably good
they needed to higher up anyway. So you want to
talk history, chuck history the Service. I know, we kind
of went back to eighteen sixty five, so let's stay there.
(09:09):
We've been doing all this from eighteen sixty five the
whole time. It turns out that's right. So that what
the reason why the Secret Service was initially created was
to combat counterfeiting, right, And I think we said in
our our Counterfeiting episode, UM, there was just a ton
of counterfeit bank notes in circulation in the States at
the time, because if you were a bank or if
(09:31):
you were just some guy who had a bunch of
money and could gain the trust of people, you could
issue your own currency there for a while, so it
was really easy to print money at the time. Yeah,
it's um, the stat here is hard to believe, but
of all the money was fake, all the money. That's
just ridiculous. Yeah, so Lincoln knew that was a problem.
(09:53):
UM started up the service in eighteen sixty five, and
just a couple of years after that. So you know what,
why don't we expand your duties UM to like fraud, smuggling,
UM mail robbery and stuff like that, and and we'll
stick around for some of the older stuff. But since
then it's just sort of been expanded. It seems like
(10:17):
a lot to me to include other things. But I
don't know how the government runs sometimes as far as
like well we need someone to monitor like fishing scams online,
so it seems like the Secret Service is kind of like,
let's just give it to them. But I'm sure that's
not correct. You know, I thought the designation of stuff
(10:37):
was pretty odd as well, for sure, But um, that
is kind of how it's gone. It's they there as
long as it has to do with law enforcement. The
Secret Service feels pretty good about giving a crack at it.
Yeah for sure. So, Um, besides the counterfeiting and all
that stuff today, Uh, not only do they have to
(10:57):
protect the president and vice president, they have to protect
their families, um, all the former presidents and there are
a lot more living former presidents now, which is another
reason they need more people. Um. Medical science is fault
from all the spouses, um, all the children under sixteen
when you're a candidate running for president, like a major one,
(11:19):
I doubt if well, I'm not going to make fun
of anyone on the campaign trail that. I don't know
if Jeff Busch had had a detail or he actually
he may have. Jeff Bush is probably born with the detail, yeah,
because he's he's linked twice over to the presidency, but
not where accounted. Um. And then uh, all the spouses um,
(11:42):
foreign heads of state while they visit and basically from
what I gather, they can be assigned to protect anyone
at any time if someone thinks it's necessary. So I
think you're right about that last part that if a
president says, hey, I want you guys to protect this
person while they're here, that's fine. But from what I saw,
(12:04):
I think it was a New York Times rundown based
on um budgets. They they seem to say, No, it's
basically like the Secret Service protects the president, the vice president,
of their families, um, former presidents, that kind of thing,
and that things like a foreign head of state would
be covered by the Diplomatic Security Service of the State Compartment.
That there's a ton of other federal security agencies that
(12:27):
are running around Washington that people confuse for the Secret Service,
but the secior Service, their mission is actually pretty pretty
um uh narrow as far as protection goes. Yeah, and
imagine they all are in touch with one another two
just to make sure everyone butts, everyone's butts are covered.
They're probably like, hey, how far can you pee? Oh no,
(12:48):
let's see how far you compete, or they like, you know,
we got a lot of dignitaries coming in and you
guys got over a Secret Service and like, man, uh,
all we have left is Ronnie and you don't want
any guarding anybody. You know. He's good with phishing scams
and that's it. Uh So the other thing it kind
of surprised me is, um, big events. They are these
(13:08):
things called National Special Security Events and uh they're under
Department of Homeland Security. Now, so this can cover things
like the Super Bowl. If there are enough you know,
uh important people at an event like this, then the
Secret Service might be there. Yeah, which I mean makes sense.
(13:29):
And I'm sure like the local law enforcement just loves
the Secret Service coming in and bossing them around, you know,
but they do because it's the Super Bowl a k a.
The Big Game, that's right. Um, And then you were saying,
also it seemed like give it to the Secret Service
whenever you look at their history. A couple of good
examples of that are the Treasury Police. The revenuers basically
(13:53):
got folded into the Secret Service, and I think nineteen
seven and um, they took over the White how Police
Force in right, So there's a lot of law enforcement
underneath this this uh the title of Secret Service. Uh yeah.
Another thing that I had never even heard of Electronic
(14:15):
Crimes Tasks Forces. Yeah, I think that's kind of new. Yeah,
the e C t fs. And this is after eleven
and the Patriot Act, and they said, hey, you know what,
we need to create these e C t fs UM
basically to prevent attacks on America UM through cybercrime. Yea.
(14:36):
So these are I mean think they're what thirty nine
of them all over America and Europe, working together with
other countries, other financial Crimes task forces. And this is
the stuff that you know, doesn't get any of the glory,
you know, huh, it's all supposed to be pretty This
is kind of hush hush to begin with. UM, I think,
unless it goes wrong, right, But they seemed I looked
(14:59):
into they see to kind of focus on UM forensics
like going over computers or devices for evidence or whatever. UM.
They investigate data breaches and network intrusions. They do cyber intelligence,
so I guess they gather intelligence from networks, but also
from like some of those devices they're doing forensic work on.
(15:21):
It's probably some of the more important work being done,
to be honest, it really is. They're basically tasked with
guarding the financial sector of the US, and I assume
probably some of foreign countries, especially in Europe too. But
then they're also doing real like low level stuff too,
like credit card theft, identity theft um. So they're basically
anything any crime that can be done using a computer
(15:44):
or computer network. They seem to be fighting with the
e C t f S. Yeah. Should we take a break, Yeah,
all right, let's do that, and we're gonna talk a
little bit about the sexiest assignment of the mall. Alright,
(16:21):
Chuck you uh, you said the we would hear about
the sexiest position of the mall. What is that? The
PPD the Presidential Protection Division, So this is the one
that everyone thinks of a secret service when you see
Ronald Reagan being covered up and shoved in the back
(16:41):
of a limo when Jerry Ford moved to Springfield. Yeah,
or like you mentioned, jogging alongside the limousine, we're jogging
alongside a tubby blow Bill Clinton, yeah, or riding horseback
alongside Ronald Reagan. Oh yeah, that's right. I forgot he
used to do that sometimes. That's one of the things
(17:03):
this article points out is you gotta you gotta take
up the hobbies of the president and Clinton very famously,
you know, trotted along various wooded paths, and then Reagan
would have the Secret Service round up union organizers and
then he'd ride over him with his horse. Well, apparently
there's a lot of horseback riding that goes on, but
(17:25):
Reagan's was pretty intense. Like he was a real horse guy.
The guy was a cowboy movie cowboy come to life. Yeah,
so he apparently you had to really learn to ride
if you're on Reagan's team, I got you know, it's
not just like trotting along like Clinton probably liked to do. Right. Yeah.
Do you remember that Saturday Night Live when Clinton was
(17:45):
first elected and it was Phil Hartman playing him. He
was out jogging and he just he kept stopping into
McDonald's on his jogging. It's a big joke. But wouldn't
you wouldn't you, like, as a Secret Service agent, want
to just be like, you know, be a lot safer
and easier for everybody if you just hit the treadmill.
Yeah right, and watch television as your as your main hobby. Right, Well,
(18:08):
I think that's kind of going on now. Um, all right,
so this is the one that you talked about having
a really high burnout rate because it's um. Well, first
of all, there's the stress of I can die and
am willing to die for on my on my job. Yeah,
and apparently there's like this, did you hear that there's
a myth that they have to take an oath to
(18:30):
take a bullet for the president? I had never heard
that as specifically an oath, and I was glad to
know that that was true or untrue? Right, it was untrue. Yes,
there is no such out right. No, it's apparently if
you are a secret service agent, you just know that
that might be part of the job, and you're when
(18:52):
you show up that day, you're willing to do it. Correct,
it's supposedly, um. But beyond all the stresses of dying
on the job like that, um, the the schedule itself
is just really tough. Um. And I've seen a lot
of different breakdowns of the on and off schedules. So
I don't know if this one is the gospel truth.
But the one in our article at least says two
(19:13):
weeks of a day shift, two weeks of a midnight shift,
two weeks of an evening shift, and then two weeks
of training. So I guess training is just continuous. Yeah.
What's weird though, is I had seen, at least back
in the sixties, training was code for fill out these
forms that say you did all this physical fitness. So
if there was like, uh, if there was two weeks
(19:35):
of training, it seems like that. It's almost like, I
don't know if it is anymore, but that would have
been like a two week break, which frankly, I don't
really blame them for that kind of schedule. Yeah, they
go and they undergo the same training regiment as Major
League Baseball umpires. Right. But the thing is, Chuck, is
it's like, if you're tasked with protecting the president, everyone knows,
(19:56):
like any organizational psychologist, anybody can tell you that when
you do different shift work, you're going to mentally suffer foundly. Right,
So why are we putting the people who are protecting
the president and and um, you know, the first Lady
and and the vice president. Why are we putting them
through that kind of mental torture that doesn't make any sense?
(20:19):
Is it really just a staffing thing? Well, I mean,
what's the answer. Then someone's got to take the midnight shift, sure,
but that person should be like you got the midnight
shift for a year. Yeah, so you can your sleep
pattern can change, and then you could be like you know,
when you when you rotate out to the to the
day shift or the morning shift or whatever, you might
(20:41):
have a two week transition period or so who knows,
maybe you get two weeks off or something between. I
don't know. There's gotta be a better way than this.
This just is grueling. Well, I do know too, that
that permanent midnight shifts can um leave the weirdness. Oh yeah,
Like that's what they did with Ronnie, right, That's why
Ronnie's so unreliable, because you know, on the fourth month
(21:01):
of his midnight shift, things got strange, he got kind
of pasty. I should I shouldn't have said Ronnie, because
now Ee's gonna think I'm thinking Reagan. No, everybody knows,
we call him Gepper. Um. So you if you are
on that detail of the sitting president, like you're the
(21:22):
cream of the crop of the PPD. Yeah, which is
kind of a double edged sword because you want somebody
with a lot of experience who's proven himself for herself,
um over the years. But at the same time you're
also starting to run up against age and slower reflexes. Um.
And so if you if you look at some of
(21:46):
the agents who are around the president, you're gonna see
somebody who's probably in their forties, if not over forty.
Uh And that's that's just you know, if you could
have a guy or girl who's like twenty seven thirty even,
they're probably going to be faster on the draw than
that forty year old five year old. But they also
(22:07):
might not know to notice certain things that the forty
five year old would, right, because they're on Snapchat exactly.
They're like l O L president just fell over for
some reason. Uh b r b he needs help. Um,
if you are, you can still be on the pp
D though, and not actually be on the detail of
protecting the president in that moment, Like if you can
(22:30):
be on the pp D and be on the assessment team,
like any any sort of well, first of all, anyone
who's ever made a threat on the president in any way,
whether it's Twitter or like a letter that shows up
at the White House, they are thoroughly investigated in person.
Oh yeah, for sure, I hadn't realized. Uh. And any
(22:54):
any kind of advance um work they have to do,
like if the president's traveling UM, which you know happens
all the time. There's always some sort of advance um
intelligence going on about where the president's going, the town,
if they're visiting a restaurant, if they're staying in a hotel, um,
all kinds of like background checks are going on with
(23:15):
every employee that works there. Yeah, and like if the
president follows a bit of a pattern, you know, like
going to the same place like a win or White
House or a Western white House or something like that,
like that place is covered, it's checked out, it's probably
guarded all the time. So they'll do advance once and
then maybe updated here or there. But what's post is
(23:36):
the real headache and nightmare for the Secret Service is
when they're going to places they haven't been before or
haven't been in a while, and so they've got to
do all of this incredible analysis and planning. They've got
to figure out, Okay, well, this is the route the
president is going to take through the hotel. Uh, and
then if this happens, then here's the escape route. If
(23:57):
an incident happens, you know, in the next corridor, here's
the scape route. Here are two alternate routes to the
original route. Um. And look, there's a pretty good place
for a sniper to be, so we need to keep
our eyes up there. If there's a fire, we need
to leave here. Um. This that's just like one place.
And then like you said, they also do background checks too,
so that any employee apparently who has any kind of
(24:19):
criminal record, um. At say like a hotel that the
president is going to be staying and they're not allowed
to work while the president's there, which is like half
the staff of every hotel. I would guess that that
could be kind of problematic for some hotels, you know,
not to say that their staff of criminals, but at
the very least, well it said even like yeah, minor,
minor stuff like they're gonna say, you tell Ronnie to
(24:42):
stay home, and the manage would be like I thought
Ronnie was with you, and then Ronnie's and the presses
enter and the financial system collapses. The president, if they
stay in a hotel there, they will own three floors
of that hotel in full um, the one the president
is on, one above it, and the one below it. Um.
And apparently it's I read one little insider thing on
(25:05):
when the president stays at a at a hotel that
they normally don't. It's just a nightmare for the hotel. Yeah,
in every way, yep, you know, and for the people
who were staying there, especially if it was sudden, you know,
because um, you don't have a reservation there anymore. True,
Like ts, sorry, what else could you do? You could
(25:26):
be on the video in the video department of the
p p D because they film all this stuff pp
D a V club. Basically, Uh, every motorcade is filmed
or videoed. Obviously I say filmed because I'm old. Um,
anytime the president's traveling like that, all this stuff is
on tape again, not on tape reels because like there's
(25:55):
a Prouder film, like you need to have this stuff
in case of an attack or an assassination attempt. Um,
so you can you know, rewind and watch the crowd. Right,
it's just handy, but it's kind of reactive, whereas like
the advanced people are proactive and trying to prevent an
incident from ever taking place. Right, did you mention the details?
(26:18):
They are specific to like people who are permanently guarded.
So there, if you're a Secret Service agent, you might
be assigned to like a field office, and if the
president comes to your state, you might be called up
to go work what's called the standing position, which is
literally just standing around. Right, So if you're if it's
(26:40):
a hotel room, this article uses a pretty good example.
If it's a hotel that the President is staying at,
the advanced team who goes right before the president arrives
with the President will say clear to steer a stairwell,
checked it for anything, cleared it, and then you come
in and you stand there and make sure nothing changes
to that stairwell. No one else comes in. Uh, no
one drops anything off, there's nothing like that. That's your job,
(27:03):
right then, that's probably a pretty common assignment for somebody
who works protection in the Secret Service, right Yeah. But
if you are protecting, say the first Lady, you're going
to be part of a detail that is a crew
of people whose job it is to protect the first Lady,
and they get to be pretty close apparently U or
(27:23):
it can happen, I guess you mean emotionally, romantically, no,
emotionally surprised that hadn't been a wrong come yet. It's
like Three's Company, but in the White House. But it's
funny you mentioned that stairway detail like, that's literally the
worst job you can get as a p A on
the film set. Yeah, that's pretty bad. It's called lock
(27:43):
up where you're like three blocks away just saying no, three,
you can't go around this corner, right, And there's always
a guy like me who's like, uh, you can't legally
keep me from walking on the sidewalks public sidewalk. J
I was the worst lock up guy when I was
a p A because I would always just be like,
all right, you're totally right. People choke you look them
through again. I'm like, dude, what am I gonna do,
(28:05):
like physically restrain somebody. I always felt so bad when
we were shooting our TV show. Yeah, when people were
redirected from their normal path. You know, we look at
the bright side. You didn't have to feel bad for
too long. That's there's also the food detail. Um, and
even in the White House with the very much trusted
(28:28):
White House uh cooking staff, there's someone in the kitchen
from Secret Service watching over that stuff. Yeah, making sure
seven didn't have any kind of break and is now
trying to poison the president. Correct. Apparently if you want
to order a pizza though, as the president, like literally
I don't want the White House pizza. I want the
(28:48):
pizza from whatever. Uh, you can do that, but they
say that they send it to, um a different address.
They send it to the Naval Observatory usually just to
kind of throw them off the scent. Seems smart, but
certainly not fool proof. No, you know, but I guess,
(29:10):
especially now that you just told everybody, I guess it
couldn't poison every pizza going to the Naval observatory though,
because they would be outed. I don't know, like some
evil organization like Specter probably could. Yeah, that's true. Good point. Um,
this is a pretty is that a good point? I think?
So this is a pretty expensive process to the fiscal year.
(29:35):
That is uh seven d and fifty million dollars on
just protective operations, which is about half of its overall budget,
which is a you know, I mean, it's worth it, obviously,
but that's a lot of dough going towards the very
smallest thing that you do. When half your money is
spent on that, then uh, you're gonna run out of money, right, Yeah,
(29:57):
And they did actually um the fiscal year a gooes.
We're recording actually before the end of the two thousand,
seventeen fiscal year. But the Secret Service said, UM, we're
gonna run out of money like right around the end
of the fiscal year, and we still have three more
months of operations that we have to do, So what
do you want to do? You know? And apparently there
(30:20):
was also I was I was reading in the Washington
Post about um a dispute over money about actually terms
of a lease when um this the Secret Service tried
to rent out office space in the headquarters in Trump
Tower that the Trump organization UM said you should go
(30:41):
find office space elsewhere because they couldn't come to terms
on a lease somehow, And so the Secret Service moved
down to a trailer on the sidewalk in front of
Trump Tower, which I guess they found out that they
burned through all their money and they were like, you
guys go to a trailer on the sidewalk. Yeah, that's
probably the most expense of property in the world that
has a trailer on their front lawn. It's pretty funny, um,
(31:05):
And we should mention we joked about the dark glasses
that was actually do sort of function. Um, they're not
just trying to look cool, they're trying to um keep
their eyes hidden for what they're looking at. Yeah, you
know what was that one agent's name and uh um
taxi driver in the line of fire. No, no, it
(31:26):
has nothing to do Secret Service Matrix. The matrix. Oh
this is Smith, right, the main bad guy I think so. Yeah.
I thought he did a good job rocking the glasses
and everything. So that literally had nothing to do with
anything but him looking cool and glasses. Right, Okay, you
want to take a break, Yeah, let's do. I think
I just threw us off. We probably should and regroup.
(32:00):
H all right, Chuck. We talked a little bit about
other stuff that the Secret Service gets down on UM counterfeiting,
(32:20):
male fraud. Those are some throwbacks, but then they've got
the whole new cyber crime thing with like fishing and
stuff like that. But they also have UM to combat
this crime. They've accrued some pretty cool stuff over there
over the years, not the least of which is an
ink library. Yeah. This I think is for me the
(32:42):
coolest part of this show. So this article types of
ink I saw eleven thousand, four hundred. That's believable. Yeah.
So the idea is they literally have collected since the
nineteen twenties, what they think is every kind end of
ink and every kind of pin that is ever been made. Yeah,
(33:06):
that's the goal at least so they can use that. UM.
I think when like when Bick makes a new pin,
they will send them their ank and stuff. Otherwise they
have to collect it. And this is who I didn't like.
You know, if they ever get a letter about any
kind of crime that is under their per view, they
have a database to compare it to UM. And not
(33:28):
just with things like ransom notes and threatening letters. Apparently
they'll use that kind of stuff for if somebody's forged
a baseball signed by Babe Ruth or something. I said,
Oh interesting, Um, if it's like a really high profile
crime that has to do with ink, they'll they'll freelance
for somebody. Interesting. Yeah, and they use gas chromatography. It's
(33:51):
not just like this one looks black. Oh, this one's black.
I figured out who did it. Um. But the the apparently,
if you're a field agent going around own the world,
the Ink Library guys will ask you to like grab
some pens while you're in you know, Cartagena. Oh really,
it's like a standing request. They also have an information
(34:15):
database for handwriting too, the forensic information system for handwriting
database or phish Yeah, decent acronym yes see, yeah, but
it breaks our one rule of acronymic, which is just
kind of forgetting about another word. So it looks cooler
right yeah than fished, right right exactly, Or it could
(34:38):
be the Phish database. I guess that's true fish. So
this is basically just a handwriting database, and I imagine
there's a lot of overlap here with FBI and CIA,
don't you think, um what else? Ninety four they added uh,
providing Evidence and Assistance to Missing and Exploited Children. Yeah,
I thought that was pretty cool. Uh. And their big
(35:00):
bag though, was really um counterfeiting in bank fraud. Um.
They executed twenty one more than arrests um for stuff
like that and recovered it. They recover a lot of
money every year too, right. Yeah. There was one bust
in two thousand and sixteen and Lima, Peru, where they
(35:20):
recovered like three million in counterfeit US dollars and fifty
thou counterfeit euros. Not bad, which I think was their
biggest single bus to date. It's a lot of a
lot of mula. It is a lot of fake moula.
So do you what if you want to be what
if Josh wants to be in the Secret Service? I
don't think that's gonna work out for me. Well, it's
too late first, they Yeah, you have to be between
(35:44):
twenty one and thirty seven. You have to do a
pp screen. Yeah. Um, they don't want you to have
any visible tattoos or piercings, which I imagine that's probably
getting harder and harder these days. Yeah, it's probably not
a good look to have, like the presidential detailed guy
having those big ear ring gauges. Right, So what those
(36:06):
are called gauge? Yeah, you know, like one of those
big two inters. Can you fit a hot dog through it? Yes?
I can. You're hired. Uh No tattoos, a piercings? What else?
You gotta pass that polygraph? You gotta take a physical. Um,
gotta get that Secret Service Uh top security clearance? What
(36:26):
can take? It can take geez nine months to get that. Yeah,
and I looked into that. Depending on what level of
security you're looking for, it says nine nine months here,
but I saw they could do it in like sixty days.
But depending on how thorough they go, like they're either
going to go back five years or ten years into
your past. They're gonna interview your coworkers, your neighbors, your friends,
(36:48):
your pastor whoever, and they're gonna ask him all sorts
of personal questions like is uh is this guy a freak?
You know what I mean, like a freak freak? Um?
Does he you like to get wasted? Uh? Does he
love America? What country? Does he like as much of
not more than America? Which is stuff like that? Like, seriously,
(37:08):
they're gonna they they're gonna look into what your foreign
preferences are. You know, Ronnie, he was always going on
about Spain. Yeah, I couldn't get enough that explains it.
His whole catchphrase was oh ay. So if you go
through all that, you take a written test, you have
an interview. If you pass all that junk, the new
you are sent to lovely Glencoe, Georgia, right here in
(37:31):
our our home state, to the Federal Law Enforcement Training
Center for ten weeks of training. Uh. This is down
down near the Georgia coast where it's hot and humid
and muggy. Yeah, but if you want some good shrimp,
it's a good place to train, I imagine. So. Um,
so you know, ten weeks of hardcore training, then an
(37:52):
eighteen week course at a place called the James S.
Rowley Center in Beltsville, Maryland, which is basically Camp X. Yeah,
kind of the special Special Agent Basic Training Center. Um. Yeah,
and that's the one where it's probably i mean they
teach you how to shoot guns. I'm sure you already
know at this point. I doubt if it's like I
(38:13):
never held one of these emergency medicine that's a big one. Um.
I saw that they travel with the president with um
a full full supply of the president's blood, which makes sense.
I never really thought about that, like as many leaders
(38:33):
are as in the president right then, I don't know,
I mean it said, uh, they said what they they're
trained in what's called ten minute medicine, which is they
never want to have the president more than ten minutes
away from a trauma center. And uh, not only that,
when the president is traveling, they have an agent at
the nearest hospital already who has gone through the operating
(38:55):
room and emergency staff. So they have these bags of
blood if a transfusion is knee did and um, you know,
basically in that just that ten minutes, they need to
be able to keep the president alive, Yeah, which was
a big deal. When Reagan was shot. Yeah, you want
to talk about that, Yeah, I mean he he was
shot in the chest. It was it was bad yeah,
(39:15):
by John Hinckley Jr. Right, Yeah, or as our articles
just says, a crazed assassin. Yeah. I thought that was
really weird, Like maybe the author was like, I'm not
putting his name in print, I'm not giving him any press.
It definitely seemed weird to not say who it was.
And Hinckley was trying to impress Jodie Foster so that
she would fall in love with them and they could
move into the White House if I remember correctly. Right. Yeah,
(39:37):
So to do that, right, you had to get Reagan
out of the way. And Reagan was coming out of
the Washington Hilton Hotel hed just given a speech. This
is in I think, uh, January one. It was early
in night one, and um Hinckley walked up and just
shot him at least twice I think got him once
in the shoulder and then once in the chest. It
(40:00):
might be confusing with another assassination. He definitely got him
in the chest, like you said. And there was this
agent named Jerry Parr, who was I think like fifty
at the time. Um, and he immediately threw I think
he threw his coat over Reagan. Threw Reagan into the limo,
landed on him and shut the door and told the
limo driver to drive. And Reagan UM was like, I
(40:24):
think you broke one of my ribs throw me into
the limo, did you know that? And he said that's
the bullet, sir, right. But yeah, that's when Parr was like, oh,
you got hit. So he told the limo to go
to the hospital instead of the White House. Yeah, I
think he was. Um had blood coming out of his mouth,
which was the surefire telltale sign that he had. There
(40:47):
was a lung punctured apparently when you're bleeding from the mouth,
and so he knew, no, no, no, we we need
to go straight to the hospital and not too whatever
medical staff we have at the White House. Ye, saved
his life, he did it. He actually became convinced from
what I saw that um uh, he had been chosen
by God to save Reagan's life. And he became like
a pastor after that. Oh yeah interesting yeah, well, um,
(41:13):
the speaking of limos, the driver of that limo is
trained I mean the presidential limo is bulletproof, flat tire proof,
um as bomb proof as it can be. And the
driver is trained. It's like a you know, it's like
a trained stunt driver, right, and it's a Secret Service driver, right, Yeah,
(41:35):
And they need to be able to they're trained to
do those like super cool looking one eight moves to
get the heck out of there, to drive backwards at
high speeds, and um, all the other stuff that you
see stuntman stunt drivers do these, the Secret Service limo
drivers can do so. On the other end of the spectrum,
speaking of limo drivers from the Secret Service, um is
(41:57):
JFK's assassination. Um. I read this in this article didn't
even mention that, right. It's like in the Secret Service
successes and failures not even mentioned at all. So I
read this article on it from Vanity Fair that was
called could the Secret Service have saved JFK? Go read it?
(42:18):
Totally worthwhile read. But they um, apparently the Secret Service guys,
not all of them, but a handful of them. We're
out partying like all night, uh the night before into
the morning, um, and showed up after three or four
maybe five hours of sleep in some cases, uh, ready
(42:39):
for duty. And if you look at it through that lens,
apparently you can see how yeah, it looks a lot
like being hungover and maybe even still a little drunk.
Definitely affected their responses. And one of the guys, um
was the limo driver who UM really like took it
personally immediately that he had failed. But he he did.
(43:03):
He didn't swerve, he didn't speed up, He just tapped
the brake a little bit and actually, if anything, gave
um Lee Harvey Oswald a clear second fatal shot. UM.
And they think that it was because of this culture
of like drinking and partying that was just endemic at
the time, UM, and that it actually led to JFK's potential.
(43:27):
Potentially he his life could have been saved, is what
the article says. Obviously could have died from the neck wound,
but they didn't do enough in retrospect to protect against
that second fatal shot. That definitely did it. Yeah, it's
worth reading man. Well, I mean, you talk about the
party atmosphere, and I think early on some listeners MND
(43:48):
have thought you were kidding around. But that's really the
case apparently, UM. And it probably has a lot to
do with just how understaff and overwork they are that
they kind of unwind. Um. They have been known to
unwind and pretty epic fashion. Um. And and recently and
in the last like five or six years, have been
some pretty high profile blemishes on the agency. One in
(44:12):
two thousand twelve when a bunch of agents a hundred
and seventy five I went to Columbia um before Obama visit,
and twelve of them were caught taking prostitutes back to
their hotel. And apparently the same kind of thing happened
the year before in El Salvador Um. And then wasn't
there another kind of big party bust or something? Yeah Amsterdam?
(44:36):
Oh right, well, of course, yeah, there were three agents
were found passed out drunk, one of them in the
hallway of the hotel that the President was staying at
the below and um, they got sent home and put
on leave for that. And they came like right on
the heels well two years later after the first scandal
(44:56):
in two thousand twelve, and that was on the heels
of Oscar or take a hernandez um shooting at the
White House. Why he did that, well, I mean he
claimed he was Jesus I hadn't. I hadn't had a
chance to look up at on that one, and I
just didn't know what his motive was. Yeah, I mean,
(45:17):
by all accounts, I think he was mentally ill. He
claimed like he made a video for Oprah Winfrey incident
to her claiming he was Jesus. And it's funny if
you look at the guy, he looks like Jesus. Well,
I mean, whatever your conception of Jesus is, I don't know,
but the kind of the classic Jesus um figure that
you see a lot, the guy kind of looked a
(45:38):
lot like him, like more more than you do. Let's say,
I could I could see that most people do look
more like Jesus than me. But he he fired a
semi automatic weapon rifle at the White House quite a
few shots. And this was just kind of bungled. The
investigation was bungled. They had no clue what was happening,
(46:01):
what was going on. It took four full days to
realize that he actually hit the White House. And that's
when a housekeeper said, you know, there's broken glass and
cement on the floor in here. Remember, Michelle Obama was
really upset. I can imagine that this happened. They weren't
home at the time, but I think one of the
daughters was um. And this is, you know, after the
(46:23):
same thing. It happened in the Clinton administration. Yeah, I
don't remember that at all. The Clinton one. Yeah, that
was another guy that just you know, shot at the
White House. Basically, yeah, I think he did it from
the street, but this guy actually got through. Oh wait,
was this one from the street too? I think it
was from the fence, Okay, but no, the guy that
got through was a guy with a knife. Yes, made
(46:46):
it through several lines of security, through the fence and
made it all the way to the north portico, which
is basically the front door of the White House, with
a knife before he was finally apprehended. Said he was
caught sprinting towards the front door with a knife. But yeah,
that was And again, the capital or the White House
police are part of the Secret Service too, And these
(47:07):
are the people who look like you know, paramilitary police
officers patrolling the White House. They're part of the Secret
Service police. Wow. So yeah it was. There were a
bunch of controversies that rocked the place, which is why
one some people are like, oh, it might be good
that this Marine Corps colonel who has no connection to
(47:28):
the Secret Services coming in maybe bring in a fresh perspective,
because I guess there was a study that found that
it was an insular culture that has historically been resistant
to change. As the Congressional investigation, so who knows, but
they've done a lot of good too. Agreed. I can't can't,
(47:51):
just don't want to just end on the controversies, but man,
there's been some doozies. Are you got anything else? Yeah?
I got just a couple of more little things that
if you look up like coolest Secret Service secrets. There's
just an abundance of articles, um, from mental flaws to
breeders digest and I compiled a couple of these and
(48:12):
we've gone over most of them, but this one I
thought was neat Um. Secret Service isn't actually in the
Oval office most times, UM like inside the room. They're
right outside. But they have installed weight sensitive pressure pads
throughout the Oval office, so they know where the president
is at all times. Oh wow, that sounds like it's
(48:33):
made up, but it's supposedly true. I could see that. Um,
when the President delivers the State of the Union, they
hold one member of the cabinet behind hidden at Mount
Weather in case someone bombs the entire thing. That's like
that show Designated Survivor that I've never seen never What
(48:54):
is that? It's like, uh Keia not Kena Reeves Key
for Sutherland show where he's like a cabinet member who
who like, I think that very thing happened and like
there was bombing and it killed everybody and now he's president.
That's all I know. Uh what else? The headquarters of
Secret Service in Washington, d C. Does not have trash
(49:16):
cans anywhere near it on the sidewalk, okay, because you know,
put a bomb in there. Apparently Reagan carried a gun,
his own gun. I believe that right. He carried a
thirty eight in his briefcase and apparently uh Vice President
Bush didn't even know about it. Wow, really, that's what
it says. He found out the hard way. And then uh,
(49:40):
when he crossed drawnnee and some policy yeah, President Ronnie,
not oh yeah the gipper. Yeah, not Secret Service Ronnie.
When he crossed the gipper. Uh. And then finally, um,
apparently the code word for when there's a big private
investigation going on at the White House. They they're renovating
a room, so the First family gets out of the
(50:01):
house and they don't really know what's going on. And
so it said over the years, whenever you hear like
Clinton Obama renovated the treaty room, Clinton renovated Room Bush
renovated the briefing room. Clinton's was the music room. Apparently
those were all um private investigations going on. I don't understand. Well,
I mean, I guess they just they need to set
(50:24):
up shop in the White House and too even not
alert the first family that that's going on. They'll quote
renovate unquote a room. Wow. That sounds a little hinky
to me, though. It does like I would guess that
the president is a prize of just about everything that's
going on, including investigations. Yeah, there may be some more
clarity on that that someone will know an email us
(50:46):
about where did they come from Reader's digest Now I
think that, Uh well, boo, that was huff po a
bunch of commies. Yeah. Really, they'll say anything to make
the president look bad. Pe Well, don't take it seriously. Okay,
do you got anything else now? Uh no, sir? Okay, Well,
(51:06):
if you want to know more about the secret Service.
Go check out this article on how stuff works. And
since I said go check it out, it's time for
a listener mail. I'm gonna call this one of two
on Satanism that we're gonna read. I want to thank
you guys for the Satanism episode. I myself am a
Satanist and remember the Satanic Temple. I appreciate you voicing
(51:26):
my faith in objective and fair manner, but I do
take issue with you calling us hippies. Feel your summation
the various TST programs and that's the Satanic Church or
a temple uh to accurately represent much of what we
strive to do. But I wish you had taken the
time to go over the our core beliefs like you
did the Church of Satan. And then he sent them
to me, so I'll just read them, and he said,
(51:47):
here's a fiver for each of you. What wish um.
One should strive to act with compassion and empathy towards
all creatures. The struggle for justice is an ongoing and
necessary pursuit should prevail over laws and institutions. One's body
is invite, inviolable, subject to one's own will. Alone. The
(52:08):
freedoms of others should be respected, including the freedom to offend.
A belief should conform to our best scientific understanding of
the world. Uh, we should never care to distort scientific
facts to fit our beliefs. That's a good one. People
are fallible. If we make a mistake, we should do
our best directify it and resolve any harm. And finally,
every tenant is a guiding principle designed to inspire nobility
(52:30):
and action and thought. Yeah, so he said, the takeaway
basically is what we try and reflect as a focus
on scientific inquiry, nobility and action and thought and respect
for oneself and others. And he closes out by saying,
Haile satan and his name is Caleb Tarat Tuta Tera Tuta.
(52:53):
Sorry but I thought it was Caleb Tarantula, and I
was like, that's a great name for a Satanist, like
Peter Grim or if you want to get in touch
with this, like Caleb did, you can tweet to us.
I'm at josh Um Clark and at s Y s
K podcast on Twitter. You can hang out with Chuck
at Charles W. Chuck Bryant on Facebook dot com or
(53:14):
at Facebook dot com slash stuff. You should Know. You
can send us an email to Stuff podcast how stuff
Works dot com and has always joined us at our
home on the web. Stuff You Should Know dot com
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it how stuff Works dot com.
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