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How the Secret Service Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
0:04
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
0:13
Speaker 1: and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry Rowland that
0:17
Speaker 1: makes this stuff you should know. Continuing Law Enforcements saga,
0:22
Speaker 1: this has got to be it. It's you say that
0:25
Speaker 1: every time. I don't think this is it. Well, this
0:28
Speaker 1: is the one that I U is one of my picks.
0:31
Speaker 1: And I stressed up until like an hour ago that
0:35
Speaker 1: we had done this, even though I looked like twenty times. Yeah,
0:38
Speaker 1: I know, I I. Um, I thought that too when
0:40
Speaker 1: I first saw it, but the article so new, there's
0:42
Speaker 1: no way we did. And then, um, I think what
0:45
Speaker 1: it was Chuck was probably the counterfeiting episode. Yeah, you
0:49
Speaker 1: probably got that one really crossed over a lot. I
0:51
Speaker 1: think you're right. We did do a good one for
0:53
Speaker 1: everybody who's not familiar on counterfeiting. I don't remember exactly when,
0:56
Speaker 1: but go check it out because it was good. Um.
1:00
Speaker 1: And the reason why the two things would have crossed
1:03
Speaker 1: over is because when most people think of Chuck the
1:06
Speaker 1: Secret Service, which we're talking about today, they think of,
1:08
Speaker 1: you know, dudes, big dudes in suits stark suits, sunglasses,
1:14
Speaker 1: got the wire in their ear. Every once a while
1:15
Speaker 1: they put their finger in the ear to look cool.
1:18
Speaker 1: You know, I thought that's just if they had, you know,
1:21
Speaker 1: your wax building up. Maybe that's the other ear. Um,
1:25
Speaker 1: And that they're usually running alongside the president as he
1:29
Speaker 1: or eventually she um is driving down the road, right, Yeah. Sure,
1:34
Speaker 1: But the Secret Services test with doing way more than that,
1:38
Speaker 1: and that's actually protecting the president or the vice president
1:41
Speaker 1: of the first Lady or certain other people. That's actually
1:44
Speaker 1: secondary to their main role. And that role actually came
1:48
Speaker 1: decades after the Secret Service was first established. Yeah, I
1:53
Speaker 1: mean I think secondary. I took issue in the article
1:56
Speaker 1: when I read that, But I think secondary in terms
1:58
Speaker 1: of allocated uh personnel, right, but for sure primary and importance. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
2:08
Speaker 1: for sure, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, I
2:09
Speaker 1: think protecting the president's life is more important than catching counterfeiters, right,
2:14
Speaker 1: But a much much smaller allocation of people are actually
2:17
Speaker 1: on that protection force. Yeah, and I think that's I
2:19
Speaker 1: get the impression that that's the glamorous um assignment, you know,
2:24
Speaker 1: like protecting the president specifically. It's probably pretty pretty plumb.
2:29
Speaker 1: But um, that that again, that's that's not what the
2:33
Speaker 1: bulk of people in the Secret Service are doing at
2:35
Speaker 1: any given point in time. All right, So should we
2:37
Speaker 1: go back in time a bit? Yeah? Two, Uh the
2:41
Speaker 1: close of the Civil War, of the American Civil War specifically, uh,
2:45
Speaker 1: and this was an eighteen sixty five and very with
2:49
Speaker 1: a great deal of keeping irony. Uh. I did not
2:53
Speaker 1: know this. This maybe the fact of the show. President
2:56
Speaker 1: Abraham Lincoln um officially signed the legislation to create the
3:01
Speaker 1: Secret Service, um the evening that he was killed dead, Yes,
3:08
Speaker 1: that day, right, he signed it and then went to
3:11
Speaker 1: the Ford Theater, I believe. Yeah. So ironic in one
3:13
Speaker 1: sense that you know, obviously you can't look at that
3:16
Speaker 1: and say, you know, it has no irony whatsoever. But
3:19
Speaker 1: not ironic when you look at what he was signing
3:21
Speaker 1: at the time, which was not hey, we need somebody
3:24
Speaker 1: to protect presidents, because that didn't come along until uh
3:28
Speaker 1: well just um, like less than thirty years later, is
3:33
Speaker 1: that right? Twenty nine? Yeah. Um, informal protection started with
3:38
Speaker 1: Grover Cleveland, but after McKinley's assassination nineteen o one was
3:43
Speaker 1: when they said, hey, maybe we need to really just
3:47
Speaker 1: codify this agency and I'll tell you about irony. It
3:51
Speaker 1: turns out that when McKinley was assassinated, there were three
3:55
Speaker 1: Secret Service agents flanking him at the time. Yeah, I
3:59
Speaker 1: read up about that one. That's one I wasn't too
4:01
Speaker 1: familiar with. I wasn't either, but it was pretty fascinating. Um.
4:05
Speaker 1: And then it was an anarchist, correct, an anarchist in Buffalo,
4:11
Speaker 1: New York, who said who came for the assassination and
4:15
Speaker 1: stayed for the hot wings? I also read about Garfield.
4:20
Speaker 1: Garfield didn't get any mentioned in here. Um, he he was.
4:24
Speaker 1: He definitely served to make the Secret Service kind of
4:29
Speaker 1: become part of presidential protection, and that he was the
4:33
Speaker 1: second of three sitting presidents to be assassinated technically while
4:38
Speaker 1: the Secret Service was in existence. So when that that
4:42
Speaker 1: assassination plot against Grover Cleveland was uncovered, they were like,
4:46
Speaker 1: all right, oh right, we really need to do something
4:49
Speaker 1: about this. Yeah, I think we should cover assassination and
4:52
Speaker 1: assassination attempts in full, because they're just far more than
4:55
Speaker 1: I Then I thought, like, once I was looking into this,
4:59
Speaker 1: I forgot that Clinton had a couple of of not
5:03
Speaker 1: so serious attempts. The one guy that you know, shot
5:06
Speaker 1: at the White House. And then the other dude tried
5:09
Speaker 1: to fly a stole a Cessna, remember that, and tried
5:12
Speaker 1: to fly it into White House. I forgot about that,
5:15
Speaker 1: and both of them, by all accounts, were assassination attempts.
5:18
Speaker 1: Just I would call them clumsy, that's yeah. But yeah,
5:24
Speaker 1: there's been a lot more than I thought. So maybe
5:26
Speaker 1: we should just knock that out one day. Let's do it.
5:29
Speaker 1: I can't believe we haven't already. But today, if we're
5:34
Speaker 1: talking Secret Service, just by the numbers, about six hundred
5:39
Speaker 1: people work there. About those or special agents. Another hundred
5:45
Speaker 1: are what's called uniform division officers, and then a couple
5:50
Speaker 1: of thousand plus and change of admin types, tech support,
5:56
Speaker 1: just people who keep the agency running and UM there
6:01
Speaker 1: apparently there have been women there since nine so I
6:05
Speaker 1: thought was somewhat progressive. UM. And then as of today,
6:10
Speaker 1: there's the first outsider in the the hundred year history,
6:14
Speaker 1: or no, in about a hundred years. I guess there
6:16
Speaker 1: have been outsiders previously, but the first non Secret Service
6:20
Speaker 1: agent to to rise to UM director level has been
6:26
Speaker 1: appointed by Trump. Actually a guy named text text Als
6:31
Speaker 1: General former Marine Corps General Randolph Texts. Owls is it
6:35
Speaker 1: als al's ales Alice alice is another way to say it. Uh.
6:40
Speaker 1: And you mentioned women, and of course, very famously Julia
6:43
Speaker 1: Pearson briefly lead the agency when Obama was in there.
6:47
Speaker 1: But as we'll see later on, there were quite a
6:50
Speaker 1: number of kind of things that happened in a row
6:54
Speaker 1: that we're very embarrassing for the Secret Service Agency. So
6:58
Speaker 1: she she forced out or resigned or kind of what's
7:01
Speaker 1: the difference. I think what's the difference is the impression
7:04
Speaker 1: I have so UM, I think her tenure kind of
7:10
Speaker 1: coincide at she kind of takes the brunt from what
7:13
Speaker 1: I understand, of the blame for something that that was
7:17
Speaker 1: part of a culture that has long been around part
7:21
Speaker 1: of your Secret Service, UM. And apparently one of the
7:25
Speaker 1: big problems is that it is in a thoroughly understaffed
7:31
Speaker 1: executive branch agency, like the the people who are at
7:35
Speaker 1: tasked with protecting the president and the president's family and
7:38
Speaker 1: the vice president vice president's family. UM, they are thoroughly overworked,
7:44
Speaker 1: and they also have a long standing party culture too,
7:47
Speaker 1: and as a result, you have a lot of burnout
7:51
Speaker 1: and very low morale. Apparently chucked. There was a survey
7:55
Speaker 1: done of three hundred and five federal agencies and two
7:58
Speaker 1: thousand and sixteen and the Secret Service rated dead last
8:02
Speaker 1: for employee satisfaction. Yeah, I mean that that says at all.
8:07
Speaker 1: They're not somewhere in the middle. They were number three
8:09
Speaker 1: oh five, right, So apparently at the time of this
8:12
Speaker 1: survey they were hot. They were operating with five hundred
8:16
Speaker 1: fewer people than they were authorized to hire, so they
8:20
Speaker 1: were there. It's clearly an overwork department, yes, very much. So.
8:26
Speaker 1: Apparently they've added several people since several Yeah, like seven
8:30
Speaker 1: I think seven people, yeah, seven or eight hundred people. Uh.
8:35
Speaker 1: And I think that's partially because they just were woefully
8:38
Speaker 1: and understaffed, and partially because the current president has more
8:43
Speaker 1: family than um past presidents for sure, um more adult
8:48
Speaker 1: children and their kids, and more travel going on to
8:52
Speaker 1: weekend places all over the country. So that's just gonna
8:56
Speaker 1: require more staffing, right, which is you know, probably good
9:00
Speaker 1: they needed to higher up anyway. So you want to
9:02
Speaker 1: talk history, chuck history the Service. I know, we kind
9:05
Speaker 1: of went back to eighteen sixty five, so let's stay there.
9:09
Speaker 1: We've been doing all this from eighteen sixty five the
9:11
Speaker 1: whole time. It turns out that's right. So that what
9:14
Speaker 1: the reason why the Secret Service was initially created was
9:17
Speaker 1: to combat counterfeiting, right, And I think we said in
9:19
Speaker 1: our our Counterfeiting episode, UM, there was just a ton
9:25
Speaker 1: of counterfeit bank notes in circulation in the States at
9:29
Speaker 1: the time, because if you were a bank or if
9:31
Speaker 1: you were just some guy who had a bunch of
9:33
Speaker 1: money and could gain the trust of people, you could
9:35
Speaker 1: issue your own currency there for a while, so it
9:38
Speaker 1: was really easy to print money at the time. Yeah,
9:40
Speaker 1: it's um, the stat here is hard to believe, but
9:45
Speaker 1: of all the money was fake, all the money. That's
9:49
Speaker 1: just ridiculous. Yeah, so Lincoln knew that was a problem.
9:53
Speaker 1: UM started up the service in eighteen sixty five, and
9:57
Speaker 1: just a couple of years after that. So you know what,
10:00
Speaker 1: why don't we expand your duties UM to like fraud, smuggling,
10:06
Speaker 1: UM mail robbery and stuff like that, and and we'll
10:10
Speaker 1: stick around for some of the older stuff. But since
10:12
Speaker 1: then it's just sort of been expanded. It seems like
10:17
Speaker 1: a lot to me to include other things. But I
10:21
Speaker 1: don't know how the government runs sometimes as far as
10:23
Speaker 1: like well we need someone to monitor like fishing scams online,
10:29
Speaker 1: so it seems like the Secret Service is kind of like,
10:32
Speaker 1: let's just give it to them. But I'm sure that's
10:35
Speaker 1: not correct. You know, I thought the designation of stuff
10:37
Speaker 1: was pretty odd as well, for sure, But um, that
10:41
Speaker 1: is kind of how it's gone. It's they there as
10:45
Speaker 1: long as it has to do with law enforcement. The
10:47
Speaker 1: Secret Service feels pretty good about giving a crack at it.
10:51
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure. So, Um, besides the counterfeiting and all
10:54
Speaker 1: that stuff today, Uh, not only do they have to
10:57
Speaker 1: protect the president and vice president, they have to protect
11:00
Speaker 1: their families, um, all the former presidents and there are
11:04
Speaker 1: a lot more living former presidents now, which is another
11:07
Speaker 1: reason they need more people. Um. Medical science is fault
11:11
Speaker 1: from all the spouses, um, all the children under sixteen
11:16
Speaker 1: when you're a candidate running for president, like a major one,
11:19
Speaker 1: I doubt if well, I'm not going to make fun
11:22
Speaker 1: of anyone on the campaign trail that. I don't know
11:27
Speaker 1: if Jeff Busch had had a detail or he actually
11:29
Speaker 1: he may have. Jeff Bush is probably born with the detail, yeah,
11:33
Speaker 1: because he's he's linked twice over to the presidency, but
11:36
Speaker 1: not where accounted. Um. And then uh, all the spouses um,
11:42
Speaker 1: foreign heads of state while they visit and basically from
11:46
Speaker 1: what I gather, they can be assigned to protect anyone
11:50
Speaker 1: at any time if someone thinks it's necessary. So I
11:54
Speaker 1: think you're right about that last part that if a
11:56
Speaker 1: president says, hey, I want you guys to protect this
11:59
Speaker 1: person while they're here, that's fine. But from what I saw,
12:04
Speaker 1: I think it was a New York Times rundown based
12:06
Speaker 1: on um budgets. They they seem to say, No, it's
12:10
Speaker 1: basically like the Secret Service protects the president, the vice president,
12:13
Speaker 1: of their families, um, former presidents, that kind of thing,
12:16
Speaker 1: and that things like a foreign head of state would
12:19
Speaker 1: be covered by the Diplomatic Security Service of the State Compartment.
12:22
Speaker 1: That there's a ton of other federal security agencies that
12:27
Speaker 1: are running around Washington that people confuse for the Secret Service,
12:32
Speaker 1: but the secior Service, their mission is actually pretty pretty
12:35
Speaker 1: um uh narrow as far as protection goes. Yeah, and
12:39
Speaker 1: imagine they all are in touch with one another two
12:42
Speaker 1: just to make sure everyone butts, everyone's butts are covered.
12:45
Speaker 1: They're probably like, hey, how far can you pee? Oh no,
12:48
Speaker 1: let's see how far you compete, or they like, you know,
12:50
Speaker 1: we got a lot of dignitaries coming in and you
12:53
Speaker 1: guys got over a Secret Service and like, man, uh,
12:57
Speaker 1: all we have left is Ronnie and you don't want
13:00
Speaker 1: any guarding anybody. You know. He's good with phishing scams
13:03
Speaker 1: and that's it. Uh So the other thing it kind
13:05
Speaker 1: of surprised me is, um, big events. They are these
13:08
Speaker 1: things called National Special Security Events and uh they're under
13:14
Speaker 1: Department of Homeland Security. Now, so this can cover things
13:18
Speaker 1: like the Super Bowl. If there are enough you know,
13:21
Speaker 1: uh important people at an event like this, then the
13:24
Speaker 1: Secret Service might be there. Yeah, which I mean makes sense.
13:29
Speaker 1: And I'm sure like the local law enforcement just loves
13:32
Speaker 1: the Secret Service coming in and bossing them around, you know,
13:36
Speaker 1: but they do because it's the Super Bowl a k a.
13:39
Speaker 1: The Big Game, that's right. Um, And then you were saying,
13:43
Speaker 1: also it seemed like give it to the Secret Service
13:45
Speaker 1: whenever you look at their history. A couple of good
13:48
Speaker 1: examples of that are the Treasury Police. The revenuers basically
13:53
Speaker 1: got folded into the Secret Service, and I think nineteen
13:56
Speaker 1: seven and um, they took over the White how Police
14:00
Speaker 1: Force in right, So there's a lot of law enforcement
14:07
Speaker 1: underneath this this uh the title of Secret Service. Uh yeah.
14:13
Speaker 1: Another thing that I had never even heard of Electronic
14:15
Speaker 1: Crimes Tasks Forces. Yeah, I think that's kind of new. Yeah,
14:18
Speaker 1: the e C t fs. And this is after eleven
14:22
Speaker 1: and the Patriot Act, and they said, hey, you know what,
14:25
Speaker 1: we need to create these e C t fs UM
14:29
Speaker 1: basically to prevent attacks on America UM through cybercrime. Yea.
14:36
Speaker 1: So these are I mean think they're what thirty nine
14:39
Speaker 1: of them all over America and Europe, working together with
14:42
Speaker 1: other countries, other financial Crimes task forces. And this is
14:46
Speaker 1: the stuff that you know, doesn't get any of the glory,
14:50
Speaker 1: you know, huh, it's all supposed to be pretty This
14:53
Speaker 1: is kind of hush hush to begin with. UM, I think,
14:55
Speaker 1: unless it goes wrong, right, But they seemed I looked
14:59
Speaker 1: into they see to kind of focus on UM forensics
15:03
Speaker 1: like going over computers or devices for evidence or whatever. UM.
15:08
Speaker 1: They investigate data breaches and network intrusions. They do cyber intelligence,
15:16
Speaker 1: so I guess they gather intelligence from networks, but also
15:19
Speaker 1: from like some of those devices they're doing forensic work on.
15:21
Speaker 1: It's probably some of the more important work being done,
15:23
Speaker 1: to be honest, it really is. They're basically tasked with
15:26
Speaker 1: guarding the financial sector of the US, and I assume
15:30
Speaker 1: probably some of foreign countries, especially in Europe too. But
15:34
Speaker 1: then they're also doing real like low level stuff too,
15:37
Speaker 1: like credit card theft, identity theft um. So they're basically
15:41
Speaker 1: anything any crime that can be done using a computer
15:44
Speaker 1: or computer network. They seem to be fighting with the
15:46
Speaker 1: e C t f S. Yeah. Should we take a break, Yeah,
15:51
Speaker 1: all right, let's do that, and we're gonna talk a
15:52
Speaker 1: little bit about the sexiest assignment of the mall. Alright,
16:21
Speaker 1: Chuck you uh, you said the we would hear about
16:24
Speaker 1: the sexiest position of the mall. What is that? The
16:29
Speaker 1: PPD the Presidential Protection Division, So this is the one
16:34
Speaker 1: that everyone thinks of a secret service when you see
16:38
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan being covered up and shoved in the back
16:41
Speaker 1: of a limo when Jerry Ford moved to Springfield. Yeah,
16:48
Speaker 1: or like you mentioned, jogging alongside the limousine, we're jogging
16:52
Speaker 1: alongside a tubby blow Bill Clinton, yeah, or riding horseback
16:57
Speaker 1: alongside Ronald Reagan. Oh yeah, that's right. I forgot he
17:01
Speaker 1: used to do that sometimes. That's one of the things
17:03
Speaker 1: this article points out is you gotta you gotta take
17:06
Speaker 1: up the hobbies of the president and Clinton very famously,
17:10
Speaker 1: you know, trotted along various wooded paths, and then Reagan
17:16
Speaker 1: would have the Secret Service round up union organizers and
17:19
Speaker 1: then he'd ride over him with his horse. Well, apparently
17:22
Speaker 1: there's a lot of horseback riding that goes on, but
17:25
Speaker 1: Reagan's was pretty intense. Like he was a real horse guy.
17:30
Speaker 1: The guy was a cowboy movie cowboy come to life. Yeah,
17:33
Speaker 1: so he apparently you had to really learn to ride
17:36
Speaker 1: if you're on Reagan's team, I got you know, it's
17:39
Speaker 1: not just like trotting along like Clinton probably liked to do. Right. Yeah.
17:43
Speaker 1: Do you remember that Saturday Night Live when Clinton was
17:45
Speaker 1: first elected and it was Phil Hartman playing him. He
17:48
Speaker 1: was out jogging and he just he kept stopping into
17:51
Speaker 1: McDonald's on his jogging. It's a big joke. But wouldn't
17:55
Speaker 1: you wouldn't you, like, as a Secret Service agent, want
17:58
Speaker 1: to just be like, you know, be a lot safer
18:00
Speaker 1: and easier for everybody if you just hit the treadmill.
18:04
Speaker 1: Yeah right, and watch television as your as your main hobby. Right, Well,
18:08
Speaker 1: I think that's kind of going on now. Um, all right,
18:11
Speaker 1: so this is the one that you talked about having
18:13
Speaker 1: a really high burnout rate because it's um. Well, first
18:17
Speaker 1: of all, there's the stress of I can die and
18:20
Speaker 1: am willing to die for on my on my job. Yeah,
18:25
Speaker 1: and apparently there's like this, did you hear that there's
18:28
Speaker 1: a myth that they have to take an oath to
18:30
Speaker 1: take a bullet for the president? I had never heard
18:33
Speaker 1: that as specifically an oath, and I was glad to
18:36
Speaker 1: know that that was true or untrue? Right, it was untrue. Yes,
18:43
Speaker 1: there is no such out right. No, it's apparently if
18:46
Speaker 1: you are a secret service agent, you just know that
18:49
Speaker 1: that might be part of the job, and you're when
18:52
Speaker 1: you show up that day, you're willing to do it. Correct,
18:55
Speaker 1: it's supposedly, um. But beyond all the stresses of dying
18:58
Speaker 1: on the job like that, um, the the schedule itself
19:02
Speaker 1: is just really tough. Um. And I've seen a lot
19:04
Speaker 1: of different breakdowns of the on and off schedules. So
19:07
Speaker 1: I don't know if this one is the gospel truth.
19:11
Speaker 1: But the one in our article at least says two
19:13
Speaker 1: weeks of a day shift, two weeks of a midnight shift,
19:17
Speaker 1: two weeks of an evening shift, and then two weeks
19:19
Speaker 1: of training. So I guess training is just continuous. Yeah.
19:23
Speaker 1: What's weird though, is I had seen, at least back
19:25
Speaker 1: in the sixties, training was code for fill out these
19:29
Speaker 1: forms that say you did all this physical fitness. So
19:32
Speaker 1: if there was like, uh, if there was two weeks
19:35
Speaker 1: of training, it seems like that. It's almost like, I
19:38
Speaker 1: don't know if it is anymore, but that would have
19:39
Speaker 1: been like a two week break, which frankly, I don't
19:42
Speaker 1: really blame them for that kind of schedule. Yeah, they
19:45
Speaker 1: go and they undergo the same training regiment as Major
19:47
Speaker 1: League Baseball umpires. Right. But the thing is, Chuck, is
19:51
Speaker 1: it's like, if you're tasked with protecting the president, everyone knows,
19:56
Speaker 1: like any organizational psychologist, anybody can tell you that when
20:00
Speaker 1: you do different shift work, you're going to mentally suffer foundly. Right,
20:07
Speaker 1: So why are we putting the people who are protecting
20:10
Speaker 1: the president and and um, you know, the first Lady
20:13
Speaker 1: and and the vice president. Why are we putting them
20:16
Speaker 1: through that kind of mental torture that doesn't make any sense?
20:19
Speaker 1: Is it really just a staffing thing? Well, I mean,
20:21
Speaker 1: what's the answer. Then someone's got to take the midnight shift, sure,
20:25
Speaker 1: but that person should be like you got the midnight
20:28
Speaker 1: shift for a year. Yeah, so you can your sleep
20:33
Speaker 1: pattern can change, and then you could be like you know,
20:35
Speaker 1: when you when you rotate out to the to the
20:39
Speaker 1: day shift or the morning shift or whatever, you might
20:41
Speaker 1: have a two week transition period or so who knows,
20:44
Speaker 1: maybe you get two weeks off or something between. I
20:46
Speaker 1: don't know. There's gotta be a better way than this.
20:48
Speaker 1: This just is grueling. Well, I do know too, that
20:50
Speaker 1: that permanent midnight shifts can um leave the weirdness. Oh yeah,
20:55
Speaker 1: Like that's what they did with Ronnie, right, That's why
20:58
Speaker 1: Ronnie's so unreliable, because you know, on the fourth month
21:01
Speaker 1: of his midnight shift, things got strange, he got kind
21:04
Speaker 1: of pasty. I should I shouldn't have said Ronnie, because
21:07
Speaker 1: now Ee's gonna think I'm thinking Reagan. No, everybody knows,
21:11
Speaker 1: we call him Gepper. Um. So you if you are
21:17
Speaker 1: on that detail of the sitting president, like you're the
21:22
Speaker 1: cream of the crop of the PPD. Yeah, which is
21:26
Speaker 1: kind of a double edged sword because you want somebody
21:28
Speaker 1: with a lot of experience who's proven himself for herself,
21:33
Speaker 1: um over the years. But at the same time you're
21:36
Speaker 1: also starting to run up against age and slower reflexes. Um.
21:42
Speaker 1: And so if you if you look at some of
21:46
Speaker 1: the agents who are around the president, you're gonna see
21:48
Speaker 1: somebody who's probably in their forties, if not over forty.
21:53
Speaker 1: Uh And that's that's just you know, if you could
21:56
Speaker 1: have a guy or girl who's like twenty seven thirty even,
22:01
Speaker 1: they're probably going to be faster on the draw than
22:03
Speaker 1: that forty year old five year old. But they also
22:07
Speaker 1: might not know to notice certain things that the forty
22:09
Speaker 1: five year old would, right, because they're on Snapchat exactly.
22:13
Speaker 1: They're like l O L president just fell over for
22:16
Speaker 1: some reason. Uh b r b he needs help. Um,
22:21
Speaker 1: if you are, you can still be on the pp
22:23
Speaker 1: D though, and not actually be on the detail of
22:26
Speaker 1: protecting the president in that moment, Like if you can
22:30
Speaker 1: be on the pp D and be on the assessment team,
22:35
Speaker 1: like any any sort of well, first of all, anyone
22:39
Speaker 1: who's ever made a threat on the president in any way,
22:41
Speaker 1: whether it's Twitter or like a letter that shows up
22:44
Speaker 1: at the White House, they are thoroughly investigated in person.
22:48
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, for sure, I hadn't realized. Uh. And any
22:54
Speaker 1: any kind of advance um work they have to do,
22:57
Speaker 1: like if the president's traveling UM, which you know happens
23:00
Speaker 1: all the time. There's always some sort of advance um
23:04
Speaker 1: intelligence going on about where the president's going, the town,
23:09
Speaker 1: if they're visiting a restaurant, if they're staying in a hotel, um,
23:12
Speaker 1: all kinds of like background checks are going on with
23:15
Speaker 1: every employee that works there. Yeah, and like if the
23:17
Speaker 1: president follows a bit of a pattern, you know, like
23:20
Speaker 1: going to the same place like a win or White
23:23
Speaker 1: House or a Western white House or something like that,
23:25
Speaker 1: like that place is covered, it's checked out, it's probably
23:28
Speaker 1: guarded all the time. So they'll do advance once and
23:32
Speaker 1: then maybe updated here or there. But what's post is
23:36
Speaker 1: the real headache and nightmare for the Secret Service is
23:39
Speaker 1: when they're going to places they haven't been before or
23:41
Speaker 1: haven't been in a while, and so they've got to
23:44
Speaker 1: do all of this incredible analysis and planning. They've got
23:49
Speaker 1: to figure out, Okay, well, this is the route the
23:51
Speaker 1: president is going to take through the hotel. Uh, and
23:54
Speaker 1: then if this happens, then here's the escape route. If
23:57
Speaker 1: an incident happens, you know, in the next corridor, here's
23:59
Speaker 1: the scape route. Here are two alternate routes to the
24:02
Speaker 1: original route. Um. And look, there's a pretty good place
24:05
Speaker 1: for a sniper to be, so we need to keep
24:07
Speaker 1: our eyes up there. If there's a fire, we need
24:09
Speaker 1: to leave here. Um. This that's just like one place.
24:13
Speaker 1: And then like you said, they also do background checks too,
24:16
Speaker 1: so that any employee apparently who has any kind of
24:19
Speaker 1: criminal record, um. At say like a hotel that the
24:22
Speaker 1: president is going to be staying and they're not allowed
24:24
Speaker 1: to work while the president's there, which is like half
24:27
Speaker 1: the staff of every hotel. I would guess that that
24:29
Speaker 1: could be kind of problematic for some hotels, you know,
24:32
Speaker 1: not to say that their staff of criminals, but at
24:34
Speaker 1: the very least, well it said even like yeah, minor,
24:38
Speaker 1: minor stuff like they're gonna say, you tell Ronnie to
24:42
Speaker 1: stay home, and the manage would be like I thought
24:44
Speaker 1: Ronnie was with you, and then Ronnie's and the presses
24:49
Speaker 1: enter and the financial system collapses. The president, if they
24:53
Speaker 1: stay in a hotel there, they will own three floors
24:56
Speaker 1: of that hotel in full um, the one the president
24:59
Speaker 1: is on, one above it, and the one below it. Um.
25:02
Speaker 1: And apparently it's I read one little insider thing on
25:05
Speaker 1: when the president stays at a at a hotel that
25:07
Speaker 1: they normally don't. It's just a nightmare for the hotel. Yeah,
25:11
Speaker 1: in every way, yep, you know, and for the people
25:15
Speaker 1: who were staying there, especially if it was sudden, you know,
25:19
Speaker 1: because um, you don't have a reservation there anymore. True,
25:23
Speaker 1: Like ts, sorry, what else could you do? You could
25:26
Speaker 1: be on the video in the video department of the
25:29
Speaker 1: p p D because they film all this stuff pp
25:33
Speaker 1: D a V club. Basically, Uh, every motorcade is filmed
25:39
Speaker 1: or videoed. Obviously I say filmed because I'm old. Um,
25:43
Speaker 1: anytime the president's traveling like that, all this stuff is
25:46
Speaker 1: on tape again, not on tape reels because like there's
25:55
Speaker 1: a Prouder film, like you need to have this stuff
25:57
Speaker 1: in case of an attack or an assassination attempt. Um,
26:00
Speaker 1: so you can you know, rewind and watch the crowd. Right,
26:06
Speaker 1: it's just handy, but it's kind of reactive, whereas like
26:09
Speaker 1: the advanced people are proactive and trying to prevent an
26:13
Speaker 1: incident from ever taking place. Right, did you mention the details?
26:18
Speaker 1: They are specific to like people who are permanently guarded.
26:24
Speaker 1: So there, if you're a Secret Service agent, you might
26:26
Speaker 1: be assigned to like a field office, and if the
26:29
Speaker 1: president comes to your state, you might be called up
26:32
Speaker 1: to go work what's called the standing position, which is
26:36
Speaker 1: literally just standing around. Right, So if you're if it's
26:40
Speaker 1: a hotel room, this article uses a pretty good example.
26:42
Speaker 1: If it's a hotel that the President is staying at,
26:45
Speaker 1: the advanced team who goes right before the president arrives
26:49
Speaker 1: with the President will say clear to steer a stairwell,
26:52
Speaker 1: checked it for anything, cleared it, and then you come
26:55
Speaker 1: in and you stand there and make sure nothing changes
26:57
Speaker 1: to that stairwell. No one else comes in. Uh, no
27:00
Speaker 1: one drops anything off, there's nothing like that. That's your job,
27:03
Speaker 1: right then, that's probably a pretty common assignment for somebody
27:06
Speaker 1: who works protection in the Secret Service, right Yeah. But
27:11
Speaker 1: if you are protecting, say the first Lady, you're going
27:14
Speaker 1: to be part of a detail that is a crew
27:17
Speaker 1: of people whose job it is to protect the first Lady,
27:20
Speaker 1: and they get to be pretty close apparently U or
27:23
Speaker 1: it can happen, I guess you mean emotionally, romantically, no,
27:28
Speaker 1: emotionally surprised that hadn't been a wrong come yet. It's
27:34
Speaker 1: like Three's Company, but in the White House. But it's
27:36
Speaker 1: funny you mentioned that stairway detail like, that's literally the
27:40
Speaker 1: worst job you can get as a p A on
27:41
Speaker 1: the film set. Yeah, that's pretty bad. It's called lock
27:43
Speaker 1: up where you're like three blocks away just saying no, three,
27:47
Speaker 1: you can't go around this corner, right, And there's always
27:49
Speaker 1: a guy like me who's like, uh, you can't legally
27:52
Speaker 1: keep me from walking on the sidewalks public sidewalk. J
27:56
Speaker 1: I was the worst lock up guy when I was
27:57
Speaker 1: a p A because I would always just be like,
27:59
Speaker 1: all right, you're totally right. People choke you look them
28:03
Speaker 1: through again. I'm like, dude, what am I gonna do,
28:05
Speaker 1: like physically restrain somebody. I always felt so bad when
28:09
Speaker 1: we were shooting our TV show. Yeah, when people were
28:13
Speaker 1: redirected from their normal path. You know, we look at
28:17
Speaker 1: the bright side. You didn't have to feel bad for
28:19
Speaker 1: too long. That's there's also the food detail. Um, and
28:25
Speaker 1: even in the White House with the very much trusted
28:28
Speaker 1: White House uh cooking staff, there's someone in the kitchen
28:33
Speaker 1: from Secret Service watching over that stuff. Yeah, making sure
28:36
Speaker 1: seven didn't have any kind of break and is now
28:38
Speaker 1: trying to poison the president. Correct. Apparently if you want
28:43
Speaker 1: to order a pizza though, as the president, like literally
28:46
Speaker 1: I don't want the White House pizza. I want the
28:48
Speaker 1: pizza from whatever. Uh, you can do that, but they
28:52
Speaker 1: say that they send it to, um a different address.
28:56
Speaker 1: They send it to the Naval Observatory usually just to
28:59
Speaker 1: kind of throw them off the scent. Seems smart, but
29:05
Speaker 1: certainly not fool proof. No, you know, but I guess,
29:10
Speaker 1: especially now that you just told everybody, I guess it
29:13
Speaker 1: couldn't poison every pizza going to the Naval observatory though,
29:15
Speaker 1: because they would be outed. I don't know, like some
29:19
Speaker 1: evil organization like Specter probably could. Yeah, that's true. Good point. Um,
29:26
Speaker 1: this is a pretty is that a good point? I think?
29:29
Speaker 1: So this is a pretty expensive process to the fiscal year.
29:35
Speaker 1: That is uh seven d and fifty million dollars on
29:40
Speaker 1: just protective operations, which is about half of its overall budget,
29:45
Speaker 1: which is a you know, I mean, it's worth it, obviously,
29:48
Speaker 1: but that's a lot of dough going towards the very
29:51
Speaker 1: smallest thing that you do. When half your money is
29:53
Speaker 1: spent on that, then uh, you're gonna run out of money, right, Yeah,
29:57
Speaker 1: And they did actually um the fiscal year a gooes.
30:01
Speaker 1: We're recording actually before the end of the two thousand,
30:04
Speaker 1: seventeen fiscal year. But the Secret Service said, UM, we're
30:08
Speaker 1: gonna run out of money like right around the end
30:10
Speaker 1: of the fiscal year, and we still have three more
30:12
Speaker 1: months of operations that we have to do, So what
30:16
Speaker 1: do you want to do? You know? And apparently there
30:20
Speaker 1: was also I was I was reading in the Washington
30:23
Speaker 1: Post about um a dispute over money about actually terms
30:27
Speaker 1: of a lease when um this the Secret Service tried
30:32
Speaker 1: to rent out office space in the headquarters in Trump
30:36
Speaker 1: Tower that the Trump organization UM said you should go
30:41
Speaker 1: find office space elsewhere because they couldn't come to terms
30:44
Speaker 1: on a lease somehow, And so the Secret Service moved
30:48
Speaker 1: down to a trailer on the sidewalk in front of
30:51
Speaker 1: Trump Tower, which I guess they found out that they
30:54
Speaker 1: burned through all their money and they were like, you
30:56
Speaker 1: guys go to a trailer on the sidewalk. Yeah, that's
30:59
Speaker 1: probably the most expense of property in the world that
31:00
Speaker 1: has a trailer on their front lawn. It's pretty funny, um,
31:05
Speaker 1: And we should mention we joked about the dark glasses
31:07
Speaker 1: that was actually do sort of function. Um, they're not
31:10
Speaker 1: just trying to look cool, they're trying to um keep
31:13
Speaker 1: their eyes hidden for what they're looking at. Yeah, you
31:17
Speaker 1: know what was that one agent's name and uh um
31:21
Speaker 1: taxi driver in the line of fire. No, no, it
31:26
Speaker 1: has nothing to do Secret Service Matrix. The matrix. Oh
31:30
Speaker 1: this is Smith, right, the main bad guy I think so. Yeah.
31:35
Speaker 1: I thought he did a good job rocking the glasses
31:37
Speaker 1: and everything. So that literally had nothing to do with
31:40
Speaker 1: anything but him looking cool and glasses. Right, Okay, you
31:44
Speaker 1: want to take a break, Yeah, let's do. I think
31:46
Speaker 1: I just threw us off. We probably should and regroup.
32:00
Speaker 1: H all right, Chuck. We talked a little bit about
32:15
Speaker 1: other stuff that the Secret Service gets down on UM counterfeiting,
32:20
Speaker 1: male fraud. Those are some throwbacks, but then they've got
32:24
Speaker 1: the whole new cyber crime thing with like fishing and
32:28
Speaker 1: stuff like that. But they also have UM to combat
32:33
Speaker 1: this crime. They've accrued some pretty cool stuff over there
32:36
Speaker 1: over the years, not the least of which is an
32:39
Speaker 1: ink library. Yeah. This I think is for me the
32:42
Speaker 1: coolest part of this show. So this article types of
32:47
Speaker 1: ink I saw eleven thousand, four hundred. That's believable. Yeah.
32:52
Speaker 1: So the idea is they literally have collected since the
32:56
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties, what they think is every kind end of
33:00
Speaker 1: ink and every kind of pin that is ever been made. Yeah,
33:06
Speaker 1: that's the goal at least so they can use that. UM.
33:09
Speaker 1: I think when like when Bick makes a new pin,
33:11
Speaker 1: they will send them their ank and stuff. Otherwise they
33:15
Speaker 1: have to collect it. And this is who I didn't like.
33:17
Speaker 1: You know, if they ever get a letter about any
33:21
Speaker 1: kind of crime that is under their per view, they
33:23
Speaker 1: have a database to compare it to UM. And not
33:28
Speaker 1: just with things like ransom notes and threatening letters. Apparently
33:32
Speaker 1: they'll use that kind of stuff for if somebody's forged
33:36
Speaker 1: a baseball signed by Babe Ruth or something. I said,
33:39
Speaker 1: Oh interesting, Um, if it's like a really high profile
33:43
Speaker 1: crime that has to do with ink, they'll they'll freelance
33:46
Speaker 1: for somebody. Interesting. Yeah, and they use gas chromatography. It's
33:51
Speaker 1: not just like this one looks black. Oh, this one's black.
33:54
Speaker 1: I figured out who did it. Um. But the the apparently,
33:58
Speaker 1: if you're a field agent going around own the world,
34:01
Speaker 1: the Ink Library guys will ask you to like grab
34:04
Speaker 1: some pens while you're in you know, Cartagena. Oh really,
34:10
Speaker 1: it's like a standing request. They also have an information
34:15
Speaker 1: database for handwriting too, the forensic information system for handwriting
34:20
Speaker 1: database or phish Yeah, decent acronym yes see, yeah, but
34:26
Speaker 1: it breaks our one rule of acronymic, which is just
34:30
Speaker 1: kind of forgetting about another word. So it looks cooler
34:33
Speaker 1: right yeah than fished, right right exactly, Or it could
34:38
Speaker 1: be the Phish database. I guess that's true fish. So
34:42
Speaker 1: this is basically just a handwriting database, and I imagine
34:46
Speaker 1: there's a lot of overlap here with FBI and CIA,
34:48
Speaker 1: don't you think, um what else? Ninety four they added uh,
34:54
Speaker 1: providing Evidence and Assistance to Missing and Exploited Children. Yeah,
34:57
Speaker 1: I thought that was pretty cool. Uh. And their big
35:00
Speaker 1: bag though, was really um counterfeiting in bank fraud. Um.
35:06
Speaker 1: They executed twenty one more than arrests um for stuff
35:11
Speaker 1: like that and recovered it. They recover a lot of
35:15
Speaker 1: money every year too, right. Yeah. There was one bust
35:17
Speaker 1: in two thousand and sixteen and Lima, Peru, where they
35:20
Speaker 1: recovered like three million in counterfeit US dollars and fifty
35:24
Speaker 1: thou counterfeit euros. Not bad, which I think was their
35:27
Speaker 1: biggest single bus to date. It's a lot of a
35:30
Speaker 1: lot of mula. It is a lot of fake moula.
35:33
Speaker 1: So do you what if you want to be what
35:35
Speaker 1: if Josh wants to be in the Secret Service? I
35:37
Speaker 1: don't think that's gonna work out for me. Well, it's
35:40
Speaker 1: too late first, they Yeah, you have to be between
35:44
Speaker 1: twenty one and thirty seven. You have to do a
35:47
Speaker 1: pp screen. Yeah. Um, they don't want you to have
35:51
Speaker 1: any visible tattoos or piercings, which I imagine that's probably
35:54
Speaker 1: getting harder and harder these days. Yeah, it's probably not
35:58
Speaker 1: a good look to have, like the presidential detailed guy
36:00
Speaker 1: having those big ear ring gauges. Right, So what those
36:06
Speaker 1: are called gauge? Yeah, you know, like one of those
36:10
Speaker 1: big two inters. Can you fit a hot dog through it? Yes?
36:14
Speaker 1: I can. You're hired. Uh No tattoos, a piercings? What else?
36:19
Speaker 1: You gotta pass that polygraph? You gotta take a physical. Um,
36:23
Speaker 1: gotta get that Secret Service Uh top security clearance? What
36:26
Speaker 1: can take? It can take geez nine months to get that. Yeah,
36:29
Speaker 1: and I looked into that. Depending on what level of
36:32
Speaker 1: security you're looking for, it says nine nine months here,
36:36
Speaker 1: but I saw they could do it in like sixty days.
36:38
Speaker 1: But depending on how thorough they go, like they're either
36:41
Speaker 1: going to go back five years or ten years into
36:43
Speaker 1: your past. They're gonna interview your coworkers, your neighbors, your friends,
36:48
Speaker 1: your pastor whoever, and they're gonna ask him all sorts
36:52
Speaker 1: of personal questions like is uh is this guy a freak?
36:56
Speaker 1: You know what I mean, like a freak freak? Um?
36:59
Speaker 1: Does he you like to get wasted? Uh? Does he
37:02
Speaker 1: love America? What country? Does he like as much of
37:05
Speaker 1: not more than America? Which is stuff like that? Like, seriously,
37:08
Speaker 1: they're gonna they they're gonna look into what your foreign
37:11
Speaker 1: preferences are. You know, Ronnie, he was always going on
37:14
Speaker 1: about Spain. Yeah, I couldn't get enough that explains it.
37:18
Speaker 1: His whole catchphrase was oh ay. So if you go
37:22
Speaker 1: through all that, you take a written test, you have
37:24
Speaker 1: an interview. If you pass all that junk, the new
37:27
Speaker 1: you are sent to lovely Glencoe, Georgia, right here in
37:31
Speaker 1: our our home state, to the Federal Law Enforcement Training
37:35
Speaker 1: Center for ten weeks of training. Uh. This is down
37:39
Speaker 1: down near the Georgia coast where it's hot and humid
37:42
Speaker 1: and muggy. Yeah, but if you want some good shrimp,
37:45
Speaker 1: it's a good place to train, I imagine. So. Um,
37:49
Speaker 1: so you know, ten weeks of hardcore training, then an
37:52
Speaker 1: eighteen week course at a place called the James S.
37:56
Speaker 1: Rowley Center in Beltsville, Maryland, which is basically Camp X. Yeah,
38:01
Speaker 1: kind of the special Special Agent Basic Training Center. Um. Yeah,
38:06
Speaker 1: and that's the one where it's probably i mean they
38:08
Speaker 1: teach you how to shoot guns. I'm sure you already
38:10
Speaker 1: know at this point. I doubt if it's like I
38:13
Speaker 1: never held one of these emergency medicine that's a big one. Um.
38:21
Speaker 1: I saw that they travel with the president with um
38:25
Speaker 1: a full full supply of the president's blood, which makes sense.
38:30
Speaker 1: I never really thought about that, like as many leaders
38:33
Speaker 1: are as in the president right then, I don't know,
38:37
Speaker 1: I mean it said, uh, they said what they they're
38:40
Speaker 1: trained in what's called ten minute medicine, which is they
38:43
Speaker 1: never want to have the president more than ten minutes
38:45
Speaker 1: away from a trauma center. And uh, not only that,
38:49
Speaker 1: when the president is traveling, they have an agent at
38:51
Speaker 1: the nearest hospital already who has gone through the operating
38:55
Speaker 1: room and emergency staff. So they have these bags of
38:58
Speaker 1: blood if a transfusion is knee did and um, you know,
39:02
Speaker 1: basically in that just that ten minutes, they need to
39:04
Speaker 1: be able to keep the president alive, Yeah, which was
39:07
Speaker 1: a big deal. When Reagan was shot. Yeah, you want
39:09
Speaker 1: to talk about that, Yeah, I mean he he was
39:12
Speaker 1: shot in the chest. It was it was bad yeah,
39:15
Speaker 1: by John Hinckley Jr. Right, Yeah, or as our articles
39:19
Speaker 1: just says, a crazed assassin. Yeah. I thought that was
39:21
Speaker 1: really weird, Like maybe the author was like, I'm not
39:24
Speaker 1: putting his name in print, I'm not giving him any press.
39:26
Speaker 1: It definitely seemed weird to not say who it was.
39:30
Speaker 1: And Hinckley was trying to impress Jodie Foster so that
39:33
Speaker 1: she would fall in love with them and they could
39:35
Speaker 1: move into the White House if I remember correctly. Right. Yeah,
39:37
Speaker 1: So to do that, right, you had to get Reagan
39:40
Speaker 1: out of the way. And Reagan was coming out of
39:43
Speaker 1: the Washington Hilton Hotel hed just given a speech. This
39:46
Speaker 1: is in I think, uh, January one. It was early
39:50
Speaker 1: in night one, and um Hinckley walked up and just
39:54
Speaker 1: shot him at least twice I think got him once
39:57
Speaker 1: in the shoulder and then once in the chest. It
40:00
Speaker 1: might be confusing with another assassination. He definitely got him
40:02
Speaker 1: in the chest, like you said. And there was this
40:05
Speaker 1: agent named Jerry Parr, who was I think like fifty
40:08
Speaker 1: at the time. Um, and he immediately threw I think
40:14
Speaker 1: he threw his coat over Reagan. Threw Reagan into the limo,
40:17
Speaker 1: landed on him and shut the door and told the
40:20
Speaker 1: limo driver to drive. And Reagan UM was like, I
40:24
Speaker 1: think you broke one of my ribs throw me into
40:26
Speaker 1: the limo, did you know that? And he said that's
40:29
Speaker 1: the bullet, sir, right. But yeah, that's when Parr was like, oh,
40:33
Speaker 1: you got hit. So he told the limo to go
40:35
Speaker 1: to the hospital instead of the White House. Yeah, I
40:38
Speaker 1: think he was. Um had blood coming out of his mouth,
40:41
Speaker 1: which was the surefire telltale sign that he had. There
40:47
Speaker 1: was a lung punctured apparently when you're bleeding from the mouth,
40:50
Speaker 1: and so he knew, no, no, no, we we need
40:53
Speaker 1: to go straight to the hospital and not too whatever
40:55
Speaker 1: medical staff we have at the White House. Ye, saved
40:58
Speaker 1: his life, he did it. He actually became convinced from
41:01
Speaker 1: what I saw that um uh, he had been chosen
41:04
Speaker 1: by God to save Reagan's life. And he became like
41:06
Speaker 1: a pastor after that. Oh yeah interesting yeah, well, um,
41:13
Speaker 1: the speaking of limos, the driver of that limo is
41:17
Speaker 1: trained I mean the presidential limo is bulletproof, flat tire proof,
41:23
Speaker 1: um as bomb proof as it can be. And the
41:28
Speaker 1: driver is trained. It's like a you know, it's like
41:31
Speaker 1: a trained stunt driver, right, and it's a Secret Service driver, right, Yeah,
41:35
Speaker 1: And they need to be able to they're trained to
41:37
Speaker 1: do those like super cool looking one eight moves to
41:40
Speaker 1: get the heck out of there, to drive backwards at
41:43
Speaker 1: high speeds, and um, all the other stuff that you
41:47
Speaker 1: see stuntman stunt drivers do these, the Secret Service limo
41:51
Speaker 1: drivers can do so. On the other end of the spectrum,
41:54
Speaker 1: speaking of limo drivers from the Secret Service, um is
41:57
Speaker 1: JFK's assassination. Um. I read this in this article didn't
42:02
Speaker 1: even mention that, right. It's like in the Secret Service
42:06
Speaker 1: successes and failures not even mentioned at all. So I
42:12
Speaker 1: read this article on it from Vanity Fair that was
42:15
Speaker 1: called could the Secret Service have saved JFK? Go read it?
42:18
Speaker 1: Totally worthwhile read. But they um, apparently the Secret Service guys,
42:24
Speaker 1: not all of them, but a handful of them. We're
42:27
Speaker 1: out partying like all night, uh the night before into
42:31
Speaker 1: the morning, um, and showed up after three or four
42:35
Speaker 1: maybe five hours of sleep in some cases, uh, ready
42:39
Speaker 1: for duty. And if you look at it through that lens,
42:42
Speaker 1: apparently you can see how yeah, it looks a lot
42:47
Speaker 1: like being hungover and maybe even still a little drunk.
42:50
Speaker 1: Definitely affected their responses. And one of the guys, um
42:54
Speaker 1: was the limo driver who UM really like took it
42:59
Speaker 1: personally immediately that he had failed. But he he did.
43:03
Speaker 1: He didn't swerve, he didn't speed up, He just tapped
43:06
Speaker 1: the brake a little bit and actually, if anything, gave
43:08
Speaker 1: um Lee Harvey Oswald a clear second fatal shot. UM.
43:14
Speaker 1: And they think that it was because of this culture
43:17
Speaker 1: of like drinking and partying that was just endemic at
43:20
Speaker 1: the time, UM, and that it actually led to JFK's potential.
43:27
Speaker 1: Potentially he his life could have been saved, is what
43:29
Speaker 1: the article says. Obviously could have died from the neck wound,
43:33
Speaker 1: but they didn't do enough in retrospect to protect against
43:38
Speaker 1: that second fatal shot. That definitely did it. Yeah, it's
43:41
Speaker 1: worth reading man. Well, I mean, you talk about the
43:44
Speaker 1: party atmosphere, and I think early on some listeners MND
43:48
Speaker 1: have thought you were kidding around. But that's really the
43:51
Speaker 1: case apparently, UM. And it probably has a lot to
43:54
Speaker 1: do with just how understaff and overwork they are that
43:58
Speaker 1: they kind of unwind. Um. They have been known to
44:01
Speaker 1: unwind and pretty epic fashion. Um. And and recently and
44:06
Speaker 1: in the last like five or six years, have been
44:08
Speaker 1: some pretty high profile blemishes on the agency. One in
44:12
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve when a bunch of agents a hundred
44:16
Speaker 1: and seventy five I went to Columbia um before Obama visit,
44:20
Speaker 1: and twelve of them were caught taking prostitutes back to
44:24
Speaker 1: their hotel. And apparently the same kind of thing happened
44:27
Speaker 1: the year before in El Salvador Um. And then wasn't
44:32
Speaker 1: there another kind of big party bust or something? Yeah Amsterdam?
44:36
Speaker 1: Oh right, well, of course, yeah, there were three agents
44:39
Speaker 1: were found passed out drunk, one of them in the
44:42
Speaker 1: hallway of the hotel that the President was staying at
44:45
Speaker 1: the below and um, they got sent home and put
44:49
Speaker 1: on leave for that. And they came like right on
44:52
Speaker 1: the heels well two years later after the first scandal
44:56
Speaker 1: in two thousand twelve, and that was on the heels
45:00
Speaker 1: of Oscar or take a hernandez um shooting at the
45:03
Speaker 1: White House. Why he did that, well, I mean he
45:09
Speaker 1: claimed he was Jesus I hadn't. I hadn't had a
45:13
Speaker 1: chance to look up at on that one, and I
45:14
Speaker 1: just didn't know what his motive was. Yeah, I mean,
45:17
Speaker 1: by all accounts, I think he was mentally ill. He
45:20
Speaker 1: claimed like he made a video for Oprah Winfrey incident
45:23
Speaker 1: to her claiming he was Jesus. And it's funny if
45:26
Speaker 1: you look at the guy, he looks like Jesus. Well,
45:29
Speaker 1: I mean, whatever your conception of Jesus is, I don't know,
45:32
Speaker 1: but the kind of the classic Jesus um figure that
45:37
Speaker 1: you see a lot, the guy kind of looked a
45:38
Speaker 1: lot like him, like more more than you do. Let's say,
45:44
Speaker 1: I could I could see that most people do look
45:46
Speaker 1: more like Jesus than me. But he he fired a
45:50
Speaker 1: semi automatic weapon rifle at the White House quite a
45:54
Speaker 1: few shots. And this was just kind of bungled. The
45:57
Speaker 1: investigation was bungled. They had no clue what was happening,
46:01
Speaker 1: what was going on. It took four full days to
46:04
Speaker 1: realize that he actually hit the White House. And that's
46:07
Speaker 1: when a housekeeper said, you know, there's broken glass and
46:09
Speaker 1: cement on the floor in here. Remember, Michelle Obama was
46:13
Speaker 1: really upset. I can imagine that this happened. They weren't
46:16
Speaker 1: home at the time, but I think one of the
46:19
Speaker 1: daughters was um. And this is, you know, after the
46:23
Speaker 1: same thing. It happened in the Clinton administration. Yeah, I
46:28
Speaker 1: don't remember that at all. The Clinton one. Yeah, that
46:31
Speaker 1: was another guy that just you know, shot at the
46:33
Speaker 1: White House. Basically, yeah, I think he did it from
46:35
Speaker 1: the street, but this guy actually got through. Oh wait,
46:39
Speaker 1: was this one from the street too? I think it
46:41
Speaker 1: was from the fence, Okay, but no, the guy that
46:43
Speaker 1: got through was a guy with a knife. Yes, made
46:46
Speaker 1: it through several lines of security, through the fence and
46:50
Speaker 1: made it all the way to the north portico, which
46:52
Speaker 1: is basically the front door of the White House, with
46:55
Speaker 1: a knife before he was finally apprehended. Said he was
46:58
Speaker 1: caught sprinting towards the front door with a knife. But yeah,
47:02
Speaker 1: that was And again, the capital or the White House
47:04
Speaker 1: police are part of the Secret Service too, And these
47:07
Speaker 1: are the people who look like you know, paramilitary police
47:11
Speaker 1: officers patrolling the White House. They're part of the Secret
47:14
Speaker 1: Service police. Wow. So yeah it was. There were a
47:18
Speaker 1: bunch of controversies that rocked the place, which is why
47:22
Speaker 1: one some people are like, oh, it might be good
47:24
Speaker 1: that this Marine Corps colonel who has no connection to
47:28
Speaker 1: the Secret Services coming in maybe bring in a fresh perspective,
47:34
Speaker 1: because I guess there was a study that found that
47:37
Speaker 1: it was an insular culture that has historically been resistant
47:41
Speaker 1: to change. As the Congressional investigation, so who knows, but
47:47
Speaker 1: they've done a lot of good too. Agreed. I can't can't,
47:51
Speaker 1: just don't want to just end on the controversies, but man,
47:53
Speaker 1: there's been some doozies. Are you got anything else? Yeah?
47:57
Speaker 1: I got just a couple of more little things that
48:00
Speaker 1: if you look up like coolest Secret Service secrets. There's
48:04
Speaker 1: just an abundance of articles, um, from mental flaws to
48:09
Speaker 1: breeders digest and I compiled a couple of these and
48:12
Speaker 1: we've gone over most of them, but this one I
48:14
Speaker 1: thought was neat Um. Secret Service isn't actually in the
48:18
Speaker 1: Oval office most times, UM like inside the room. They're
48:22
Speaker 1: right outside. But they have installed weight sensitive pressure pads
48:27
Speaker 1: throughout the Oval office, so they know where the president
48:30
Speaker 1: is at all times. Oh wow, that sounds like it's
48:33
Speaker 1: made up, but it's supposedly true. I could see that. Um,
48:38
Speaker 1: when the President delivers the State of the Union, they
48:40
Speaker 1: hold one member of the cabinet behind hidden at Mount
48:46
Speaker 1: Weather in case someone bombs the entire thing. That's like
48:50
Speaker 1: that show Designated Survivor that I've never seen never What
48:54
Speaker 1: is that? It's like, uh Keia not Kena Reeves Key
48:58
Speaker 1: for Sutherland show where he's like a cabinet member who
49:02
Speaker 1: who like, I think that very thing happened and like
49:05
Speaker 1: there was bombing and it killed everybody and now he's president.
49:08
Speaker 1: That's all I know. Uh what else? The headquarters of
49:13
Speaker 1: Secret Service in Washington, d C. Does not have trash
49:16
Speaker 1: cans anywhere near it on the sidewalk, okay, because you know,
49:22
Speaker 1: put a bomb in there. Apparently Reagan carried a gun,
49:26
Speaker 1: his own gun. I believe that right. He carried a
49:29
Speaker 1: thirty eight in his briefcase and apparently uh Vice President
49:33
Speaker 1: Bush didn't even know about it. Wow, really, that's what
49:36
Speaker 1: it says. He found out the hard way. And then uh,
49:40
Speaker 1: when he crossed drawnnee and some policy yeah, President Ronnie,
49:44
Speaker 1: not oh yeah the gipper. Yeah, not Secret Service Ronnie.
49:47
Speaker 1: When he crossed the gipper. Uh. And then finally, um,
49:50
Speaker 1: apparently the code word for when there's a big private
49:54
Speaker 1: investigation going on at the White House. They they're renovating
49:57
Speaker 1: a room, so the First family gets out of the
50:01
Speaker 1: house and they don't really know what's going on. And
50:04
Speaker 1: so it said over the years, whenever you hear like
50:07
Speaker 1: Clinton Obama renovated the treaty room, Clinton renovated Room Bush
50:11
Speaker 1: renovated the briefing room. Clinton's was the music room. Apparently
50:15
Speaker 1: those were all um private investigations going on. I don't understand. Well,
50:21
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess they just they need to set
50:24
Speaker 1: up shop in the White House and too even not
50:27
Speaker 1: alert the first family that that's going on. They'll quote
50:31
Speaker 1: renovate unquote a room. Wow. That sounds a little hinky
50:35
Speaker 1: to me, though. It does like I would guess that
50:37
Speaker 1: the president is a prize of just about everything that's
50:40
Speaker 1: going on, including investigations. Yeah, there may be some more
50:44
Speaker 1: clarity on that that someone will know an email us
50:46
Speaker 1: about where did they come from Reader's digest Now I
50:48
Speaker 1: think that, Uh well, boo, that was huff po a
50:52
Speaker 1: bunch of commies. Yeah. Really, they'll say anything to make
50:56
Speaker 1: the president look bad. Pe Well, don't take it seriously. Okay,
51:02
Speaker 1: do you got anything else now? Uh no, sir? Okay, Well,
51:06
Speaker 1: if you want to know more about the secret Service.
51:08
Speaker 1: Go check out this article on how stuff works. And
51:10
Speaker 1: since I said go check it out, it's time for
51:13
Speaker 1: a listener mail. I'm gonna call this one of two
51:17
Speaker 1: on Satanism that we're gonna read. I want to thank
51:20
Speaker 1: you guys for the Satanism episode. I myself am a
51:23
Speaker 1: Satanist and remember the Satanic Temple. I appreciate you voicing
51:26
Speaker 1: my faith in objective and fair manner, but I do
51:29
Speaker 1: take issue with you calling us hippies. Feel your summation
51:32
Speaker 1: the various TST programs and that's the Satanic Church or
51:35
Speaker 1: a temple uh to accurately represent much of what we
51:39
Speaker 1: strive to do. But I wish you had taken the
51:41
Speaker 1: time to go over the our core beliefs like you
51:43
Speaker 1: did the Church of Satan. And then he sent them
51:46
Speaker 1: to me, so I'll just read them, and he said,
51:47
Speaker 1: here's a fiver for each of you. What wish um.
51:51
Speaker 1: One should strive to act with compassion and empathy towards
51:53
Speaker 1: all creatures. The struggle for justice is an ongoing and
51:56
Speaker 1: necessary pursuit should prevail over laws and institutions. One's body
52:01
Speaker 1: is invite, inviolable, subject to one's own will. Alone. The
52:08
Speaker 1: freedoms of others should be respected, including the freedom to offend.
52:12
Speaker 1: A belief should conform to our best scientific understanding of
52:15
Speaker 1: the world. Uh, we should never care to distort scientific
52:18
Speaker 1: facts to fit our beliefs. That's a good one. People
52:21
Speaker 1: are fallible. If we make a mistake, we should do
52:23
Speaker 1: our best directify it and resolve any harm. And finally,
52:27
Speaker 1: every tenant is a guiding principle designed to inspire nobility
52:30
Speaker 1: and action and thought. Yeah, so he said, the takeaway
52:34
Speaker 1: basically is what we try and reflect as a focus
52:38
Speaker 1: on scientific inquiry, nobility and action and thought and respect
52:42
Speaker 1: for oneself and others. And he closes out by saying,
52:46
Speaker 1: Haile satan and his name is Caleb Tarat Tuta Tera Tuta.
52:53
Speaker 1: Sorry but I thought it was Caleb Tarantula, and I
52:56
Speaker 1: was like, that's a great name for a Satanist, like
52:59
Speaker 1: Peter Grim or if you want to get in touch
53:03
Speaker 1: with this, like Caleb did, you can tweet to us.
53:05
Speaker 1: I'm at josh Um Clark and at s Y s
53:08
Speaker 1: K podcast on Twitter. You can hang out with Chuck
53:10
Speaker 1: at Charles W. Chuck Bryant on Facebook dot com or
53:14
Speaker 1: at Facebook dot com slash stuff. You should Know. You
53:17
Speaker 1: can send us an email to Stuff podcast how stuff
53:20
Speaker 1: Works dot com and has always joined us at our
53:22
Speaker 1: home on the web. Stuff You Should Know dot com
53:29
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
53:31
Speaker 1: it how stuff Works dot com.