How The Secret Service Has Changed Since Jfk

The limousine carrying President John F. Kennedy races toward the hospital after he was shot in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, with Clandestine Service agent Clint Hill riding on the back. Justin Newman/AP hide caption

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Justin Newman/AP

The limousine carrying President John F. Kennedy races toward the hospital after he was shot in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, with Secret Service agent Clint Hill riding on the back.

Justin Newman/AP

Nov. 22 volition mark the 50th ceremony of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, a moment that left an enduring mark on those who remember it.

It also permanently changed the agency charged with protecting the president — the U.Southward. Secret Service.

Looking back at the images of Kennedy, first lady Jackie Kennedy, Texas Gov. John Connally and his wife waving as they rode through the streets of Dallas in an open up Lincoln, it all looks terribly innocent and naive.

Less than a year later Lee Harvey Oswald fired from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, the Warren Commission formed by President Lyndon Johnson completed its investigation into that day.

The commission institute what it politely called "certain shortcomings and lapses from the loftier standards which the Commission believes should prevail in the field of Presidential protection."

Many dealt with the Undercover Service'south advance work. No one thought to check the buildings along the motorcade route. There were no formal procedures for working with local law enforcement agencies.

Marc Ambinder, who is editor at large of The Week and has written well-nigh the agency, says the Secret Service of 50 years agone was ill-prepared to bargain with the gregarious Kennedy.

"It's a combination of the fact that the Secret Service playbook was outdated and they had never really encountered a president earlier John F. Kennedy who loved to mix it upward, and loved to get in the middle of huge crowds, and fed off the energy of huge crowds," Ambinder says.

Subsequently the assassination, the Secret Service made some immediate changes. Open limousines were out. And it began taking a more aggressive approach to its advance work.

"Not criticizing what happened in 1963, but I think it'south off-white to say that protections changed quite a bit, and how we do things on a day-to-day basis," says Special Agent Brian Leary, who serves as a spokesman for the agency.

The Secret Service began staffing up. There were only 28 agents on the ground in Dallas in 1963, and the agency's budget was $5.5 one thousand thousand. Terminal year the budget was more than than $1.six billion.

Over the years, Leary says, the service has established counter-sniper units, assault teams and surveillance units.

"And so every bit the threat has evolved and has changed, Secret Service has changed with it," he says.

A Undercover Service counter-sniper team looks out on the surface area every bit President Obama campaigns at a rally on Nov. 4, 2012, in Concord, N.H. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images hide caption

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Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

A Secret Service counter-sniper team looks out on the surface area equally President Obama campaigns at a rally on Nov. iv, 2012, in Concur, Northward.H.

Scrap Somodevilla/Getty Images

In fact, it's difficult to compare the bubble that surrounds President Obama with the Kennedy-era security. Now anyone hoping to go close to the president has to go through a metallic detector and a bag check. The president rides in a limousine so armored it's referred to as "the Beast."

Ambinder, who has been allowed backside the scenes of a number of Underground Service operations, says the advance piece of work for just one short motorcade is meticulous.

"The Underground Service accelerate machine puts together an enormous, thick presidential transportation manual — just for that one movement — that'southward mayhap 60 to 70 pages long that has data about relocation sites and contingencies, and what happens if the motorcade needs to exist diverted, and what happens if there's a chemical attack," he says. "Only in that 1 motion."

Leary says the Secret Service tries each mean solar day to apply the lessons from Dallas and subsequent attempts on the president's life.

"I think at that place's certainly a recognition that that was a tragic day for the nation and a very difficult twenty-four hours for the Secret Service," he says. "Merely with all of that, whether that was the assassination of President Kennedy or the attempted assassination of President Reagan, Hush-hush Service is trying to learn from those events."

And as if protecting the president's life wasn't plenty, over the years the Secret Service has been given the added duty of guarding presidential families, visiting heads of country and presidential candidates.

And that's all in improver to its original task: investigating counterfeiters.

How The Secret Service Has Changed Since Jfk,

Source: https://www.npr.org/2013/11/07/243769588/how-kennedys-assassination-changed-the-secret-service

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