Ron Butterfield

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Michael O'Neill as Secret Service agent Ron Butterfield
Michael O'Neill as Secret Service agent Ron Butterfield

Ron Butterfield is the fictional head of President Josiah Bartlet's Secret Service detail and Head of White House Security on the television series The West Wing, played by Michael O'Neill.

Ron Butterfield first appeared in Season 1 of The West Wing, telling the President about a security breach at the White House, when an armed woman made it onto the White House grounds, with the President' youngest daughter as her target.

He was at the failed assassination attempt in Rosslyn, Virginia, where he was shot in his hand while getting the President into the motorcade, and was the first person to realize that the President had been shot. In spite of criticism received by the Secret Service as a result of them not preventing the assassination attempt, he refused to allow an internal White House memo showing that White House Communications Director Toby Ziegler had insisted that the President left public events in the open air to be made public, saying that he took final responsibility for the President's safety.

Butterfield was present in New York for the Season 3 finale, when he notified the then Press Secretary C.J. Cregg of the killing of the Secret Service agent assigned to protect her. When Zoey Bartlet was kidnapped towards the end of Season 4, he was the man responsible for telling Leo McGarry about the abduction, which led to President Bartlet temporarily stepping aside from the Presidency, using the 25th amendment to the Constitution.

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