| United States Secret Service | |
| Common name | Secret Service |
| Abbreviation | USSS |
| USSS star logo | |
| Agency overview | |
|---|---|
| Annual budget | $1.483 billion (FY2010)[1] |
| Legal personality | Governmental: Government agency |
| Jurisdictional structure | |
| Federal agency | USA |
| General nature |
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| Specialist jurisdiction | |
| Operational structure | |
| Sworn members | 4,400 |
| Agency executive | Mark J. Sullivan, Director |
| Parent agency | United States Department of Homeland Security |
| Field offices | 136 |
| Facilities | |
| Resident agent offices | 68 |
| Overseas offices | 19 |
| Website | |
| http://www.SecretService.gov | |
The United States Secret Service is a United States federal law enforcement agency that is part of the United States Department of Homeland Security.[2] The sworn members are divided among the Special Agents and the Uniformed Division. Until March 1, 2003, the Service was part of the United States Department of the Treasury.[3]
The U.S. Secret Service has two distinct areas of responsibility:
The Secret Service's initial responsibility was to investigate crimes related to the Treasury and then evolved into the United States' first domestic intelligence and counterintelligence agency. Many of the agency's missions were later taken over by subsequent agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
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Today the agency's primary investigative mission is to safeguard the payment and financial systems of the United States. These include crimes that involve financial institution fraud, computer and telecommunications fraud, false identification documents, access device fraud, advance fee fraud, electronic funds transfers and money laundering as it relates to the agency's core violations. After the 1901 assassination of President William McKinley, Congress also directed the Secret Service to protect the President of the United States. Protection remains the other key mission of the United States Secret Service.
Today, the Secret Service is authorized by law to protect:[6]
Any of these individuals can decline Secret Service protection, with the exception of the President, the Vice President (or other officer next in the order of succession to the Office of President), the President-elect, and the Vice President-elect.[6]
When Hillary Clinton became Secretary of State in 2009, the Secret Service continued to protect her at home, however the Diplomatic Security Service protects her while she is performing her duties as the Secretary of State, to include any foreign travel.
The Secret Service investigates thousands of incidents a year of individuals threatening the President of the United States.
The United States Secret Service Uniformed Division (UD) assists in protection duties. Established in 1922 as the White House Police Force, this organization was fully integrated into the Secret Service in 1930. With more than 1,300 officers as of 2010, the Uniformed Division is responsible for security at the White House Complex; the vice president's residence; the Department of the Treasury (as part of the White House Complex); and foreign diplomatic missions in the Washington, D.C., area. Uniformed Division officers carry out their protective responsibilities through a network of fixed security posts, foot, bicycle, vehicular and motorcycle patrols.
Officers are responsible for providing additional support to the Secret Service's protective mission through the following special support groups:
The Countersniper Support Unit (CS): Created in 1971, the CS unit's purpose is to provide specialized protective support to defend against long-range threats to Secret Service protectees. Today CS is an operational element of the Presidential Protective Division.[7]
The Canine Explosives Detection Unit (K-9): Created in 1976, the mission of the K-9 unit is to provide skilled and specialized explosives detection support to protective efforts involving Secret Service protectees.[7]
The Emergency Response Team (ERT): Formed in 1992, ERT's primary mission is to provide tactical response to unlawful intrusions and other protective challenges related to the White House and its grounds. ERT personnel receive specialized, advanced training and must maintain a high level of physical and operational proficiency.[7]
The Magnetometer Support Unit: Formed to ensure that all persons entering secure areas occupied by Secret Service protectees are unarmed,[7] the Secret Service began relying on magnetometer (metal detector) support by Uniformed Division officers to augment its protective efforts away from the White House following the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan.
| Title | Insignia |
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| Chief | |
| Assistant Chief | |
| Deputy Chief | |
| Inspector | |
| Captain | |
| Lieutenant | |
| Sergeant | |
| Officer |
Special Agents of the Secret Service wear attire that is appropriate for the surroundings. In many circumstances, the attire is a conservative suit, but attire can range from a tuxedo to blue jeans. Photographs often show them wearing sunglasses and a communication earpiece. They normally wear loose-fitting jackets to conceal their service pistol.
The attire for Uniformed Division Officers includes standard police uniforms or utility uniforms and ballistic/identification vests for members of the countersniper team, Emergency Response Team (ERT), and canine officers. The shoulder patch of the Uniformed Division consists of the presidential seal on white or black depending on the garment to which it is attached. While there is no official patch indicating "Secret Service", UD officers have occasionally designed and purchased unofficial patches to trade in their extensive collaborations with uniformed law enforcement officers.[8]
With a reported one third of the currency in circulation being counterfeit at the time,[9] the Secret Service was created by President Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865 (five days after Lee's surrender at Appomattox), and commissioned on July 5, 1865, in Washington, D.C. as the "Secret Service Division" of the Department of the Treasury with the mission of suppressing counterfeiting. The legislation creating the agency was on Abraham Lincoln's desk the night he was assassinated.[10] At the time, the only other federal law enforcement agencies were the United States Park Police, U.S. Post Office Department, Office of Instructions and Mail Depredations, now known as the United States Postal Inspection Service, and the United States Marshals Service. The Marshals did not have the manpower to investigate all crime under federal jurisdiction, so the Secret Service began to investigate everything from murder to bank robbery to illegal gambling. After the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901, Congress informally requested that the Secret Service provide presidential protection. A year later, the Secret Service assumed full-time responsibility for presidential protection. In 1902, William Craig became the first Secret Service agent to die while serving, in a road accident while riding in the presidential carriage.
The Secret Service was the first U.S. domestic intelligence and counterintelligence agency. Domestic intelligence collection and counterintelligence responsibilities were vested in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) after the FBI's creation in 1908. The Secret Service assisted in arresting Japanese American leaders and in the Japanese American internment during World War II.[11] The U.S. Secret Service is not an official part of the U.S. Intelligence Community.[12]
In 1950, President Harry S. Truman was residing in Blair House, across the street from the White House, while the executive mansion was undergoing renovations. Two Puerto Rican nationalists, Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola, approached Blair House with the intent to assassinate President Truman. Collazo and Torresola opened fire on Private Leslie Coffelt and other White House Police officers. Though mortally wounded by three shots from a 9 mm Walther P38 to his chest and abdomen, Private Coffelt returned fire, killing Torresola with a single shot to his head. As of 2010[update], Coffelt is the only member of the Secret Service to be killed while protecting a US President against an assassination attempt (Special Agent Tim McCarthy stepped in front of President Ronald Reagan during the assassination attempt of March 30, 1981 and took a bullet to the abdomen but made a full recovery). Collazo was also shot but survived his injuries and served 29 years in prison before returning to Puerto Rico in 1979.
In 1968, as a result of presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy's assassination, Congress authorized protection of major presidential and vice presidential candidates and nominees (Pub.L. 90-331). In 1965 and 1968, Congress also authorized lifetime protection of the spouses of deceased presidents unless they remarry and of the children of former presidents until age 16.[3]
Congress passed legislation in 1994 stating that presidents who enter office after January 1, 1997 receive Secret Service protection for 10 years after leaving office. Presidents who entered office prior to January 1, 1997 will continue to receive lifetime protection (Treasury Department Appropriations Act, 1995: Pub.L. 103-329).
The Secret Service Presidential Protective Division safeguards the President of the United States and his immediate family. They work with other federal, state and local law enforcement agencies and the military to safeguard the President when he travels in Air Force One, Marine One, and by limousine in motorcades.
Although the most visible role of the Secret Service today, personal protection is an anomaly in the responsibilities of an agency focused on fraud and counterfeiting.
In 1984 the US Congress passed the Comprehensive Crime Control act, which extended the Secret Service's jurisdiction over credit card fraud and computer fraud.
In 1990 the Secret Service initiated Operation Sundevil, originally intended to be a sting against malicious hackers, allegedly responsible for disrupting telephone services across all the USA. The operation, which was later described by Bruce Sterling in his book The Hacker Crackdown, affected a great number of people unrelated to hacking, and led to no convictions. The Secret Service, however, was sued and condemned to pay damages.
In 1994/5, it ran an undercover sting called Operation Cybersnare.[13]
The Secret Service investigates forgery of government checks, forgery of currency equivalents (such as travelers' or cashiers' checks), and certain instances of wire fraud (such as the so-called Nigerian scam) and credit card fraud. The reason for this combination of duties is that when the need for presidential protection became apparent in the early 20th century, few federal services had the necessary abilities and resources. The FBI, IRS, ATF, ICE, and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) did not yet exist. The United States Marshals Service was the only other logical choice, providing protection for the President on a number of occasions.
As of 2010, the Service has over 6,500 employees: 3,200 Special Agents, 1,300 Uniformed Division Officers, and 2,000 technical and administrative employees.[14] Special agents serve on protective details, special teams or sometimes investigate certain financial and homeland security-related crimes.
The Uniformed Division is similar to the United States Capitol Police and is in charge of protecting the physical White House grounds and foreign diplomatic missions in the Washington, D.C. area. The Uniformed Division was originally a separate organization known as the White House Police Force, but was moved into the Secret Service in 1930. In 1970, the role of the force, then called the Executive Protective Service, was expanded. The name United States Secret Service Uniformed Division was adopted in 1977.
The Secret Service has concurrent jurisdiction with the FBI over certain violations of federal computer crime laws. They have created 24 Electronic Crimes Task Forces (ECTFs) across the United States. These task forces are partnerships between the Service, federal/state and local law enforcement, the private sector and academia aimed at combating technology-based crimes.
In 1998, President Bill Clinton signed Presidential Decision Directive 62, which established National Special Security Events (NSSE). That directive made the Secret Service responsible for security at designated events.
Effective March 1, 2003, the Secret Service transferred from the Treasury to the newly established Department of Homeland Security.
Since the 1960s, Presidents John F. Kennedy (killed), Gerald Ford (twice-attacked, but uninjured) and Ronald Reagan (seriously injured) have been attacked while appearing in public.[15][16] Agents on scene though not injured during attacks on Presidents include William Greer, and Roy Kellerman. One of the more distinguished agents was Robert DeProspero, the Special Agent In Charge (SAIC) of Reagan's Presidential Protective Division (PPD) from January 1982 to April 1985. DeProspero was deputy to Jerry S. Parr, the SAIC of PPD during the Reagan assassination attempt on March 30, 1981.[17][18]
The Kennedy assassination spotlighted the bravery of two Secret Service agents. First, an agent protecting Mrs. Kennedy, Clint Hill, was riding in the car directly behind the Presidential limousine when the attack began. While the shooting continued, Hill leapt from the running board of the car he was riding on and jumped on to the back of the President's moving car and guided Mrs. Kennedy from the trunk back into the rear seat of the car. He then shielded the President and the First Lady with his body until the car arrived at the hospital.
Rufus Youngblood was riding in the Vice-Presidential car. When the shots were fired, he vaulted over the front seat and threw his body over Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson.[19][20] That evening, Johnson called Secret Service Chief James J. Rowley and cited Youngblood's bravery.[21][22] Youngblood would later recall some of this in his memoir, Twenty Years in the Secret Service.
The period following the Kennedy assassination was the most difficult in the modern history of the agency. Press reports indicated that morale among the agents was "low" for months following the assassination.[23][24] The agency overhauled its procedures in the wake of the Kennedy killing. Training, which until that time had been confined largely to "on-the-job" efforts, was systematized and regularized.
The Reagan assassination attempt also highlighted the bravery of several Secret Service agents, particularly agent Tim McCarthy, who spread his stance to protect Reagan as six bullets were being fired by the would-be assassin, John Hinckley, Jr.[25] McCarthy survived a .22-caliber round in the abdomen. For his bravery, McCarthy received the NCAA Award of Valor in 1982.[26] After the near-successful assassination attempt of Ronald Reagan, it was very clear that the Secret Service needed to increase its efficiency to protect the President.
The New York City Field office was located at 7 World Trade Center. Immediately after the September 11 attacks, Special Agents and other New York Field office employees were among the first to respond with first aid. Sixty-seven Special Agents in New York City, at and near the New York Field Office, helped to set up triage areas and evacuate the towers. One Secret Service employee, Master Special Officer Craig Miller,[27] died during the rescue efforts. On August 20, 2002, Director Brian L. Stafford awarded the Director's Valor Award to employees who assisted in the rescue attempts.
The USA Patriot Act, signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 26, 2001, mandated the U.S. Secret Service to establish a nationwide network of Electronic Crimes Task Forces (ECTFs) to investigate and prevent attacks on financial and critical infrastructures in the United States. As such, this mandate expanded on the agency's first ECTF -- the New York Electronic Crimes Task Force, formed in 1995 -- which brought together federal, state and local law enforcement, prosecutors, private-industry companies, and academia.[28][29]
The network prioritizes investigations that meet the following criteria:
Currently, the network includes ECTFs in the following 28 U.S. cities:
On July 6, 2009, the U.S. Secret Service expanded its fight on cyber-crime by creating the first European Electronic Crimes Task Force, based on the successful U.S. domestic model, through a memorandum of understanding with Italian police and postal officials. Over a year later, on August 9, 2010, the agency expanded its European involvement by creating its second overseas ECTF in the United Kingdom.[32][33]
Both task forces are said to concentrate on a wide range of "computer-based criminal activity," including:
Currently, the overseas network includes ECTFs in the following European cities:
Arrest and indictment of Max Ray Butler, co-founder of the Carders Market carding website. Butler was indicted by a federal grand jury in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, after his September 5, 2007 arrest, on wire fraud and identity theft charges. According to the indictment, Butler hacked over the Internet into computers at financial institutions and credit card processing centers and sold the tens of thousands of credit card numbers that he acquired in the process.[34]
Operation Firewall. In October 2004, 28 suspects -- located across eight U.S. states and six countries -- were arrested on charges of identity theft, computer fraud, credit-card fraud, and conspiracy. Nearly 30 national and foreign field offices of the U.S. Secret Service, including the newly established national ECTFs, and countless local enforcement agencies from around the globe, were involved in this operation. Collectively, the arrested suspects trafficked in at least 1.7 million stolen credit card numbers, which amounted to $4.3 million of losses to financial institutions. However, authorities estimated prevented loss to the industry to be in hundreds of millions of dollars. This over year-long operation, which started in July 2003, led investigators to identify three cyber-criminal groups: Shadowcrew, Carderplanet, and Darkprofits.[35]
Arrest and indictment of Albert "Segvec" Gonzalez and others in a service-network intrusion case. 11 individuals -- three U.S. citizens, one from Estonia, three from Ukraine, two from the People's Republic of China, one from Belarus, and one known only by an online alias -- were arrested for the theft and sale of more than 40 million credit and debit card numbers from major U.S. retailers, including TJX Companies, BJ's Wholesale Club, OfficeMax, Boston Market, Barnes & Noble, Sports Authority, Forever 21, and DSW. Gonzalez, the main organizer of the scheme, was charged with computer fraud, wire fraud, access device fraud, aggravated identity theft, and conspiracy for his leading role in the crime.[36]
At a minimum, a prospective agent must be a U.S. Citizen, possess a current valid driver's license, possess visual acuity no worse than 20/60 uncorrected, correctable to 20/20 in each eye, and be between the ages of 21 and 37 at the time of appointment. However, preference eligible veterans may apply after age 37. In 2009, the Office of Personnel Management issued implementation guidance on the Isabella v. Department of State court decision: OPM Letter.[37]
The agency (particularly agents under the Office of Protective Operations) receive the latest weapons, training, and technology. Training occurs at the James J. Rowley Training Center.
The Uniformed Division has three branches: the White House Branch, Foreign Missions, and the Naval Observatory Branch. Together they provide protection for the following: The President, Vice President, and their immediate families, presidential candidates, the White House Complex, the Vice President's Residence, the main Treasury Department building and its annex facility, and foreign diplomatic missions in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area.[38]
In the 1950s and 1960s, Special Agents carried the Smith & Wesson Model 36 and Colt Detective Special revolvers. Following President Kennedy's assassination, USSS Special Agents were authorized to carry the .357 Magnum. Between 1981 and 1991, the Secret Service issued the Smith & Wesson Model 66-2 .357 Magnum revolver, loaded with hollow-point rounds, agents could also carry the blued-steel version, the Smith & Wesson Model 19. By 1992, the standard issue weapon became the SIG Sauer P228 9mm pistol. In the late 1990s it was swapped for the SIG Sauer P229 for more caliber options and the different, lighter materials used in the production of the frame and slide.
As of 2011, Special Agents and Uniformed Division Officers carry the SIG Sauer P229 pistol chambered for the .357 SIG cartridge,[39] or the FN Five-seven pistol chambered for the 5.7x28mm cartridge.[40] Agents and Officers are also trained on close-combat weapons such as the Remington 870 shotgun, the FN P90 submachine gun, and the HK MP5.[39] They have Motorola radios and surveillance kits in order to maintain communication and are known to use Type 1 encryption algorithms to secure their transmissions.[41]
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The Secret Service has agents assigned to 136 field offices and the headquarters in Washington, D.C. while the field offices are located in cities throughout the United States and in Brazil (Brasilia), Bulgaria (Sofia), Canada (Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver), Colombia (Bogota), China (Hong Kong), France (Paris), INTERPOL (Lyon), Germany (Frankfurt), Italy (Rome), Mexico (Mexico City), EUROPOL (Netherlands/The Hague), Romania (Bucharest), Russia (Moscow), South Africa (Pretoria), Spain (Madrid), Thailand (Bangkok), and the United Kingdom (London).
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