How the Secret Service Works

we had done this, even though I looked like twenty times. Yeah, I know, I I. Um, I thought that too when I first saw it, but the article so new, there's no way we did. And then, um, I think what it was Chuck was probably the counterfeiting episode. Yeah, you probably got that one really crossed over a lot. I think you're right. We did do a good one for everybody who's not familiar on counterfeiting. I don't remember exactly when,

but go check it out because it was good. Um. And the reason why the two things would have crossed over is because when most people think of Chuck the Secret Service, which we're talking about today, they think of, you know, dudes, big dudes in suits stark suits, sunglasses, got the wire in their ear. Every once a while they put their finger in the ear to look cool. You know, I thought that's just if they had, you know,

your wax building up. Maybe that's the other ear. Um, And that they're usually running alongside the president as he or eventually she um is driving down the road, right, Yeah. Sure, But the Secret Services test with doing way more than that, and that's actually protecting the president or the vice president of the first Lady or certain other people. That's actually secondary to their main role. And that role actually came decades after the Secret Service was first established. Yeah, I

mean I think secondary. I took issue in the article when I read that, But I think secondary in terms of allocated uh personnel, right, but for sure primary and importance. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, I think protecting the president's life is more important than catching counterfeiters, right, But a much much smaller allocation of people are actually

on that protection force. Yeah, and I think that's I get the impression that that's the glamorous um assignment, you know, like protecting the president specifically. It's probably pretty pretty plumb. But um, that that again, that's that's not what the bulk of people in the Secret Service are doing at any given point in time. All right, So should we

go back in time a bit? Yeah? Two, Uh the close of the Civil War, of the American Civil War specifically, uh, and this was an eighteen sixty five and very with a great deal of keeping irony. Uh. I did not know this. This maybe the fact of the show. President Abraham Lincoln um officially signed the legislation to create the Secret Service, um the evening that he was killed dead, Yes, that day, right, he signed it and then went to

the Ford Theater, I believe. Yeah. So ironic in one sense that you know, obviously you can't look at that and say, you know, it has no irony whatsoever. But not ironic when you look at what he was signing at the time, which was not hey, we need somebody to protect presidents, because that didn't come along until uh well just um, like less than thirty years later, is

that right? Twenty nine? Yeah. Um, informal protection started with Grover Cleveland, but after McKinley's assassination nineteen o one was when they said, hey, maybe we need to really just codify this agency and I'll tell you about irony. It turns out that when McKinley was assassinated, there were three Secret Service agents flanking him at the time. Yeah, I read up about that one. That's one I wasn't too

familiar with. I wasn't either, but it was pretty fascinating. Um. And then it was an anarchist, correct, an anarchist in Buffalo, New York, who said who came for the assassination and stayed for the hot wings? I also read about Garfield. Garfield didn't get any mentioned in here. Um, he he was. He definitely served to make the Secret Service kind of become part of presidential protection, and that he was the second of three sitting presidents to be assassinated technically while

the Secret Service was in existence. So when that that assassination plot against Grover Cleveland was uncovered, they were like, all right, oh right, we really need to do something about this. Yeah, I think we should cover assassination and assassination attempts in full, because they're just far more than I Then I thought, like, once I was looking into this, I forgot that Clinton had a couple of of not so serious attempts. The one guy that you know, shot

at the White House. And then the other dude tried to fly a stole a Cessna, remember that, and tried to fly it into White House. I forgot about that, and both of them, by all accounts, were assassination attempts. Just I would call them clumsy, that's yeah. But yeah, there's been a lot more than I thought. So maybe we should just knock that out one day. Let's do it. I can't believe we haven't already. But today, if we're talking Secret Service, just by the numbers, about six hundred

people work there. About those or special agents. Another hundred are what's called uniform division officers, and then a couple of thousand plus and change of admin types, tech support, just people who keep the agency running and UM there apparently there have been women there since nine so I thought was somewhat progressive. UM. And then as of today, there's the first outsider in the the hundred year history,

or no, in about a hundred years. I guess there have been outsiders previously, but the first non Secret Service agent to to rise to UM director level has been appointed by Trump. Actually a guy named text text Als General former Marine Corps General Randolph Texts. Owls is it als al's ales Alice alice is another way to say it. Uh. And you mentioned women, and of course, very famously Julia Pearson briefly lead the agency when Obama was in there.

But as we'll see later on, there were quite a number of kind of things that happened in a row that we're very embarrassing for the Secret Service Agency. So she she forced out or resigned or kind of what's the difference. I think what's the difference is the impression I have so UM, I think her tenure kind of coincide at she kind of takes the brunt from what I understand, of the blame for something that that was part of a culture that has long been around part

of your Secret Service, UM. And apparently one of the big problems is that it is in a thoroughly understaffed executive branch agency, like the the people who are at tasked with protecting the president and the president's family and the vice president vice president's family. UM, they are thoroughly overworked, and they also have a long standing party culture too, and as a result, you have a lot of burnout

and very low morale. Apparently chucked. There was a survey done of three hundred and five federal agencies and two thousand and sixteen and the Secret Service rated dead last for employee satisfaction. Yeah, I mean that that says at all. They're not somewhere in the middle. They were number three oh five, right, So apparently at the time of this survey they were hot. They were operating with five hundred fewer people than they were authorized to hire, so they

were there. It's clearly an overwork department, yes, very much. So. Apparently they've added several people since several Yeah, like seven I think seven people, yeah, seven or eight hundred people. Uh. And I think that's partially because they just were woefully and understaffed, and partially because the current president has more family than um past presidents for sure, um more adult children and their kids, and more travel going on to

weekend places all over the country. So that's just gonna require more staffing, right, which is you know, probably good they needed to higher up anyway. So you want to talk history, chuck history the Service. I know, we kind of went back to eighteen sixty five, so let's stay there. We've been doing all this from eighteen sixty five the

whole time. It turns out that's right. So that what the reason why the Secret Service was initially created was to combat counterfeiting, right, And I think we said in our our Counterfeiting episode, UM, there was just a ton of counterfeit bank notes in circulation in the States at the time, because if you were a bank or if you were just some guy who had a bunch of money and could gain the trust of people, you could issue your own currency there for a while, so it

was really easy to print money at the time. Yeah, it's um, the stat here is hard to believe, but of all the money was fake, all the money. That's just ridiculous. Yeah, so Lincoln knew that was a problem. UM started up the service in eighteen sixty five, and just a couple of years after that. So you know what, why don't we expand your duties UM to like fraud, smuggling, UM mail robbery and stuff like that, and and we'll stick around for some of the older stuff. But since

then it's just sort of been expanded. It seems like a lot to me to include other things. But I don't know how the government runs sometimes as far as like well we need someone to monitor like fishing scams online, so it seems like the Secret Service is kind of like, let's just give it to them. But I'm sure that's not correct. You know, I thought the designation of stuff was pretty odd as well, for sure, But um, that is kind of how it's gone. It's they there as

long as it has to do with law enforcement. The Secret Service feels pretty good about giving a crack at it. Yeah for sure. So, Um, besides the counterfeiting and all that stuff today, Uh, not only do they have to protect the president and vice president, they have to protect their families, um, all the former presidents and there are a lot more living former presidents now, which is another

reason they need more people. Um. Medical science is fault from all the spouses, um, all the children under sixteen when you're a candidate running for president, like a major one, I doubt if well, I'm not going to make fun of anyone on the campaign trail that. I don't know if Jeff Busch had had a detail or he actually he may have. Jeff Bush is probably born with the detail, yeah, because he's he's linked twice over to the presidency, but

not where accounted. Um. And then uh, all the spouses um, foreign heads of state while they visit and basically from what I gather, they can be assigned to protect anyone at any time if someone thinks it's necessary. So I think you're right about that last part that if a president says, hey, I want you guys to protect this person while they're here, that's fine. But from what I saw, I think it was a New York Times rundown based

on um budgets. They they seem to say, No, it's basically like the Secret Service protects the president, the vice president, of their families, um, former presidents, that kind of thing, and that things like a foreign head of state would be covered by the Diplomatic Security Service of the State Compartment.

That there's a ton of other federal security agencies that are running around Washington that people confuse for the Secret Service, but the secior Service, their mission is actually pretty pretty um uh narrow as far as protection goes. Yeah, and imagine they all are in touch with one another two just to make sure everyone butts, everyone's butts are covered.

They're probably like, hey, how far can you pee? Oh no, let's see how far you compete, or they like, you know, we got a lot of dignitaries coming in and you guys got over a Secret Service and like, man, uh, all we have left is Ronnie and you don't want any guarding anybody. You know. He's good with phishing scams and that's it. Uh So the other thing it kind of surprised me is, um, big events. They are these things called National Special Security Events and uh they're under

Department of Homeland Security. Now, so this can cover things like the Super Bowl. If there are enough you know, uh important people at an event like this, then the Secret Service might be there. Yeah, which I mean makes sense. And I'm sure like the local law enforcement just loves the Secret Service coming in and bossing them around, you know, but they do because it's the Super Bowl a k a.

The Big Game, that's right. Um, And then you were saying, also it seemed like give it to the Secret Service whenever you look at their history. A couple of good examples of that are the Treasury Police. The revenuers basically got folded into the Secret Service, and I think nineteen seven and um, they took over the White how Police Force in right, So there's a lot of law enforcement underneath this this uh the title of Secret Service. Uh yeah.

Another thing that I had never even heard of Electronic Crimes Tasks Forces. Yeah, I think that's kind of new. Yeah, the e C t fs. And this is after eleven and the Patriot Act, and they said, hey, you know what, we need to create these e C t fs UM basically to prevent attacks on America UM through cybercrime. Yea. So these are I mean think they're what thirty nine of them all over America and Europe, working together with

other countries, other financial Crimes task forces. And this is the stuff that you know, doesn't get any of the glory, you know, huh, it's all supposed to be pretty This is kind of hush hush to begin with. UM, I think, unless it goes wrong, right, But they seemed I looked into they see to kind of focus on UM forensics like going over computers or devices for evidence or whatever. UM.

They investigate data breaches and network intrusions. They do cyber intelligence, so I guess they gather intelligence from networks, but also from like some of those devices they're doing forensic work on. It's probably some of the more important work being done, to be honest, it really is. They're basically tasked with guarding the financial sector of the US, and I assume probably some of foreign countries, especially in Europe too. But then they're also doing real like low level stuff too,

like credit card theft, identity theft um. So they're basically anything any crime that can be done using a computer or computer network. They seem to be fighting with the e C t f S. Yeah. Should we take a break, Yeah, all right, let's do that, and we're gonna talk a little bit about the sexiest assignment of the mall. Alright, Chuck you uh, you said the we would hear about

the sexiest position of the mall. What is that? The PPD the Presidential Protection Division, So this is the one that everyone thinks of a secret service when you see Ronald Reagan being covered up and shoved in the back of a limo when Jerry Ford moved to Springfield. Yeah, or like you mentioned, jogging alongside the limousine, we're jogging alongside a tubby blow Bill Clinton, yeah, or riding horseback alongside Ronald Reagan. Oh yeah, that's right. I forgot he

used to do that sometimes. That's one of the things this article points out is you gotta you gotta take up the hobbies of the president and Clinton very famously, you know, trotted along various wooded paths, and then Reagan would have the Secret Service round up union organizers and then he'd ride over him with his horse. Well, apparently there's a lot of horseback riding that goes on, but Reagan's was pretty intense. Like he was a real horse guy.

The guy was a cowboy movie cowboy come to life. Yeah, so he apparently you had to really learn to ride if you're on Reagan's team, I got you know, it's not just like trotting along like Clinton probably liked to do. Right. Yeah. Do you remember that Saturday Night Live when Clinton was first elected and it was Phil Hartman playing him. He was out jogging and he just he kept stopping into

McDonald's on his jogging. It's a big joke. But wouldn't you wouldn't you, like, as a Secret Service agent, want to just be like, you know, be a lot safer and easier for everybody if you just hit the treadmill. Yeah right, and watch television as your as your main hobby. Right, Well, I think that's kind of going on now. Um, all right, so this is the one that you talked about having a really high burnout rate because it's um. Well, first of all, there's the stress of I can die and

am willing to die for on my on my job. Yeah, and apparently there's like this, did you hear that there's a myth that they have to take an oath to take a bullet for the president? I had never heard that as specifically an oath, and I was glad to know that that was true or untrue? Right, it was untrue. Yes, there is no such out right. No, it's apparently if you are a secret service agent, you just know that that might be part of the job, and you're when

you show up that day, you're willing to do it. Correct, it's supposedly, um. But beyond all the stresses of dying on the job like that, um, the the schedule itself is just really tough. Um. And I've seen a lot of different breakdowns of the on and off schedules. So I don't know if this one is the gospel truth. But the one in our article at least says two weeks of a day shift, two weeks of a midnight shift, two weeks of an evening shift, and then two weeks

of training. So I guess training is just continuous. Yeah. What's weird though, is I had seen, at least back in the sixties, training was code for fill out these forms that say you did all this physical fitness. So if there was like, uh, if there was two weeks of training, it seems like that. It's almost like, I don't know if it is anymore, but that would have been like a two week break, which frankly, I don't

really blame them for that kind of schedule. Yeah, they go and they undergo the same training regiment as Major League Baseball umpires. Right. But the thing is, Chuck, is it's like, if you're tasked with protecting the president, everyone knows, like any organizational psychologist, anybody can tell you that when you do different shift work, you're going to mentally suffer foundly. Right, So why are we putting the people who are protecting the president and and um, you know, the first Lady

and and the vice president. Why are we putting them through that kind of mental torture that doesn't make any sense? Is it really just a staffing thing? Well, I mean, what's the answer. Then someone's got to take the midnight shift, sure, but that person should be like you got the midnight

shift for a year. Yeah, so you can your sleep pattern can change, and then you could be like you know, when you when you rotate out to the to the day shift or the morning shift or whatever, you might have a two week transition period or so who knows, maybe you get two weeks off or something between. I don't know. There's gotta be a better way than this. This just is grueling. Well, I do know too, that

that permanent midnight shifts can um leave the weirdness. Oh yeah, Like that's what they did with Ronnie, right, That's why Ronnie's so unreliable, because you know, on the fourth month of his midnight shift, things got strange, he got kind of pasty. I should I shouldn't have said Ronnie, because now Ee's gonna think I'm thinking Reagan. No, everybody knows, we call him Gepper. Um. So you if you are on that detail of the sitting president, like you're the

cream of the crop of the PPD. Yeah, which is kind of a double edged sword because you want somebody with a lot of experience who's proven himself for herself, um over the years. But at the same time you're also starting to run up against age and slower reflexes. Um. And so if you if you look at some of the agents who are around the president, you're gonna see somebody who's probably in their forties, if not over forty.

Uh And that's that's just you know, if you could have a guy or girl who's like twenty seven thirty even, they're probably going to be faster on the draw than that forty year old five year old. But they also might not know to notice certain things that the forty five year old would, right, because they're on Snapchat exactly. They're like l O L president just fell over for

some reason. Uh b r b he needs help. Um, if you are, you can still be on the pp D though, and not actually be on the detail of protecting the president in that moment, Like if you can be on the pp D and be on the assessment team, like any any sort of well, first of all, anyone who's ever made a threat on the president in any way, whether it's Twitter or like a letter that shows up at the White House, they are thoroughly investigated in person.

Oh yeah, for sure, I hadn't realized. Uh. And any any kind of advance um work they have to do, like if the president's traveling UM, which you know happens all the time. There's always some sort of advance um intelligence going on about where the president's going, the town, if they're visiting a restaurant, if they're staying in a hotel, um, all kinds of like background checks are going on with

every employee that works there. Yeah, and like if the president follows a bit of a pattern, you know, like going to the same place like a win or White House or a Western white House or something like that, like that place is covered, it's checked out, it's probably guarded all the time. So they'll do advance once and

then maybe updated here or there. But what's post is the real headache and nightmare for the Secret Service is when they're going to places they haven't been before or haven't been in a while, and so they've got to do all of this incredible analysis and planning. They've got to figure out, Okay, well, this is the route the president is going to take through the hotel. Uh, and then if this happens, then here's the escape route. If an incident happens, you know, in the next corridor, here's

the scape route. Here are two alternate routes to the original route. Um. And look, there's a pretty good place for a sniper to be, so we need to keep our eyes up there. If there's a fire, we need to leave here. Um. This that's just like one place. And then like you said, they also do background checks too, so that any employee apparently who has any kind of

criminal record, um. At say like a hotel that the president is going to be staying and they're not allowed to work while the president's there, which is like half

the staff of every hotel. I would guess that that could be kind of problematic for some hotels, you know, not to say that their staff of criminals, but at the very least, well it said even like yeah, minor, minor stuff like they're gonna say, you tell Ronnie to stay home, and the manage would be like I thought Ronnie was with you, and then Ronnie's and the presses

enter and the financial system collapses. The president, if they stay in a hotel there, they will own three floors of that hotel in full um, the one the president is on, one above it, and the one below it. Um. And apparently it's I read one little insider thing on when the president stays at a at a hotel that they normally don't. It's just a nightmare for the hotel. Yeah, in every way, yep, you know, and for the people who were staying there, especially if it was sudden, you know,

because um, you don't have a reservation there anymore. True, Like ts, sorry, what else could you do? You could be on the video in the video department of the p p D because they film all this stuff pp D a V club. Basically, Uh, every motorcade is filmed or videoed. Obviously I say filmed because I'm old. Um, anytime the president's traveling like that, all this stuff is on tape again, not on tape reels because like there's a Prouder film, like you need to have this stuff

in case of an attack or an assassination attempt. Um, so you can you know, rewind and watch the crowd. Right, it's just handy, but it's kind of reactive, whereas like the advanced people are proactive and trying to prevent an incident from ever taking place. Right, did you mention the details? They are specific to like people who are permanently guarded.

So there, if you're a Secret Service agent, you might be assigned to like a field office, and if the president comes to your state, you might be called up to go work what's called the standing position, which is literally just standing around. Right, So if you're if it's a hotel room, this article uses a pretty good example.

If it's a hotel that the President is staying at, the advanced team who goes right before the president arrives with the President will say clear to steer a stairwell, checked it for anything, cleared it, and then you come in and you stand there and make sure nothing changes to that stairwell. No one else comes in. Uh, no one drops anything off, there's nothing like that. That's your job, right then, that's probably a pretty common assignment for somebody

who works protection in the Secret Service, right Yeah. But if you are protecting, say the first Lady, you're going to be part of a detail that is a crew of people whose job it is to protect the first Lady, and they get to be pretty close apparently U or it can happen, I guess you mean emotionally, romantically, no, emotionally surprised that hadn't been a wrong come yet. It's

like Three's Company, but in the White House. But it's funny you mentioned that stairway detail like, that's literally the worst job you can get as a p A on the film set. Yeah, that's pretty bad. It's called lock up where you're like three blocks away just saying no, three, you can't go around this corner, right, And there's always a guy like me who's like, uh, you can't legally

keep me from walking on the sidewalks public sidewalk. J I was the worst lock up guy when I was a p A because I would always just be like, all right, you're totally right. People choke you look them through again. I'm like, dude, what am I gonna do, like physically restrain somebody. I always felt so bad when we were shooting our TV show. Yeah, when people were redirected from their normal path. You know, we look at the bright side. You didn't have to feel bad for

too long. That's there's also the food detail. Um, and even in the White House with the very much trusted White House uh cooking staff, there's someone in the kitchen from Secret Service watching over that stuff. Yeah, making sure seven didn't have any kind of break and is now trying to poison the president. Correct. Apparently if you want to order a pizza though, as the president, like literally I don't want the White House pizza. I want the

pizza from whatever. Uh, you can do that, but they say that they send it to, um a different address. They send it to the Naval Observatory usually just to kind of throw them off the scent. Seems smart, but certainly not fool proof. No, you know, but I guess, especially now that you just told everybody, I guess it couldn't poison every pizza going to the Naval observatory though, because they would be outed. I don't know, like some

evil organization like Specter probably could. Yeah, that's true. Good point. Um, this is a pretty is that a good point? I think? So this is a pretty expensive process to the fiscal year. That is uh seven d and fifty million dollars on just protective operations, which is about half of its overall budget, which is a you know, I mean, it's worth it, obviously, but that's a lot of dough going towards the very

smallest thing that you do. When half your money is spent on that, then uh, you're gonna run out of money, right, Yeah, And they did actually um the fiscal year a gooes. We're recording actually before the end of the two thousand, seventeen fiscal year. But the Secret Service said, UM, we're gonna run out of money like right around the end of the fiscal year, and we still have three more months of operations that we have to do, So what

do you want to do? You know? And apparently there was also I was I was reading in the Washington Post about um a dispute over money about actually terms of a lease when um this the Secret Service tried to rent out office space in the headquarters in Trump Tower that the Trump organization UM said you should go find office space elsewhere because they couldn't come to terms on a lease somehow, And so the Secret Service moved down to a trailer on the sidewalk in front of

Trump Tower, which I guess they found out that they burned through all their money and they were like, you guys go to a trailer on the sidewalk. Yeah, that's probably the most expense of property in the world that has a trailer on their front lawn. It's pretty funny, um, And we should mention we joked about the dark glasses that was actually do sort of function. Um, they're not just trying to look cool, they're trying to um keep

their eyes hidden for what they're looking at. Yeah, you know what was that one agent's name and uh um taxi driver in the line of fire. No, no, it has nothing to do Secret Service Matrix. The matrix. Oh this is Smith, right, the main bad guy I think so. Yeah. I thought he did a good job rocking the glasses and everything. So that literally had nothing to do with anything but him looking cool and glasses. Right, Okay, you want to take a break, Yeah, let's do. I think

I just threw us off. We probably should and regroup. H all right, Chuck. We talked a little bit about other stuff that the Secret Service gets down on UM counterfeiting, male fraud. Those are some throwbacks, but then they've got the whole new cyber crime thing with like fishing and stuff like that. But they also have UM to combat this crime. They've accrued some pretty cool stuff over there over the years, not the least of which is an ink library. Yeah. This I think is for me the

coolest part of this show. So this article types of ink I saw eleven thousand, four hundred. That's believable. Yeah. So the idea is they literally have collected since the nineteen twenties, what they think is every kind end of ink and every kind of pin that is ever been made. Yeah, that's the goal at least so they can use that. UM. I think when like when Bick makes a new pin, they will send them their ank and stuff. Otherwise they have to collect it. And this is who I didn't like.

You know, if they ever get a letter about any kind of crime that is under their per view, they have a database to compare it to UM. And not just with things like ransom notes and threatening letters. Apparently they'll use that kind of stuff for if somebody's forged a baseball signed by Babe Ruth or something. I said, Oh interesting, Um, if it's like a really high profile crime that has to do with ink, they'll they'll freelance

for somebody. Interesting. Yeah, and they use gas chromatography. It's not just like this one looks black. Oh, this one's black. I figured out who did it. Um. But the the apparently, if you're a field agent going around own the world, the Ink Library guys will ask you to like grab some pens while you're in you know, Cartagena. Oh really,

it's like a standing request. They also have an information database for handwriting too, the forensic information system for handwriting database or phish Yeah, decent acronym yes see, yeah, but it breaks our one rule of acronymic, which is just kind of forgetting about another word. So it looks cooler right yeah than fished, right right exactly, Or it could

be the Phish database. I guess that's true fish. So this is basically just a handwriting database, and I imagine there's a lot of overlap here with FBI and CIA, don't you think, um what else? Ninety four they added uh, providing Evidence and Assistance to Missing and Exploited Children. Yeah, I thought that was pretty cool. Uh. And their big bag though, was really um counterfeiting in bank fraud. Um. They executed twenty one more than arrests um for stuff

like that and recovered it. They recover a lot of money every year too, right. Yeah. There was one bust in two thousand and sixteen and Lima, Peru, where they recovered like three million in counterfeit US dollars and fifty thou counterfeit euros. Not bad, which I think was their biggest single bus to date. It's a lot of a lot of mula. It is a lot of fake moula. So do you what if you want to be what if Josh wants to be in the Secret Service? I

don't think that's gonna work out for me. Well, it's too late first, they Yeah, you have to be between twenty one and thirty seven. You have to do a pp screen. Yeah. Um, they don't want you to have any visible tattoos or piercings, which I imagine that's probably getting harder and harder these days. Yeah, it's probably not a good look to have, like the presidential detailed guy having those big ear ring gauges. Right, So what those are called gauge? Yeah, you know, like one of those

big two inters. Can you fit a hot dog through it? Yes? I can. You're hired. Uh No tattoos, a piercings? What else? You gotta pass that polygraph? You gotta take a physical. Um, gotta get that Secret Service Uh top security clearance? What can take? It can take geez nine months to get that. Yeah, and I looked into that. Depending on what level of security you're looking for, it says nine nine months here, but I saw they could do it in like sixty days.

But depending on how thorough they go, like they're either going to go back five years or ten years into your past. They're gonna interview your coworkers, your neighbors, your friends, your pastor whoever, and they're gonna ask him all sorts of personal questions like is uh is this guy a freak? You know what I mean, like a freak freak? Um? Does he you like to get wasted? Uh? Does he love America? What country? Does he like as much of

not more than America? Which is stuff like that? Like, seriously, they're gonna they they're gonna look into what your foreign preferences are. You know, Ronnie, he was always going on about Spain. Yeah, I couldn't get enough that explains it. His whole catchphrase was oh ay. So if you go through all that, you take a written test, you have

an interview. If you pass all that junk, the new you are sent to lovely Glencoe, Georgia, right here in our our home state, to the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center for ten weeks of training. Uh. This is down down near the Georgia coast where it's hot and humid and muggy. Yeah, but if you want some good shrimp,

it's a good place to train, I imagine. So. Um, so you know, ten weeks of hardcore training, then an eighteen week course at a place called the James S. Rowley Center in Beltsville, Maryland, which is basically Camp X. Yeah, kind of the special Special Agent Basic Training Center. Um. Yeah, and that's the one where it's probably i mean they teach you how to shoot guns. I'm sure you already know at this point. I doubt if it's like I

never held one of these emergency medicine that's a big one. Um. I saw that they travel with the president with um a full full supply of the president's blood, which makes sense. I never really thought about that, like as many leaders are as in the president right then, I don't know, I mean it said, uh, they said what they they're trained in what's called ten minute medicine, which is they never want to have the president more than ten minutes

away from a trauma center. And uh, not only that, when the president is traveling, they have an agent at the nearest hospital already who has gone through the operating room and emergency staff. So they have these bags of blood if a transfusion is knee did and um, you know, basically in that just that ten minutes, they need to be able to keep the president alive, Yeah, which was a big deal. When Reagan was shot. Yeah, you want to talk about that, Yeah, I mean he he was

shot in the chest. It was it was bad yeah, by John Hinckley Jr. Right, Yeah, or as our articles just says, a crazed assassin. Yeah. I thought that was really weird, Like maybe the author was like, I'm not putting his name in print, I'm not giving him any press. It definitely seemed weird to not say who it was. And Hinckley was trying to impress Jodie Foster so that she would fall in love with them and they could

move into the White House if I remember correctly. Right. Yeah, So to do that, right, you had to get Reagan out of the way. And Reagan was coming out of the Washington Hilton Hotel hed just given a speech. This is in I think, uh, January one. It was early in night one, and um Hinckley walked up and just shot him at least twice I think got him once in the shoulder and then once in the chest. It might be confusing with another assassination. He definitely got him

in the chest, like you said. And there was this agent named Jerry Parr, who was I think like fifty at the time. Um, and he immediately threw I think he threw his coat over Reagan. Threw Reagan into the limo, landed on him and shut the door and told the limo driver to drive. And Reagan UM was like, I think you broke one of my ribs throw me into the limo, did you know that? And he said that's the bullet, sir, right. But yeah, that's when Parr was like, oh, you got hit. So he told the limo to go

to the hospital instead of the White House. Yeah, I think he was. Um had blood coming out of his mouth, which was the surefire telltale sign that he had. There was a lung punctured apparently when you're bleeding from the mouth, and so he knew, no, no, no, we we need to go straight to the hospital and not too whatever medical staff we have at the White House. Ye, saved his life, he did it. He actually became convinced from what I saw that um uh, he had been chosen

by God to save Reagan's life. And he became like a pastor after that. Oh yeah interesting yeah, well, um, the speaking of limos, the driver of that limo is trained I mean the presidential limo is bulletproof, flat tire proof, um as bomb proof as it can be. And the

driver is trained. It's like a you know, it's like a trained stunt driver, right, and it's a Secret Service driver, right, Yeah, And they need to be able to they're trained to do those like super cool looking one eight moves to get the heck out of there, to drive backwards at high speeds, and um, all the other stuff that you see stuntman stunt drivers do these, the Secret Service limo drivers can do so. On the other end of the spectrum, speaking of limo drivers from the Secret Service, um is

JFK's assassination. Um. I read this in this article didn't even mention that, right. It's like in the Secret Service successes and failures not even mentioned at all. So I read this article on it from Vanity Fair that was called could the Secret Service have saved JFK? Go read it? Totally worthwhile read. But they um, apparently the Secret Service guys,

not all of them, but a handful of them. We're out partying like all night, uh the night before into the morning, um, and showed up after three or four maybe five hours of sleep in some cases, uh, ready for duty. And if you look at it through that lens, apparently you can see how yeah, it looks a lot like being hungover and maybe even still a little drunk. Definitely affected their responses. And one of the guys, um was the limo driver who UM really like took it

personally immediately that he had failed. But he he did. He didn't swerve, he didn't speed up, He just tapped the brake a little bit and actually, if anything, gave um Lee Harvey Oswald a clear second fatal shot. UM. And they think that it was because of this culture of like drinking and partying that was just endemic at the time, UM, and that it actually led to JFK's potential. Potentially he his life could have been saved, is what

the article says. Obviously could have died from the neck wound, but they didn't do enough in retrospect to protect against that second fatal shot. That definitely did it. Yeah, it's worth reading man. Well, I mean, you talk about the party atmosphere, and I think early on some listeners MND have thought you were kidding around. But that's really the case apparently, UM. And it probably has a lot to do with just how understaff and overwork they are that

they kind of unwind. Um. They have been known to unwind and pretty epic fashion. Um. And and recently and in the last like five or six years, have been some pretty high profile blemishes on the agency. One in two thousand twelve when a bunch of agents a hundred and seventy five I went to Columbia um before Obama visit, and twelve of them were caught taking prostitutes back to their hotel. And apparently the same kind of thing happened the year before in El Salvador Um. And then wasn't

there another kind of big party bust or something? Yeah Amsterdam? Oh right, well, of course, yeah, there were three agents were found passed out drunk, one of them in the hallway of the hotel that the President was staying at the below and um, they got sent home and put on leave for that. And they came like right on the heels well two years later after the first scandal in two thousand twelve, and that was on the heels of Oscar or take a hernandez um shooting at the

White House. Why he did that, well, I mean he claimed he was Jesus I hadn't. I hadn't had a chance to look up at on that one, and I just didn't know what his motive was. Yeah, I mean, by all accounts, I think he was mentally ill. He claimed like he made a video for Oprah Winfrey incident to her claiming he was Jesus. And it's funny if

you look at the guy, he looks like Jesus. Well, I mean, whatever your conception of Jesus is, I don't know, but the kind of the classic Jesus um figure that you see a lot, the guy kind of looked a lot like him, like more more than you do. Let's say, I could I could see that most people do look more like Jesus than me. But he he fired a semi automatic weapon rifle at the White House quite a few shots. And this was just kind of bungled. The

investigation was bungled. They had no clue what was happening, what was going on. It took four full days to realize that he actually hit the White House. And that's when a housekeeper said, you know, there's broken glass and cement on the floor in here. Remember, Michelle Obama was really upset. I can imagine that this happened. They weren't home at the time, but I think one of the daughters was um. And this is, you know, after the same thing. It happened in the Clinton administration. Yeah, I

don't remember that at all. The Clinton one. Yeah, that was another guy that just you know, shot at the White House. Basically, yeah, I think he did it from the street, but this guy actually got through. Oh wait, was this one from the street too? I think it was from the fence, Okay, but no, the guy that

got through was a guy with a knife. Yes, made it through several lines of security, through the fence and made it all the way to the north portico, which is basically the front door of the White House, with a knife before he was finally apprehended. Said he was caught sprinting towards the front door with a knife. But yeah, that was And again, the capital or the White House police are part of the Secret Service too, And these are the people who look like you know, paramilitary police

officers patrolling the White House. They're part of the Secret Service police. Wow. So yeah it was. There were a bunch of controversies that rocked the place, which is why one some people are like, oh, it might be good that this Marine Corps colonel who has no connection to the Secret Services coming in maybe bring in a fresh perspective, because I guess there was a study that found that it was an insular culture that has historically been resistant

to change. As the Congressional investigation, so who knows, but they've done a lot of good too. Agreed. I can't can't, just don't want to just end on the controversies, but man, there's been some doozies. Are you got anything else? Yeah? I got just a couple of more little things that if you look up like coolest Secret Service secrets. There's just an abundance of articles, um, from mental flaws to breeders digest and I compiled a couple of these and we've gone over most of them, but this one I

thought was neat Um. Secret Service isn't actually in the Oval office most times, UM like inside the room. They're right outside. But they have installed weight sensitive pressure pads throughout the Oval office, so they know where the president is at all times. Oh wow, that sounds like it's made up, but it's supposedly true. I could see that. Um, when the President delivers the State of the Union, they hold one member of the cabinet behind hidden at Mount

Weather in case someone bombs the entire thing. That's like that show Designated Survivor that I've never seen never What is that? It's like, uh Keia not Kena Reeves Key for Sutherland show where he's like a cabinet member who who like, I think that very thing happened and like there was bombing and it killed everybody and now he's president.

That's all I know. Uh what else? The headquarters of Secret Service in Washington, d C. Does not have trash cans anywhere near it on the sidewalk, okay, because you know, put a bomb in there. Apparently Reagan carried a gun, his own gun. I believe that right. He carried a thirty eight in his briefcase and apparently uh Vice President Bush didn't even know about it. Wow, really, that's what

it says. He found out the hard way. And then uh, when he crossed drawnnee and some policy yeah, President Ronnie, not oh yeah the gipper. Yeah, not Secret Service Ronnie. When he crossed the gipper. Uh. And then finally, um, apparently the code word for when there's a big private investigation going on at the White House. They they're renovating a room, so the First family gets out of the

house and they don't really know what's going on. And so it said over the years, whenever you hear like Clinton Obama renovated the treaty room, Clinton renovated Room Bush renovated the briefing room. Clinton's was the music room. Apparently those were all um private investigations going on. I don't understand. Well, I mean, I guess they just they need to set up shop in the White House and too even not alert the first family that that's going on. They'll quote

renovate unquote a room. Wow. That sounds a little hinky to me, though. It does like I would guess that the president is a prize of just about everything that's going on, including investigations. Yeah, there may be some more clarity on that that someone will know an email us about where did they come from Reader's digest Now I think that, Uh well, boo, that was huff po a bunch of commies. Yeah. Really, they'll say anything to make the president look bad. Pe Well, don't take it seriously. Okay,

do you got anything else now? Uh no, sir? Okay, Well, if you want to know more about the secret Service. Go check out this article on how stuff works. And since I said go check it out, it's time for a listener mail. I'm gonna call this one of two on Satanism that we're gonna read. I want to thank you guys for the Satanism episode. I myself am a Satanist and remember the Satanic Temple. I appreciate you voicing my faith in objective and fair manner, but I do

take issue with you calling us hippies. Feel your summation the various TST programs and that's the Satanic Church or a temple uh to accurately represent much of what we strive to do. But I wish you had taken the time to go over the our core beliefs like you did the Church of Satan. And then he sent them to me, so I'll just read them, and he said, here's a fiver for each of you. What wish um. One should strive to act with compassion and empathy towards

all creatures. The struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit should prevail over laws and institutions. One's body is invite, inviolable, subject to one's own will. Alone. The freedoms of others should be respected, including the freedom to offend. A belief should conform to our best scientific understanding of the world. Uh, we should never care to distort scientific facts to fit our beliefs. That's a good one. People are fallible. If we make a mistake, we should do

our best directify it and resolve any harm. And finally, every tenant is a guiding principle designed to inspire nobility and action and thought. Yeah, so he said, the takeaway basically is what we try and reflect as a focus on scientific inquiry, nobility and action and thought and respect for oneself and others. And he closes out by saying, Haile satan and his name is Caleb Tarat Tuta Tera Tuta.

Sorry but I thought it was Caleb Tarantula, and I was like, that's a great name for a Satanist, like Peter Grim or if you want to get in touch with this, like Caleb did, you can tweet to us. I'm at josh Um Clark and at s Y s K podcast on Twitter. You can hang out with Chuck at Charles W. Chuck Bryant on Facebook dot com or at Facebook dot com slash stuff. You should Know. You can send us an email to Stuff podcast how stuff Works dot com and has always joined us at our

home on the web. Stuff You Should Know dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff Works dot com.