The Secret Service: Trying to Protect The Unprotectable

The Warren Commission severely criticized the Secret Service for its failure to take adequate security measures against the assassination of President Kennedy. Even so, the commission was well aware of the difficulties in protecting a President. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had testified during the investigation: “I don’t think you can get absolute security without almost establishing a police state, and we don’t want that.” And when it came to specific precautions, the commission pretty much threw up its hands, saying: “This commission can recommend no procedures for the future protection of our Presidents which will guarantee security.”

The commission did, however, suggest that a top-level committee be set up to study the problem. No sooner urged than done. Last week President Johnson named as members: Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon, Acting Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, CIA Director John McCone and White House Aide McGeorge Bundy.

A Ready Rifleman. But the Secret Service had long since started taking corrective measures against the lax habits for which it was criticized by the Warren Commission.

The President’s limousine has been redesigned to permit two Secret Service men to sit facing the President in jump seats. In the car following the President’s limousine, an agent with an automatic rifle now sits facing toward the rear—ready to fire should he spot a potential assassin aiming at the President from behind, as Lee Harvey Oswald did. Before Kennedy was killed, Secret Service files with names of persons potentially dangerous to the President contained no more than 400 names; now, thanks to broadened criteria for including names, those same Secret Service files list some 8,000 people, including every person who has defected from the U.S. to Russia and then come home, as Oswald did.

Potential Assassins. Two weeks ago, when President Johnson visited El Paso, the new security measures were in effect. Before his arrival, agents inspected every hotel, boardinghouse and high building along his 20.4-mile route from the airport into the heart of the city and back. The agents compiled a list of “transient people” in all those buildings, compared the names with those on the rapidly growing list of potential presidential assassins.

Managers of each building received cards bearing a Secret Service phone number, were ordered to call immediately if they spotted any weapons or heard suspicious conversations. Two hundred El Paso firemen were assigned to traffic control, thus freeing city cops to watch the crowd and buildings. Armed Texas Border Patrolmen were stationed on roofs along the route. They carried walkie-talkies and could flash instant reports on any suspicious activities to the Secret Service. Whenever Johnson plunged into the mass of curbside spectators, he was surrounded by circles of Secret Service men, FBI agents and city detectives.

A Reluctant President. Secret Service men may well have been pleased with their El Paso precautions. But as the Warren Commission noted: “The protective task is further complicated by the reluctance of Presidents to take security precautions which might interfere with the performance of their duties, or their desire to have frequent and easy access to the people.”

Seldom has there been a President more reluctant to hide beneath a bushel of protection than Lyndon Johnson.

Last week, during his New England tour, President Johnson joyously allowed himself to be inundated by waves of well-wishers. In Hartford, Conn., he ordered his car stopped several times, seized a bull horn and started speechifying, all the while standing in the back of his limousine, perfectly silhouetted against the sky for the shot of an assassin. He was not scared at all—but Secret Service men are still trembling.

In Providence the same day, agents had even more reason to worry. In the crowded hubbub of a presidential motorcade there, police mistook a 19-year-old college student, Neil Coady, for a Secret Service agent. They pushed the bulk of the crowd back, but allowed Coady to stay near the car in which the President’s wife was riding. Young Coady then pitched in to help agents clear a path for the vehicle, finally wound up riding on the side of Mrs. Johnson’s car when the motorcade arrived at the Brown University campus.