Ronald Kessler - The First Family Detail

“Well, guess what,” an agent will say. “We’re going to be sitting on you, so keep that in mind. Don’t even think about going to the event that the president will be at, because we’re going to be on you like a hip pocket. Where you go, we go. We’re going to be in constant contact with you and know where you are the entire time. Just be advised.”

John Hinckley is still considered a Class III threat. In 1982, he was found not guilty by reason of insanity in the shootings of President Reagan and three others who were with him. Since then, he has been confined to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, D.C. But Hinckley is periodically allowed to leave the psychiatric hospital to visit his mother in Williamsburg, Virginia. If he spends any time in Washington outside the hospital, his family notifies the Secret Service, and agents conduct surveillance of him.

Class II threats come from suspects whose intentions are serious but who may not be capable of carrying out an assassination. Often, they are in jail or mental institutions.

“He may be missing an element, like a guy who honestly thinks he can kill a president and has made the threat, but he’s a quadriplegic or can’t formulate a plan well enough to carry it out,” an agent says.

A Class I threat may be someone who blurts out in a bar a desire to kill the president, but after interviewing the suspect and investigating his or her background, the Secret Service concludes that the individual was not serious.

“You interview him, and he has absolutely no intention of carrying this threat out,” an agent says. “Agents will assess him and conclude, ‘Yeah, he said something stupid; yeah, he committed a federal crime. But we’re not going to charge him or pursue that guy.’ You just have to use your discretion and your best judgment.”

In most cases, a visit from Secret Service agents is enough to make anyone think twice about carrying out a plot or making a public threat again.

Since 1917, threatening the president has been a federal crime. As later amended, the law carries a penalty of up to five years in prison and a fine of $250,000, or both. The same penalty applies to threatening the president-elect, vice president, vice president–elect, or any officer in the line of succession to become president.

Threats against the first lady and first children are evaluated in the same way as threats against the president and vice president, but the number of threats against them is far lower. When George H. W. Bush was president, the Secret Service obtained intelligence that a Colombian drug cartel had put out a hit on his family. Even though they were adults and would not normally receive protection, the Secret Service assigned agents to protect Jeb, George, Marvin, Neil, and Dorothy.

Jeb Bush remembers that when agents showed up at his house in Miami, they found the front door unlocked. “Their first recommendation was that I lock my doors,” he tells me.

To most potential assassins, killing the president would be like hitting the jackpot. Often, they start off by threatening governors or members of Congress.

“We want to know about those individuals,” a former agent who worked intelligence says. “Sooner or later, they will direct their attention to the president, if they can’t get satisfaction with a senator or governor.”

Upon hearing a threatening call, White House operators are instructed to patch in a Secret Service agent at headquarters. Opened in 1999, Secret Service headquarters is an anonymous nine-story tan brick building on H Street at Ninth Street NW in Washington. For security reasons, there are no trash cans in front of the building. An all-seeing security camera is attached below the overhang of the entrance.

Just inside is a single metal detector. No mention of the Secret Service, not even on the visitor’s badge that the security officer issues. It is just when you get into the inner sanctum that you see a wall announcing that this is the United States Secret Service Memorial Building, the name given headquarters when President Clinton dedicated the building, and a reminder of the thirty-five agents, officers, and other personnel who have died in the line of duty.

Threatening calls to the White House are traced, and an agent listens in. He may take over the call, pretending to be another White House operator just helping out.

“He is waiting for the magic word [that signifies a threat to the president],” a Secret Service agent explains. “He is tracing it [the call].”

Agents try to distinguish between genuine threats and speech that is a legitimate exercise of First Amendment rights.

“If you don’t like the policies of the president, you can say it. That’s your right,” a Secret Service agent assigned to the vice president’s detail says. “We’re looking for those that cross the line and are threatening: ‘I’m going to get you. I’m going to kill you. You deserve to die. I know who can help kill you.’ Then his name is entered into the computer system.”

The Forensic Services Division compares the voice on a recording of the call with voices in a database of other threat calls. No threat is ignored.

If there is a security breach or a disturbance at the White House, the Joint Operations Center on the ninth floor of headquarters can view the scene by remotely controlling surveillance cameras located outside and inside the complex. A handful of agents in the center monitor the movements of protectees, whose code names and locations are displayed on light panels on the walls of the center. An agent assigned to intelligence traveling with each protectee updates the Joint Operations Center on the protectee’s location. When protectees make unexpected trips, agents refer to the new assignment as a pop-up.

Most threats come in letters rather than e-mails or phone calls. Potential assassins seem to get a great sense of satisfaction out of mailing a letter. They think that if they mail it, the president will personally read it.

If a letter is anonymous, the Secret Service’s Forensic Services Division checks it for fingerprints, analyzes the handwriting and the ink, and matches the ink against 9,500 samples in what is called the International Ink Library. To make the job easier, most ink manufacturers now add identifying tags so the Secret Service can trace the ink. The characteristics of each specimen are in a digital database. Technicians try to match the ink with that of other threatening letters in an effort to trace its origin. They may scan the letter for DNA.

Sara Jane Moore, a forty-five-year-old political activist, is the only person to have carried out a plot after being listed as a potential threat. On September 22, 1975, Moore fired a .38 Smith & Wesson revolver at President Ford from forty feet away as he was leaving the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco. At the report of the shot, Ford looked stunned. Color drained from his face, and his knees appeared to buckle.

Oliver Sipple, a disabled former U.S. Marine and Vietnam veteran, was standing next to the assailant. He pushed up Moore’s arm as the gun discharged. Although Ford doubled over, the bullet flew several feet over his head. It ricocheted off the side of the hotel and slightly wounded a cabdriver in the crowd.

Secret Service agents Ron Pontius and Jack Merchant pushed Moore to the sidewalk and arrested her. As bystanders screamed, the agents shoved the uninjured president into his limousine and onto the floor, covering his body with theirs.

For more than three hours, Moore had waited for Ford outside the hotel. Wearing baggy pants and a blue raincoat, she had stood with her hands in her pockets the entire time. Agents will sometimes ask people to remove their hands from their pockets, but this time, as people milled around her, agents did not notice her.