In the President's Secret Service: Behind the Scenes with Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents They Protect [Hardcover]

Today the Secret Service is in charge of protecting the President... the Vice-President... former President's... world leaders... big events... and even the Pope. Things have come a long way since April 14, 1865 when President Lincoln's bodyguard on duty outside the president's box at Ford's Theatre "was Patrolman John F. Parker of the Washington police. Instead of remaining on guard outside the President's box, Parker wandered off to watch the play, then went to a nearby saloon for a drink". And of course John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln that night. Author Ronald Kessler then leads the reader not only through the growth... both in size... and responsibility... of the United States Secret Service... but he also brings to light... almost limitless Presidential peccadilloes... character traits... and faults... that are almost beyond an average citizens imagination. The revelations in this book go way... way... past the JFK-Marilyn Monroe sexual liaisons... which is almost accepted common knowledge by multiple generations. We're talking about JFK bedding multiple women at the same time... with the security of a Secret Service team with Jackie... giving alerts to JFK if she was on the way back... while he was in the pool with two buxom women wearing nothing but wet T-shirts. We're talking about Lyndon Johnson having multiple sex partners... and even being caught in the act on the couch by Lady Bird Johnson... thus leading an irate LBJ to request a red warning light in his office and other areas that could be activated by agents to alert him when Lady Bird was on the way. LBJ would even have women on his ranch while Lady Bird was home... and simply get up at night and go into a different room for sex.

What makes this book so astounding is that ninety-per-cent of the quotes regarding these transgressions... are attributed directly to *NAMED-AGENTS*! With the "secrecy" of the Secret Service... the reader would think... the agents would have been sworn to a life of "OMERTA"... the code of silence. But I guess times have changed both for the Mafia... and the Secret Service. The agents... through the author... pull no punches in any area you could think of. They openly state that LBJ "was uncouth, nasty, and often drunk." They say President Ford was the cheapest guy they ever saw... they say Nixon was the "strangest modern president, Jimmy Carter was known as the least likeable. IF THE TRUE MEASURE OF A MAN IS HOW HE TREATS THE LITTLE PEOPLE, CARTER FLUNKED THE TEST." One agent said "the Carters were the biggest liars in the world"... especially when it came to booze. Agents "considered Nixon's son-in-law David Eisenhower, grandson of former President Dwight Eisenhower the most clueless person they had ever protected." What I've listed here is a miniscule tip of the iceberg of presidential depravity that engulfs the reader's senses like a flash flood annihilating an ant hill.

Interspersed with the White House decadence is a myriad of examples of assassination planning and attempts. Some thwarted in advance by the Secret Service... and some simply failing by pure luck. This book will have two extremely powerful... uncontrollable effects on potential readers. One... you literally will not be able to stop reading it... and two... you will have to talk to someone... to share this overflowing amount of formerly secret... deliriously... salacious... historical... scuttlebutt.

"In the President's Secret Service" is something of a guilty pleasure for those interested in learning more about our nation's presidents and first families and those agents who protect them. Yet it also pays tribute to those agents who put their lives on the line every day for their charges, and also seeks to highlight deficiencies in the agency that desperately need to be addressed. Kessler interviewed a number of active and retired agents in order to describe the dangers the agents and their charges face from a myriad of threats and seeks to personalize the history of this agency that often serves in the shadows and in silence for very obvious reasons. In an age when citizens are critical of the government and it's agencies it is refreshing to read about these genuinely selfless individuals who are literally willing to take a bullet in their line of duty.

Secret Service agents are a favorite topic for fiction and for Hollywood, but their portrayal there is often stilted and two dimensional rather than the nuanced portrait Kessler reveals. Agents endure considerable abuse and difficulty with supreme diffidence and their demonstration of duty, honor, and valor that emerges is very much what you would find in the Armed Forces. Along the way Kessler gives readers a healthy amount of anecdotes about Presidents and their families and how they interacted with the agents assigned to protect them. These stories are by turns funny, interesting, and sometimes downright disturbing. Rather than being a distraction from the more serious messages of the book they help to provide levity when needed. Many of these stories give readers greater insight into the agents and their charges, particular how those protected react to having someone shadow their every move. "In the President's Secret Service" is also rather topical as it focuses primarily on the more recent history of the service and recent presidents, primarily from George H. W. Bush to President Obama, but it also does occasionally touch on earlier Administrations.

"In the President's Secret Service" is a lively page turner that will certainly inspire confidence in the agents, but Kessler also points out alarming deficiencies in how the agency presently operates and how cutbacks have potentially weakened the effectiveness of their protections. Kessler exposes these weaknesses in the hope of shaming the agency and the branches of government to rectify them. Considering the stakes involved and our ongoing "War on Terror" lets hope that this book is reaching the right people!

I was hoping for a more scholarly examination of the Secret Service by Kessler, but this turns out to be more of a tabloid-kind of read. That's not to say it isn't fun to hear about some of the antics of former Presidents. A lot of the stories here have already been documented elsewhere, but there's stuff I haven't read before, either (particularly about Jimmy Carter - which I still find hard to believe).

The book is suprisingly short in length (I wonder if Kessler whipped this one together in a few months time), but if you can look past its shortcomings, I think most buyers will enjoy this title.

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