In The President’s Secret Service – By Ron Kessler
In The President’s Secret Service
Author – Ronald Kessler
Crown Publishers $26 273p
Final Grade: C+
Where you to judge this book by its dust cover teaser comments, you’d think you were in for a major behind the scenes, tell all (or at least a lot), expose’. What else would you expect from comments like “Never before has a journalist penetrated the wall of secrecy…” and that this book goes behind the scenes with agents in the line of fire and the presidents they protect. Well, at least that’s as far as the dust cover hype would lead you to believe.
Until it recently became part of the Department of Homeland Security, the Secret Service was that part of the Treasury Department which was primarily charged with the integrity of American coinage and currency in circulation as well as the safety and well being of the President, Vice President, strategic persons of importance to the government and foreign dignitaries. They are they guys you see hovering around a president with the sunglasses and little plugs in their ears, or the ones that hound down counterfeiters.
In his book, Kessler does a nice review of the historical events which have brought the service to what it is today. A group of generally silent behind the scenes people that work very diligently at making sure that you don’t read about them in the paper, which is what would happen if something were to go wrong.
As you would expect with any government security agency, little is made public about the organization, their budget, management structures, staffing, or in general how they do their jobs. Kessler does a good job into giving the reader a nice overview of the agency and how it gets business done. In the process giving you several overviews their headquarters location in downtown Washington and training center in Laurel, MD.
Going behind the scenes of Chief Executives lives, we’re doled out little titillating morsels of some of the presidents, their attitudes, proclivities, idiosyncrasies and some things about their personal and family lives that one has to wonder border on really too much information. It was interesting reading the code names that the service has assigned recent chief executives and their families, but then, most of this is already public knowledge. We all know that JFK’s stable mares included having sex with Marilyn Monroe on a regular basis and now we know that one of his favorite bedding posts was upstairs in this brother Bobby’s office at the Justice Department as Attorney General. Gee, it’s good to have a brother in a convenient place when you need it, eh? We read that Jimmy Carter was more façade than what met the eye and Miss Lillian enjoyed a nip or two. Lyndon Johnson evidently had a fairly active stable of mares and there’s some mentions of the Clintons, Truman, Eisenhowers, Nixon’s, both Presidents Bush and assorted family anecdotes.
Kessler also goes into how the Executives have treated the service personnel over the years which reminded me of Santa Claus telling me who was naughty, who was nice and who was just plain out obnoxious. And speaking of obnoxious, let’s not forget the Bush twins that sound like they were just spoiled brats while “W” was in the White House, intentionally evading and slipping away from the very folks whose job it is to insure their security. But frankly, there’s very little here that hasn’t already been hashed and rehashed by one writer or another over time. If you read the paper or a news magazine, over time, you’ve heard most of these stories. However, why Kessler thinks we need to know how long Lyndon Johnson’s penis was is just beyond me.
From an internal and managerial perspective, Kessler delves a little into the management structure history at the service. He touches on the high turnover rates, reasons and low pay, and low budgets. In addition, he does a quick review a few times of the inadequate firearms currently in use and how out gunned agents in the field and those protecting the president often are. In fact he mentions their low budgets and antiquated weapons so much that you would think he were writing a one person lobbying book for the Secret Service.
But, alas, at the end of the day and the 273 pages, it’s a lightly entertaining read. If you’ve been under a rock for a while, you’ll learn a few tidbits of Washington insider life that you may not have known, but if you’re looking for lots of new hard core, internal information on the service or it’s protectorates, you’re still going to be looking after you hit page 274.
I’m Don Rima and that’s the way I read it, From Where I Stand.
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