In the President's Secret Service: Behind the Scenes with Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents They Protect by Ronald Kessler
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
This is a book in two halves; both unexpected and interesting if disappointing for different reasons. In the first part it appears Kessler got many agents to talk about the secrets the learned from the Presidents they served and many of these are ascribed by name to the agents that divulged secrets from Kennedy (who has a room for assignations with Monroe and got alerts when Jackie was coming home) to the Obamas (Barak still smokes as of this writing. While thee revelations, almost salacious are interesting, it is disappointing to learn how easily it appears to have been to get agents to reveal secrets. We also learn of the adulteries of LBJ, the human sides of Ford and Carter and what unruly imps the Bush twins were.
The second part is how since post-9/11 the Service was rolled into Homeland Security it lacks in funding, is spread too thin also investigating modern day financial crimes, and suffering under effective indentured service (unfair transfer and overtime policies) driving away talent so that in the so-called War on Terror our heads of government have no better protection then when Lincoln's security office left Ford Theatre for the saloon.
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