On the day he was shot and killed by John Wilkes Booth, Abraham Lincoln approved the formation of the U.S. Secret Service, a government agency tasked with protecting the integrity of the nation’s currency. In 1901, after the assassination of President William McKinley, Congress extended their duties to involve the protection of the president. There are things about the Secret Service that the average American doesn’t know, and some of them may surprise you.
- 1. They travel with bags of the president’s blood. Agents are trained in “10-minute medicine” — doing everything possible to keep the president alive until specialized medical attention can be provided in the event of an emergency. When they travel, they are never more than 10 minutes away from a trauma center. They post an agent at the hospital who knows the operating room staff. The travel group also has bags of blood in the president’s motorcade in the event a transfusion is needed.
- 2. They make sure the president is never alone, even in the bathroom. Being on protective detail means following the president wherever he might go. This includes the bathroom, the doctor’s office, or anywhere that might benefit from a little privacy. When President Ronald Reagan was in office, an agent was there during his prostate exams and colonoscopies. He was armed with a gun and would have shot the doctor had her perceived him as a threat to President Reagan.
- 3. They film the president in case something happens. For all of the controversy it created, the Zapruder film of the 1963 John F. Kennedy assassination was invaluable in helping the Secret Service understand how quickly a situation can spin out of control. To this day, agents still screen the footage as part of their training. They also film presidential motorcades in the event they need to review an attack. Recently, someone threw something at Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, but agents were able to locate the person thanks to the video the agents had taken.
- 4. The food is under constant surveillance. Every bite of food presented to the president is prepared under the watchful eye of the Secret Service, who stare down White House chefs to make sure no one is flavoring with arsenic or rat poison. When the president travels, Navy stewards come along to prepare food, and when the president has a photo-op at a diner and orders food, it’s not likely he’s going to eat it.
