Secret Service strained as leaders face more threats
Report questions its role in financial investigations

By Bryan Bender, Boston Globe Staff | October 18, 2009

WASHINGTON - The unprecedented number of death threats against President
Obama, a rise in racist hate groups, and a new wave of antigovernment
fervor threaten to overwhelm the US Secret Service, according to
government officials and reports, raising new questions about the
144-year-old agency’s overall mission.

The Secret Service is tracking a far broader range of possible threats
to the nation’s leaders, the officials said, even as it also
investigates financial crimes such as counterfeiting as part of its
original mandate.

The new demands are leading some officials, both inside and outside the
agency, to raise the possibility of the service curtailing or dropping
its role in fighting financial crime to focus more on protecting leaders
and their families from assassination attempts and thwarting terrorist
plots aimed at high-profile events.

“If there were an evaluation of the service’s two missions, it might be
determined that it is ineffective . . . to conduct its protection
mission and investigate financial crimes,’’ according to a inter nal
report issued in August by the Congressional Research Service.

The report, which was provided to the Globe, said such a review should
look at how money and staff are allocated, and whether some of the
agency’s functions and workers should be transferred to the Treasury
Department.

“This is a discussion going on not only in some quarters in Congress,
but inside the Secret Service. Should there be a re-look at the
mission?’’ said a government official, who like others was not
authorized to speak publicly about security matters or reveal details
about the number or nature of the threats.

Already, there are signs of strain on the agency, officials said. Budget
documents submitted to Congress this year said the agency lacks the
necessary technology to keep up with threats.

“The network and mainframe system used today struggles to support basic
operations,’’ the agency said, requesting an additional $33 million over
last year for computers and other information technology.

Asked about the concerns, Special Agent Edwin Donovan, a Secret Service
spokesman, said that though “there is no doubt the protection mission
has grown,’’ the agency can still fulfill both its missions.

The financial crimes mission remains robust as well, he added, citing
some recent large seizures of counterfeit currency.

The Secret Service, long under the Treasury Department but now part of
the Department of Homeland Security, was established in 1865 to thwart
counterfeiting, a focus that has expanded to include a host of
electronic and financial crimes.

Its mission soon expanded to investigating the Ku Klux Klan and
conducting counterespionage operations during the Spanish-American War
and World War I.

The job of protecting presidents started in 1894 with Grover Cleveland,
who was guarded part time. That role expanded after the assassination of
William McKinley in 1901, and it became a crime to threaten the
president in 1917. Today, guarding the president and other top officials
accounts for most of the Secret Service’s budget, which totals about
$1.4 billion per year and continues to grow.

The agency has been directed by Congress to guard what it describes an
“unprecedented’’ number of individuals, including presidents, vice
presidents, their immediate families, former presidents and vice
presidents, and visiting dignitaries - as well as presidential
candidates during campaigns lasting longer than ever before.

The Service currently protects 32 people - 24 full time and eight part
time. It also coordinates security at high-profile events, such as
meetings of world leaders and political party conventions. Between Oct.
1, 2008, and Sept. 30, the Secret Service said it protected 116 heads of
state and 58 spouses.

“The service’s protection mission has increased and become more urgent,
due to the increase in terrorist threats and expanded arsenal of weapons
that terrorists could use in an assassination attempt or attacks on
facilities,’’ according to the congressional report.

The domestic threat is also growing, fueled in part by Obama’s election
as the nation’s first black president, according to specialists who
study homegrown radical movements.

Obama, who was given Secret Service protection 18 months before the
election - the earliest ever for a presidential candidate - has been the
target of more threats since his inauguration than his predecessors.

Two days before Obama’s appearance at San Francisco fund-raisers on
Thursday, a 59-year-old Northern California man was indicted on charges
of sending a racist, profanity-filled e-mail threatening to kill Obama
and his family. The rambling e-mail included specific references to
Michelle Obama and the phrase, “do it to his children and family first
in front of him,’’ according to the indictment.

The Southern Poverty Law Center says that antigovernment militias and
white supremacist groups have strengthened in recent years, responding
to an increasingly diverse population and what they see as an expanding
government.

A center study released in August found a nearly 35 percent growth in
racially based domestic hate groups since 2000 - from 602 to 926. The
center concluded that opposition to Obama’s election has only increased
the phenomenon.

“A key difference this time is that the federal government - the entity
that almost the entire radical right views as its primary enemy - is
headed by a black man,’’ the report said. “One result has been a
remarkable rash of domestic terror incidents since the presidential
campaign, most of them related to anger over the election of Barack Obama.’’

Threatening language has also found its way into talk radio broadcasts
and social networking websites, raising fears that individuals not
normally considered threats to the president could be incited to violence.

For example, the Secret Service in recent months has investigated a poll
posted on Facebook about whether Obama should be killed. It has
interviewed a Florida radio talk show host after a caller mentioned
ammunition, target practice, and the president, and federal officials
have raised concerns about several instances in which protesters
carrying weapons showed up at Obama events, including a man at an August
town hall in New Hampshire.

“The racist extremist fringe is exploiting themes that strike a chord in
the mainstream more than we have seen in the recent past,’’ said Brian
Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at
California State University-San Bernardino, citing several elected
leaders who have questioned whether Obama is a US citizen eligible to be
president.

The Secret Service has been given more resources to deal with the
changing environment. Its total number of employees has risen from 6,700
two years ago to a projected 7,055 in the new fiscal year that began
Oct. 1, with almost all the new positions for the protection mission.

Its overall budget request has grown by several hundred million dollars
a year, including a nearly a 20 percent increase since 2008 for
so-called protective intelligence activities, the efforts to analyze and
investigate threats, according to budget documents.

But a significant share of the agency’s budget still goes to
investigating financial and other crimes, including 142 field offices
nationwide and 22 overseas that also assist the search for missing and
exploited children. A new proposal in Congress would allocate $20
million next year for the Secret Service to expand its role and
investigate mortgage fraud.

“The establishment of a single mission, or a distinct primary and
secondary mission, for the [Secret Service] is one option for
Congress,’’ the congressional report said. “One argument for this is
that the majority of the Service’s resources are used for its protection
mission, and that Congress has raised the issue of the Service’s
competing missions of protection and investigation.’’





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http://tinyurl.com/ykaa4k7

On Oct 18, 3:48*pm, H the K wrote:
Secret Service strained as leaders face more threats
Report questions its role in financial investigations

By Bryan Bender, Boston Globe Staff *| *October 18, 2009

this goes along with the fact about 20% of the GOP is composed of the
radical right, who think obama's the enemy muslim atheist socialist
president...

idiots

On 10/18/09 4:54 PM, wf3h wrote:
On Oct 18, 3:48 pm, H the wrote:
Secret Service strained as leaders face more threats
Report questions its role in financial investigations

By Bryan Bender, Boston Globe Staff | October 18, 2009

this goes along with the fact about 20% of the GOP is composed of the
radical right, who think obama's the enemy muslim atheist socialist
president...

idiots


We've got a few of those idiots right here in rec.boats. BTW, I think
the percentage you are quoting is...higher.


--
Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are
conservatives. - John Stuart Mill

On Sun, 18 Oct 2009 13:54:57 -0700 (PDT), wf3h
wrote:

On Oct 18, 3:48*pm, H the K wrote:
Secret Service strained as leaders face more threats
Report questions its role in financial investigations

By Bryan Bender, Boston Globe Staff *| *October 18, 2009

this goes along with the fact about 20% of the GOP is composed of the
radical right, who think obama's the enemy muslim atheist socialist
president...

idiots

Don't forget Arab, Nazi, Kenyan and Fascist.

On Sun, 18 Oct 2009 21:08:39 -0400, gfretwell wrote:


When you look at who has actually taken a shot at one of our presidents,
it is hard to point at the right wingers any more than anyone else.

True, if you look at relatively recent assassins, many don't even seem
political, just the result of a sick mind. Mark David Chapman, John
Hinckley, and Squeaky Fromme seem to fit that profile. Arthur Bremer,
Lee Harvey Oswald, James Earl Ray, and Sirhan Sirhan, seem more "sane"
and cross the political spectrum.