Book Review: In The President's Secret Service

Knight Ridder/Tribune

I also didn't know that investigating fraud is still one of their responsibilities, and that they and the FBI sometimes investigate the same cases.

Topics covered in the book range from training and responsibilities of the agents to personal dirt on each of the presidents and their families for the past fifty years. The author also spends a great deal of time focused on ways the agency is lacking (by being short staffed, having old equipment, lack of proper crowd screening at events, etc.), and how this could threaten the security of our leaders.

The book really jumps around a lot from topic to topic. It would switch back and forth from the training of the agents, to gossipy stories about the presidents and their families (which I have to admit were fun to read in the same way as reading tabloid headlines at the checkout counter).

A good deal of the last section of the book is devoted to the inadequacies of the Secret Service. If they are true, then it makes a scary case for the lack of security currently provided for our leaders (and makes me wonder at the wisdom of giving people ideas by outlining the weaknesses of our leaders' protection).

I recommend reading In the President's Secret Service if you don't know very much about the history of the Secret Service or how it operates today. I have to be honest and say that I enjoyed this book the most for its gossipy information about the presidents and their families.

Rating: 3.5/5

Ronald Kessler is the bestselling author of The Terrorist Watch, The Bureau, Inside the White House, and The CIA at War. A former reporter for the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, he has won sixteen journalism awards.

In the President's Secret Service: Behind the Scenes with Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents They Protect (Crown Publishing/ Aug 2009) by Ronald Kessler

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