The Secret Service
The United States Secret Service, established in 1865 to safeguard the nation's currency, is best known as the agency responsible for protecting the president, a duty it assumed in 1901 after the assassination of William McKinley. Secret Service agents’ courage, creativity, and dedication are taxed to the utmost in safeguarding the president.
The special agents and uniformed officers' ever-expanding role now includes protecting the president, the president’s family, presidential candidates, and former presidents and guarding executive offices and diplomatic missions.
After John Kennedy's death in 1963, the agency increased the number of agents detailed to the president, employed new communications technology, and became more proactive in intelligence gathering.
Prior to Theodore Roosevelt's administration, presidential safety was an ad hoc mix of private security, local officers, and presidential confidants. The protection of William McKinley while on an 1897 Midwest trip was handled, quite effectively, by William Williams, director of public safety in Columbus, Ohio. When McKinley was assassinated four years later in Buffalo, New York, the Secret Service formally became the protector of the president.
The diligence of special agents like Larry Buendorf and Dick Kaiser was crucial to the agency's ability to protect President Ford from two assassination attempts in 1975. The attack by Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme on September 5 was thwarted when Special Agent Buendorf's hand pressed against her gun and prevented it from firing.
