How to Fix the Secret Service Before It Fails Again

After the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump last month—in which the bullet missed achieving lethality by less than an inch—Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle was called on the carpet by the House Oversight Committee. On July 22, she took full responsibility for the failure to protect Trump, whose ear was nicked by the bullet. In a spasm of self-contradiction, however, she then declared that she would stay on the job “and be responsible to the agency, to this committee, to the former president and to the American public.”

That taking responsibility and accepting accountability might entail offering her resignation was not Cheatle’s considered view. However, the avalanche not of criticism but of condemnation that she received from the committee led to an abrupt about-face and resignation the day after her testimony.

It is a pity that in America today, senior executives do not believe in the old Navy notion that if the ship runs aground, no matter the reason, the skipper takes the hit; in a case like this, a decent respect for those one serves requires at least a sincere offer to resign. Instead, within government and outside it, those who fail at the top too often have to be forcibly pried from their position of power rather than leave with a dignified acceptance of one of leadership’s heavier burdens.

The denunciation of Cheatle was thoroughly bipartisan, a rare thing in the United States these days. But she was not the only one failing to accept accountability. Were they honest with themselves, the members of Congress would have done so as well, because in some nontrivial measure they have helped set Cheatle, her predecessors, and her successors up for failure.

The story of the Secret Service is, in part, a story of the way that government, particularly Congress, finds organizing itself excruciatingly difficult. Congress adds missions to agencies but rarely subtracts them, thereby putting career civil servants in an impossible situation.

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Abraham Lincoln created the Secret Service in 1865 to help stanch the counterfeiting epidemic that accompanied the Civil War. Sensibly enough, the Secret Service was put into the Treasury Department, where it would remain for nearly 140 years. At the end of the 19th century, and in a more formal way at the beginning of the 20th, it took on the mission of protecting the president, a necessity reinforced by the assassination of President William McKinley.

As is the nature of such things, the mission grew. In 1908, protection of the president-elect. In 1917, the president’s immediate family. In 1951, vice presidents, vice-presidential families, and vice presidents–elect. In 1963, a former first lady and her children. In 1971, visiting heads of state, distinguished foreign visitors, and U.S. officials abroad on special missions. In 1976, presidential and vice-presidential nominees and their spouses within 120 days of the general election. In 2008, protection of former vice presidents, their spouses, and minor children. Meanwhile, in 1970 the Secret Service, through what became its uniformed branch, took over the physical protection of the White House grounds; foreign diplomatic missions in the Washington, D.C., area; and any presidential offices.

But this is not all. The original mission—investigating counterfeiting—did not go away. And indeed, further missions were added: in 1933, investigation of Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation fraud; in 1986, security of the U.S. Treasury Building; in 1990, investigations into crimes against federally insured financial institutions; and in 1994, technical and analytic assistance to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

There were, occasionally, attempts to rationalize this growing mountain of assignments. In 2003, for example, the Secret Service was transferred, sensibly enough, to the Department of Homeland Security, although there have been efforts to move it back. And periodically, a few members of Congress have wondered about the Secret Service’s multiple roles. But they’ve done nothing of note about it. The upshot is that an agency that is small by federal-government standards—a roughly $3 billion budget and 8,000 employees (although it says it needs almost 10,000)—is large in absolute terms, and requires focused management.

Common sense would suggest that an organization this big, and with a mission as crucial as protecting the nation’s leaders and their families, should focus on that mission and nothing else. Directors of the Secret Service should have only one thought in their mind—keeping the growing number of men and women they have been ordered to protect safe. Common sense would say that plenty of other federal law-enforcement agencies could pick up the financial-crimes portfolio, or help locate lost children. But common sense has trouble breaking through the sloth and inertia, not to mention the penchant for performance rather than legislation, that beset Congress.

The Secret Service is an unlovable organization. As residents of the nation’s capital know, its officers are humorless and brusque in the discharge of their duties. I have had the sense in dealing with them that I am one misinterpreted gesture from being spread-eagled on the ground. It is, moreover, disquieting to see the motorcades that shut down traffic, sirens blaring, heavily armored SUVs charging behind waves of motorcycles and police cars. We are a long, long way from the idea that the White House is actually the people’s house, and that a president should be as accessible as, say, Teddy Roosevelt, who famously shook more than 8,000 visitors’ hands on New Year’s Day 1907. The protective cocoon of the Secret Service is one of a number ways in which presidents soon lose the feeling that they are merely a servant of the people—powerful for a time, but an employee of a republic rather than a scion of a monarchy.

[Read: A terrible new era of political violence in America]

But it is unlovable for a reason. When the Secret Service fails in its main mission, as happened when President John F. Kennedy was shot, and as nearly occurred on July 13, 2024, it can upend the nation’s history. When its agents’ discipline breaks over, say, sexual adventures with local prostitutes, it is international news that discredits more than just the officers. The Secret Service is a bureaucracy that requires a unique combination of analytic skills, tactical competence, advanced technology, and willingness to take a bullet for someone you may dislike intensely. There are few more demanding and stressful jobs in law enforcement.

The men and women of the Secret Service should be held to account for their screwups—but so, too, should those who could make their lives a lot simpler by allowing them to focus on their main mission, and nothing but that mission. Someone else can chase the counterfeiters.