The Secret Service would not disclose the exact number of agents and different types of protective resources assigned to the around 40 people it currently protects.
Credit: The New York Times
Washington: For years, the US Secret Service has meted out its limited protection resources based on the person the agency was protecting. The sitting president and vice president are assigned the highest amount of protection. Former presidents, major-party candidates and visiting dignitaries receive less.
Former President Donald Trump broke the mold for shaping protective details when he left office in 2021, because he maintained an intense schedule that demanded a suite of protection not previously seen for former commanders in chief.
The Secret Service would not disclose the exact number of agents and different types of protective resources assigned to the around 40 people it currently protects. But the attempted assassination of Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, and another Sunday at his golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida, have forced a reckoning of the longtime model and its relevance in today's threat environment.
This is what we know about how the Secret Service guards its protectees.
The sitting president and vice president are always the highest priority for protection resources.
That is because the Secret Service's priority is to protect the continuity of government -- in other words, to keep the president and the vice president safe so that they can run the country. This is why they will always get the most assets, from personnel to technology, assigned to them.
While the president always has a Secret Service counter sniper -- an agent trained to take out an assassin who has a gun -- assigned to his protection, that has not always been the case for the vice president, according to a former official with knowledge of the process who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
There are notable differences in assets assigned to the president and the vice president, as well. By law the Defense Department must provide certain resources to help the Secret Service protect the president, such as aircraft to transport the president and security equipment. That requirement is not established in law for the vice president or others under Secret Service protection.
Former presidents and their spouses receive lifetime protection, but it is not one size fits all.
Some former presidents are more active and more exposed than others and thus require larger permanent protective details. For instance, former President Jimmy Carter, who is in hospice care, does not need the same number of resources to be protected as former President Barack Obama, who continues to travel and make public appearances.
Trump maintained a presidential-esque schedule after he left office, including rallies -- something the Secret Service had not seen from a former president.
As one of the most polarizing people in the world, Trump also drew more attention than other former presidents, raising the risk that he could be harmed. Even before the attempted assassination of Trump at a campaign rally in western Pennsylvania in July, the Secret Service had increased the resources to secure his South Florida home and his protective detail, the former Secret Service director, Kimberly A. Cheatle, told Congress in July.
Depending on the threat to protectees, they might be assigned even more resources, which is what happened in Butler. The Secret Service assigned two countersniper teams to go to the rally in response to a heightened threat environment. It was the first time those Secret Service resources were deployed for a former president, said the agency's acting director, Ronald Rowe.
Since then, the agency has allocated even more resources to Trump's protective package, such as ballistic glass to protect him at outdoor campaign rallies.
But there is always the issue of how many resources are actually available. The Secret Service has a certain amount of detection equipment like drones or infrared radar detectors and may not be able to spare them to secure a former president if those resources are already in use for the sitting president, for instance.
Typically, major candidates receive protection at a certain point in the election cycle.
The Secret Service has long operated under the plan that it provides protection to major presidential and vice-presidential candidates within 120 days of the general election. This year, however, it broke with that model and provided security to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the independent presidential candidate at the time, whose campaign had been asking for a protective detail for months.
The homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, decided to extend protection to Kennedy after the Butler rally. Mayorkas consults with a panel of top congressional lawmakers on such decisions.
Certain foreign dignitaries also receive Secret Service protection.
The Secret Service divides its protection of foreign dignitaries into three categories: low, medium and high, with those in the highest category getting the most resources. For example, the Israeli prime minister would get more resources than the prime minister of the Seychelles, said Ronald Layton, a 26-year veteran of the Secret Service who led divisions with oversight of protection and event security.
The foreign dignitary who received the most resources was Pope Francis when he visited the United States in 2015, Layton said.