The United States Secret Service, which celebrates its 140th anniversary this year, has two central missions:  to look after the safety of high-ranking government officials and foreign dignitaries, and to combat counterfeiters and others engaged in financial crime. 

Beginnings

On July 5, 1865, U.S. Treasury Secretary Hugh McCulloch swore in William P. Wood as the first director of the Secret Service. Wood, a veteran of the Mexican war and onetime Keeper of the Capital Prison, was considered second to none in battling financial crime. Ironically, President Lincoln decided to establish the agency, which later became tasked with protecting the nation’s commanders-in-chief, on April 14, 1865, just hours before John Wilkes Booth assassinated him at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C. 

The agency’s original mandate was to fight counterfeiting and other forms of financial crime, a problem that had become particularly acute by the end of the Civil War. In the early 1860s, over 1,500 American banks were printing 7,000 different forms of American currency.  As a consequence of the widespread non-standardization, numerous criminal groups were literally flooding the country with counterfeit money, which at one time made up as much as a third of cash in circulation.  Not until 1863 was the Treasury placed in charge of issuing money, when it began printing dollars of uniform standard.  However, even after this reform, counterfeiters continued to pursue their illicit occupation with impunity.  After the Civil War’s conclusion, McCulloch decided to put an end to the lawlessness by convincing Lincoln to create a special police division to protect the U.S. monetary system. Thus, the Secret Service was born.

The entity was initially small, consisting of just its director, Wood, and 10 operatives, some of whom were former private investigators.  Over the next few months, their numbers doubled, with new members including counterfeiters who had decided to “switch sides.”  However, throughout the 19th century there were never more than 30 operatives. 

The new division quickly proved effective in fighting financial crime and its powers were expanded in 1867. Between 1865 and 1869 the Secret Service arrested more than 200 counterfeiters, confiscating currency and government bonds worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.  Agents began investigating postal fraud, unlawful transactions in federal land, smuggling and even hate crimes linked to the Ku Klux Klan, the racist white supremacist group.  However, the Justice Department soon took over investigating these types of criminal activity, after convincing Congress to limit the Secret Service to combating counterfeiter activity only. 

Expanding the Mission

Until the mid-1890s, the agency had nothing to do with providing personal security for presidents, which was the responsibility of the Washington D.C. police force. However, in the spring of 1894, 13 years after the assassination of America’s 20th president, James Garfield, then director of the service, William Hazen, took an unprecedented step that led to a change in the agency’s mission.  Specifically, Hazen sent two officers to guard the White House after obtaining credible information about a conspiracy to kill President Grover Cleveland. 

With the start of the Spanish-American War in 1898, Congress authorized 24-hour protection for McKinley by Secret Service operatives.  The agency was entrusted with catching Spanish agents on U.S. territory, as well as with collecting military information.  After the end of the war, Secret Service operatives returned to their previous duties, but continued to protect McKinley, who received death threats from anarchists almost daily.  In view of this, Congress de facto allowed the Secret Service to protect America’s head of state, even though an official mandate for this activity was lacking.

On September 6, 1901, William McKinley was mortally wounded at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, after a disaffected anarchist, Leon Czolgosz, opened fire on the 25th president.  The murder forced the American people and Congress to think more seriously about presidential security.  McKinley’s successor, Theodore Roosevelt, immediately ordered the Secret Service to provide beefed-up protection for himself.  After lengthy debates in Congress, in 1906, lawmakers passed the Sundry Civil Expenses Act, the first legislation sanctioning the permanent allocation of public funds for presidential security.  At that time, secret agents guarded the White House, but carried out almost no tasks beyond its premises.  Local police departments were in charge of protecting the president during his travels.

Starting in 1908, agents began providing protection services for newly elected presidents preceding inauguration (formally, these powers were assigned 5 years later).  In 1908, Roosevelt also ordered the Secret Service to send eight operatives to the Justice Department.  These agents were the core of a new anticrime division which later became the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Today’s Secret Service

Over the course of the 20th century the Secret Service’s functions gradually expanded, but did not change qualitatively.  In 1917, it was assigned to guard the family of the U.S. president; in 1951, the vice president; and in 1961, retired presidents also began receiving 24-hour protection.  After a young Palestinian shot presidential hopeful Robert Kennedy in Los Angeles in June of 1968, Congress assigned the Secret Service to protect the presidential and vice presidential candidates.  The agency was put in charge of investigating credit card fraud in 1984 and computer crime in 2001.  In 2003, it was moved from the Treasury to the newly established Homeland Security Department.

The number of Secret Service operatives increased almost a hundredfold over the 20th century, from several dozen agents under Theodore Roosevelt to just over 500 in the early 1960s, to about 5,000 today.  In 2002, the agency’s budget equaled $867 million.  As of 2002, the Secret Service had 122 field offices in the United States and 15 abroad, including an office in Moscow.  W. Ralph Basham, the Service’s current director, has been at his post since January 27, 2003.