![]() “No more throngs of Congressional constituents being escorted along the beautiful, stately grand corridor … from the East Room to the State Dining Room,” the first lady’s good friend Lorena Hickok remembered, “No more government clerks hurrying through the grounds … in the late afternoon on their way home from work … No more Sunday tourists feeding the squirrels, taking snapshots and hanging around the portico hoping someone interesting would come out.” 6 He turned and headed for F Street without saying a word.” 5įollowing the United States’ entry into World War II, the Secret Service changed the White House grounds forever, banning casual visitors and setting up sentry boxes manned by agents and members of the White House police force. When he reached the gate he turned around with a look of glee on his face. He came out of the engine room, up the East steps, and passed right by me. … One day I turned the tables on him and hid in the police box on the East side. “Sometimes … he would try to sneak out the East or the West entrance, just to fool me. ![]() Starling was a particular favorite of President Calvin Coolidge, who often tried to outwit his protector. The agent found it difficult to believe the president was 58 years old, for “We walked briskly, and the president danced off the curbs and up them when we crossed streets.” 4 ![]() Edith Galt, he would often walk back from her home on 20th Street to the White House with Starling. When the widowed President Woodrow Wilson was courting the widowed Mrs. Starling, who would become chief of the White House Secret Service detail in the 1920s, frequently saw presidents in unguarded moments. Two hours after their departure a soaked and dripping first couple returned to the White House, smiling broadly. Chief John Wilkie and his men scurried all over town searching for them. When the Secret Service discovered their absence, there was widespread panic. At 4:30 on Christmas Eve afternoon 1911, the president and first lady secretly left the White House on foot in a rainstorm to call on friends as a surprise. His successor, William Howard Taft, followed the same mischievous tradition. “Always free and active in his manner of life, he found the vigilance of the secret service men irksome and their constant presence irritating.” To frustration of his Secret Service detail, Roosevelt would sometimes secretly slip off the White House grounds and go for an invigorating hike or horseback ride in Rock Creek Park. “He did not like restraint,” one observer recalled. President Roosevelt was guarded by at least two Secret Service men. Uniformed, armed sentries were posted at the gates to the grounds and at the doors to the Executive Mansion itself.ĭuring the Theodore Roosevelt administration (1901-1909), the Secret Service assumed full-time responsibility for protecting the President. Guards inside the Mansion (the doormen) dressed in civilian clothes and concealed their firearms. Metropolitan Police guarded the Executive Mansion but Lincoln did not want the house to take on the characteristics of an armed camp. ![]() A guarded outer perimeter securing the Executive Mansion itself, and an inner perimeter-the bodyguard to protect the person of the president.ĭuring the Civil War there were heightened security fears in Washington that Confederates just across the Potomac in Virginia could easily slip across and attack President Abraham Lincoln at the White House. It was a little sort of stand guard, which might eventually become a formidable army.” 1Ĭrittenden’s fears went unrealized, and in 1853 Franklin Pierce became the first president to have a full-time bodyguard, and also introduced the two-level security arrangement that characterizes presidential protection today. Crittenden of Kentucky warned “it might be metamorphosed into a political guard for the executive … it would not be entirely safe to organize such a corps. The proposal to create the force had met opposition in Congress Sen. Historian William Seale has described presidential protection as a learning process, with presidents and their families and the Secret Service sometimes straining to adjust to one another.Īlthough from the beginning guards were posted at the White House gates and front doors and the White House grounds were patrolled by a day guard and a night watchmen, it was not until 1842 that the first permanent security force for the White House was established-an auxiliary guard of a captain and three other men. ![]()
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