They are the Men and Women in Black. They wear long dark coats, dark sunglasses and drive fast cars, and have an earpiece. Their eyes are constantly moving, scanning for suspicious movement, their ears never ceasing to listen for threat. While they may not know with certainty what danger lies in their paths, they are constantly looking for it and ready to respond as a second's notice. They are the United States Secret Service.
The United States Secret Service Agency is a federal law enforcement agency, originally established under the U.S. Department of the Treasury for the sole purpose of addressing the problem of counterfeiting in late-19th century. By 1875, ten years after its inception, very little bogus money remained in circulation (wikipedia.org).
As the only federal law enforcement agency dedicated solely to Treasury operations at the time, the Secret Service took on many non-treasury related cases including the Teapot Dome scandal, the Ku Klux Klan, and foreign spying (wikipedia.org).
In 1901 when William McKinley became the third President killed in office, Congress began to unofficially assign the task of protecting the new President, Theodore Roosevelt, to the Secret Service. It was not until 1906 that Congress passed legislation making presidential protection an official duty of the Secret Service (Longley).
Today, the mission of the Secret Service remains two-fold -- protection and investigation -- and the structure, activities, and purpose of the agency reflect it. The two main points of focus of the Secret Service -- protection and investigation -- each have individual mission statements and are divided into sub-areas as well. Each mission will be discussed in detail below.
After the assassination of President McKinley in 1901, Congress directed the Secret Service to protect the President and that role of protection remains the primary mission of the Secret Service today (United States). Today, ...