The United States Secret Service USSS

By the end of the Civil War perhaps a third of the paper currency in circulation was counterfeit. The Treasury created the Secret Service on July 5, 1865, to stop it. A frequently repeated story holds that Lincoln approved the plan on April 14, the day he was shot. Protecting the President came later and by accident. After William McKinley was shot in 1901, the third President murdered in thirty-six years, Congress asked the Secret Service to take on the job informally, and made it permanent in 1906. The agency moved from Treasury to Homeland Security in 2003.

Protection is the mission the public sees. The Secret Service guards the President, the Vice President, their immediate families, former presidents and their spouses, major presidential candidates in election years, and visiting heads of state, and it secures events designated as national special security events, such as inaugurations, national conventions, and the State of the Union. Its Uniformed Division guards the White House complex, the Vice President's residence, and foreign embassies in Washington. The work combines advance planning of every route and venue with the close-in agents whose job is to cover and evacuate the protectee.

The investigative mission is older and still large. Special agents pursue counterfeiting, bank and wire fraud, identity theft, and cybercrime targeting the financial system, often through task forces with local police. Agents rotate between investigative field offices and protective details over a career. About 8,000 people work for the agency, including roughly 3,600 special agents and 1,600 Uniformed Division officers. Its Director is appointed by the President and does not require Senate confirmation.

The agency has faced a string of failures and scandals: a 2011 shooting at the White House not detected for days, the 2012 Cartagena misconduct case, a 2014 intruder who reached the East Room. On July 13, 2024, a gunman fired on Donald Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, wounding him and killing a spectator, from a rooftop the agency had not secured, and an armed man was found near his golf course two months later. The Director resigned, and independent and congressional reviews found failures of planning, communication, and leadership. Reforms, new leadership, and increased funding followed, along with long-running debate over whether the investigative and protective missions should be split.