Chapter 9 - Preventing Attacks on Public Officials and Public Figures: A Secret Service Perspective

Abstract

This chapter deals with the prevention of attacks on public officials and public figures, which is a Secret Service perspective. Assassination of political leaders and other public figures is a rare, but significant problem in the United States. The chief goal of the special case study project is to collect information and increase knowledge that might help law enforcement organizations to accomplish defensive responsibilities for public officials and public figures. The study plan involved two kinds of data collection and review. First, all available archival information about each subject was gathered and coded. Second, interviews were conducted with living subjects. A number of key observations about assassins and their behaviors have emerged from the Secret Service Exceptional Case Study Project (ECSP). Targets are selected on the basis of a subject's motives, not primarily because of a subject's feelings about, or hostility toward a particular target or office. An assassination attempt is the end result of a process of thinking and behavior. Many attackers and near-lethal approachers move through life on a path that leads them to consider assassination of one or another prominent person of public status.