- 1 week ago
What it really costs to stand between a bullet and the most powerful person in the world.
Every episode takes a lot of research and writing. Drop your next video idea in the comments. I read them all.
Subscribe so you don't miss the next one! 🔔
VIDEO TOPICS/TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 The Applicant
2:10 The Trainee
5:53 The Field Agent
8:47 The Protective Detail Member
11:10 The Shift Agent
13:25 The Advance Agent
15:46 The Shift Leader
18:25 The Special Agent In Charge
20:48 The Director's Circle
23:39 The Legend
Every episode takes a lot of research and writing. Drop your next video idea in the comments. I read them all.
Subscribe so you don't miss the next one! 🔔
VIDEO TOPICS/TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 The Applicant
2:10 The Trainee
5:53 The Field Agent
8:47 The Protective Detail Member
11:10 The Shift Agent
13:25 The Advance Agent
15:46 The Shift Leader
18:25 The Special Agent In Charge
20:48 The Director's Circle
23:39 The Legend
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00Level 1. The Applicant
00:01You fill out an application online.
00:04The form is on the Secret Service website.
00:06You enter your name, your education, your work history.
00:09You list every job you have ever had.
00:12You list every address you have lived at since you were 18.
00:15You click Submit. You wait.
00:18Three months later, you get an email.
00:20They want you to come to a field office for an interview.
00:22You fly there on your own dime.
00:25The building looks like any other federal office.
00:27Fluorescent lights, beige walls, bad coffee and styrofoam cups.
00:32A man in a dark suit asks you questions for three hours.
00:35Where did you grow up?
00:37What does your father do?
00:38Have you ever used illegal drugs?
00:40Have you ever been arrested?
00:42Have you ever traveled outside the country, and where did you go?
00:45The questions seem ordinary, but they are not.
00:48They are building a profile.
00:50They are mapping your life.
00:51They are looking for inconsistencies.
00:53They are looking for vulnerabilities.
00:55They are looking for the kind of person who can be trusted with secrets the country cannot afford to lose.
01:00You pass the first interview.
01:03Then comes the written exam.
01:05Then the physical fitness test.
01:07Push-ups, sit-ups, a mile and a half run in under 12 minutes.
01:11Then comes the polygraph.
01:13You sit in a chair with sensors strapped to your chest, your fingers, your arm.
01:17A technician asks you questions while monitoring your heart rate, your breathing, your skin conductivity.
01:23Have you ever stolen anything worth more than $50?
01:26Have you ever lied on an official document?
01:29Have you ever had contact with a foreign government?
01:31The polygraph is not infallible, but you do not know that.
01:35You sweat.
01:36You tell the truth because the consequences of lying terrify you more than the truth ever could.
01:41Then comes the background investigation.
01:44Agents interview your neighbors.
01:45They interview your ex-girlfriend.
01:47They interview your college roommate who you have not spoken to in eight years.
01:51They pull your credit reports, your tax records, your social media history going back a decade.
01:57They want to know who you really are when nobody is watching.
02:00Six months later, you receive a letter.
02:02You have been selected.
02:04Welcome to the United States Secret Service.
02:07The real work is about to begin.
02:09Level 2.
02:11The Trainee
02:11They send you to the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glencoe, Georgia.
02:17Then they send you to the James J. Rowley Training Center in Beltsville, Maryland.
02:21For the next 12 months, this is your home.
02:24You wake up at 5 in the morning.
02:26You run before breakfast.
02:28You sit in classrooms learning constitutional law and federal criminal procedure.
02:33You learn the history of every presidential assassination attempt in American history.
02:37You learn what went wrong in each case.
02:41You study Dallas.
02:43You study the Hilton in Washington.
02:45You study Sarah Jane Moore.
02:47You study Squeaky Fromm.
02:50You study every failure of protective methodology that has ever cost a life.
02:54The instructors break down each event frame by frame.
02:58The motorcade speed.
02:59The window angle.
03:01The position of the agents in the follow car.
03:04The split second when the wrong choice was made.
03:07You spend hundreds of hours on the firing range.
03:10Pistol.
03:11Shotgun.
03:12Submachine gun.
03:14Rifle.
03:15You shoot until your hands cramp and your shoulders ache.
03:18You learn to draw and fire in under two seconds from concealment.
03:22You learn to engage moving targets while moving yourself.
03:26You learn to clear malfunctions without looking at your weapon.
03:29You learn to shoot in low light, in rain, while wearing a suit, while wearing body armor underneath
03:37that suit.
03:38You train in protective driving on a track outside the city.
03:42Skid pads.
03:43Evasive maneuvers.
03:45Ramming techniques.
03:46You learn how to ram a vehicle out of your path without disabling your own.
03:51You learn the J-turn.
03:53You learn the box-in escape.
03:55You practice motorcade formations until they become instinct.
03:59The lead car.
04:01The limousine.
04:02The follow car.
04:03The counter-assault team.
04:05You learn the choreography of a moving target on wheels.
04:09You train in close-quarters combat.
04:11Krav Maga in ground fighting and joint locks.
04:15You learn how to absorb a strike and stay between the principle and the threat.
04:20You learn how to physically cover and evacuate a person who weighs more than you do.
04:25You learn that your body is the last layer of protection.
04:29You learn that you are expected to use it.
04:31The washout rate is significant.
04:34Some people cannot pass the physical standards.
04:37Some people cannot handle the constant evaluation.
04:40Some people are too cocky and get corrected.
04:43Some people are too timid and never recover.
04:46Some people freeze during scenario training when the role players come at them with weapons.
04:52The people who make it are not the strongest or the smartest.
04:56They are the ones who are consistent under pressure.
04:59They are the ones who can absorb correction without ego.
05:03They are the ones who can be invisible when invisibility is required.
05:08They are also the ones who can be decisive when decisiveness is required.
05:12There are nights when you lie in your bunk and you wonder if you are going to make it.
05:17Your roommate snores.
05:19The hallway lights buzz.
05:21You stare at the ceiling.
05:23You think about quitting.
05:25You think about how easy it would be to walk into the office and sign the paperwork.
05:30Nobody would judge you.
05:32People quit every week.
05:34But you do not quit.
05:37You get up at 5.
05:38You run.
05:39You shoot.
05:41You train.
05:42You graduate.
05:44They pin a badge on your chest.
05:46You raise your right hand and take an oath.
05:49You are now a special agent of the United States Secret Service.
05:54Level 3.
05:55The Field Agent
05:56Your first assignment is not protection.
05:59Most people do not know this.
06:00They assume Secret Service agents stand next to the President.
06:04Most agents spend years investigating financial crimes first.
06:09The Secret Service was founded in 1865 to combat counterfeit currency.
06:14That mission never went away.
06:16You were assigned to a field office in a mid-sized American city.
06:20You work counterfeit cases.
06:23You investigate credit card fraud, wire fraud, identity theft, bank fraud.
06:28You sit through long hours of surveillance in unmarked vehicles.
06:32You drink cold coffee and eat gas station food.
06:36You photograph suspects entering buildings.
06:39You write affidavits for search warrants.
06:41You testify in federal court about the chain of custody for evidence.
06:46You execute warrants at 3 in the morning in neighborhoods where the welcome is not friendly.
06:51You wear a ballistic vest under a windbreaker that says police in yellow letters.
06:57You shout commands.
06:58You handcuff suspects.
07:00You search houses.
07:02You collect evidence in plastic bags labeled with case numbers.
07:06You build cases for months.
07:09You arrest people who run sophisticated criminal enterprises.
07:12You arrest people who steal from the elderly through phone scams.
07:16You arrest people who flood the economy with fake $100 bills printed in basements.
07:23You arrest a man who has been running a credit card skimming operation across four states for two years.
07:30You arrest a woman who has stolen the identities of 300 dead people to file fraudulent tax returns.
07:37You arrest a kid who is barely 20 and who has hacked into the systems of a regional bank.
07:44There is a raid one night that goes sideways.
07:47The suspect was supposed to be alone.
07:50He was not alone.
07:52There is a second man in the back room with a shotgun.
07:55Your partner takes him down before anyone is hurt.
07:58You sit in the car afterward.
08:01You write the report.
08:03Your hands are steady.
08:05You are surprised by that.
08:07You thought you would be shaking.
08:09You drive home at four in the morning and you do not tell your wife what happened.
08:14You eat breakfast with your daughter at seven.
08:17You smile at her.
08:18You go back to work at nine.
08:21The work is unglamorous.
08:23The work is essential.
08:26The work teaches you something that no classroom could ever teach you.
08:29It teaches you how to read people.
08:32How to know when someone is lying.
08:34How to know when someone is about to run.
08:37How to know when a routine interview is about to become a fight.
08:42You will need these skills later.
08:44You will need them more than you can imagine.
08:47Level four.
08:48The protective detail member.
08:50After three years in the field, you receive an assignment that changes everything.
08:55You are detailed to protection.
08:58You report to Washington.
09:00You join a protective detail.
09:02Maybe it is a former president.
09:04Maybe it is a visiting head of state.
09:06Maybe it is the vice president or the family of the current administration.
09:10You are at the bottom of the detail hierarchy.
09:14You stand posts.
09:15You stand outside hotel room doors for eight hours at a time.
09:19You stand in lobbies and hallways and stairwells.
09:22You stand in the rain and the cold and the sun.
09:25You stand for so long that your feet ache and your knees lock.
09:30You stand until standing becomes a kind of meditation.
10:02You watch.
10:10You do not improvise.
10:18You do not improvise.
10:19You do not improvise.
10:30The buildings have crypts.
10:33and the funeral of your grandmother because you cannot leave a post.
10:37Your wife understands, or she does not understand.
10:41Your relationship survives, or it does not.
10:44The divorce rate in the Secret Service is high
10:46for reasons that become obvious very quickly.
10:49You see things that no civilian will ever see.
10:53You see how decisions are made at the highest levels of government.
10:56You stand in rooms where history happens.
10:59You hear conversations that will be classified for 50 years.
11:03You will never repeat a word of what you hear.
11:06That is the deal.
11:07You accepted it when you took the oath.
11:10Level 5. The Shift Agent
11:12You have been on the detail for two years.
11:15You are now a working shift agent on the Presidential Protective Division, the PPD.
11:20This is the assignment that almost every Secret Service agent dreams about.
11:24You are now close to the man.
11:26You travel everywhere the President travels.
11:29Your shift covers eight hours of the day.
11:31There are three shifts.
11:33The President is never alone.
11:35There is always a working shift, and there is always a backup.
11:39You stand in the Oval Office.
11:41You stand outside the residence.
11:43You stand on the South Lawn while Marine One lifts off into a sky that is being scanned by snipers
11:48on the roof.
11:48You ride in the follow car directly behind the limousine.
11:52The limousine has a name, the Beast.
11:55It weighs more than 10 tons.
11:57It is armored against rifle fire and explosives and chemical weapons.
12:01But the Beast is not your responsibility.
12:04You are.
12:05Your body is the final layer.
12:07If something goes wrong, you are expected to move toward the threat, not away from it.
12:12You are expected to put your body between the threat and the protectee.
12:15That expectation is not theoretical.
12:18It is a job requirement.
12:20You think about it constantly.
12:22You think about whether you would actually do it when the moment came.
12:25You hope you would.
12:26You believe you would.
12:28You will never know for certain until it happens.
12:30You work the events, the state dinners, the campaign rallies, the press conferences, the international
12:37summits, the funerals of foreign leaders.
12:40You stand in cathedrals and stadiums and airport hangers and convention centers.
12:44You scan every face.
12:46You watch every hand.
12:48You read body language for the thousand tiny tells that precede violence.
12:52The man who is sweating too much in cool weather.
12:55The woman whose eyes are locked on the protectee while everyone else is looking around.
12:59The person whose jacket hangs wrong on one side.
13:03The hand that disappears into a pocket and stays there too long.
13:06The bag on the ground that nobody is standing next to.
13:09The vehicle that has circled the block three times.
13:12You have been trained to see these things.
13:14You see them everywhere now.
13:16You see them in airports when you are off duty.
13:19You see them at your kid's soccer game.
13:21You cannot turn it off.
13:23The job is inside you now.
13:25Level 6.
13:26The advance agent.
13:27They pull you off the working shift and assign you to advance work.
13:31This is a different kind of job.
13:33Advance agents arrive days or weeks before the protectee.
13:37They are the architects of every visit.
13:39They walk every route.
13:41They inspect every building.
13:43They coordinate with local police, federal agencies, foreign security services, hospital administrators,
13:49fire departments, hotel managers, event organizers.
13:52The president is visiting a city in three weeks.
13:56You arrive 18 days early.
13:58You meet with the local police chief.
14:00You meet with the mayor's security liaison.
14:02You meet with the FBI field office.
14:05You walk the venue where the speech will be given.
14:08You measure sight lines from every building within 1,000 yards.
14:11You identify every window that overlooks the route.
14:14You determine which windows must be secured.
14:17You determine which rooftops must be staffed.
14:20You determine which streets must be closed.
14:22You plan the motorcade route.
14:24You plan two alternate routes in case the primary route is compromised.
14:28You drive each route at the same time of day the motorcade will move.
14:32You measure traffic patterns.
14:34You identify choke points.
14:36You designate the secure location, the place the protectee will be taken if something goes wrong.
14:41The trauma hospital is selected.
14:43The route to the hospital is timed.
14:46The trauma surgeons are briefed without being told who they may be treating.
14:50Blood is pre-positioned.
14:51Surgical teams are placed on standby.
14:54You sit in meetings for 10 hours a day.
14:56You write sight surveys that run to hundreds of pages.
14:59You coordinate counter-sniper placements, counter-surveillance teams, explosive detection canines,
15:06hazmat units, intelligence analysts, magnetometers, hand-wanned operators.
15:11Every piece of the visit is your responsibility.
15:14If something goes wrong in your city, on your visit, on your watch, the blame will land on you.
15:20You sleep four hours a night during the buildup.
15:22You do not sleep at all on the day of the visit.
15:25The visit lasts 90 minutes.
15:27Nothing goes wrong.
15:28The motorcade rolls out.
15:30The aircraft takes off.
15:31The president flies on to the next city.
15:34Another advance agent has been doing what you just did, in another city, under another sky.
15:39The work is invisible.
15:41That is the point.
15:42When advance work is done well, nobody ever knows it happened.
15:46Level 7.
15:47The shift leader.
15:49You have been an agent for 10 years.
15:51They promote you to ATSAC, assistant to the special agent in charge of a shift.
15:55You run a shift now.
15:56You have seven or eight working agents under you.
15:59You are responsible for them.
16:01You are responsible for the protectee during your eight hours.
16:04The buck stops with you for one-third of every 24-hour cycle.
16:09You make the tactical decisions.
16:11You decide where each agent stands.
16:14You decide when to move and when to hold.
16:16You decide whether a situation has changed enough to warrant evacuation.
16:21You read the room.
16:23You read the crowd.
16:24You read the intelligence reports that come in by the minute.
16:28You make calls that cannot be unmade.
16:31There is a moment at an outdoor event when a man in the crowd starts shouting.
16:35He is moving toward the rope line.
16:37He is reaching into his jacket.
16:39You have a fraction of a second to decide.
16:42Is he a threat?
16:43Is he a protester?
16:45Is he having a medical event?
16:47You make the call.
16:48You signal your agents.
16:50The protectee is moved.
16:52The man is tackled.
16:54He had a sign in his jacket.
16:56Just a sign.
16:57Nobody was hurt.
16:59You did the right thing.
17:01You will do it again tomorrow, with worse information and less time.
17:06You have a direct line to the shift leader of the working shift you are relieving.
17:09You have a direct line to the agent in charge of the detail.
17:13You have a direct line to the operations center back in Washington.
17:17Information flows up.
17:19Decisions flow down.
17:20You are the conduit.
17:23You are also responsible for the development of your agents.
17:26The young ones who are still learning to read crowds.
17:28The mid-career ones who are starting to burn out.
17:31The veterans who have seen too much and need to be reminded why the work matters.
17:37You mentor them.
17:38You correct them.
17:40You write evaluations that will determine whether they get the next assignment they want.
17:45Their careers are partly in your hands.
17:48You take that responsibility seriously
17:50because someone took it seriously for you once.
17:53The political pressure increases at this level.
17:57Campaign cycles.
17:59State visits.
18:00Inaugurations.
18:01Conventions.
18:03Funerals.
18:04You manage logistics that involve thousands of personnel from dozens of agencies.
18:09You sit in command posts at 4 in the morning before a major event.
18:13You review the schedule one more time.
18:16You look for anything you might have missed.
18:19You will not sleep more than 3 hours that night.
18:22You will be on your feet for the next 18.
18:25Level 8.
18:26The Special Agent in Charge.
18:28They give you a detail.
18:30You are now the SAIC.
18:32The Special Agent in Charge.
18:34Maybe you have the protective detail for a former president.
18:38Maybe you have a field office in a major city.
18:40Maybe you have one of the specialized divisions back at headquarters.
18:44You manage 40 to 200 agents depending on the assignment.
18:48You manage millions of dollars in operational budget.
18:52You manage relationships with Foreign Intelligence Services,
18:55with the FBI,
18:56with the CIA,
18:58with the Department of Defense.
19:00You answer to congressional oversight committees
19:02who want to know why you spent what you spent.
19:05You no longer stand posts.
19:07You no longer ride in motorcades.
19:10You sit in offices.
19:12You attend meetings.
19:13You sign off on operational plans that other people will execute.
19:17You brief the director.
19:19You brief Capitol Hill staff.
19:21You testify in closed sessions when asked.
19:24You do not love this part of the job.
19:27You came into this work to be on the ground.
19:29You came in for the adrenaline.
19:31For the proximity.
19:33For the sense that you were standing close to something that mattered.
19:36Now, you are an administrator.
19:39You make policy decisions.
19:41You make personnel decisions.
19:43You discipline agents who have crossed lines that should not be crossed.
19:47The Secret Service has had incidents over the years
19:50that have made the front pages of newspapers.
19:52Agents drinking too much on details overseas.
19:56Agents using prostitutes in Cartagena.
19:59Agents falling asleep at posts.
20:02Agents firing weapons by accident.
20:04A fence jumper getting deep into the White House before being stopped.
20:08Each incident damages the agency.
20:11Each incident makes the next agent's job harder.
20:15You spend a significant portion of your time
20:17managing the reputational damage of decisions you did not make.
20:21You do it because someone has to.
20:24You do it because the alternative is letting the institution decay.
20:28The institution must not decay.
20:31Too many people depend on it functioning.
20:34You sit alone in your office some nights
20:36and you wonder when you became this person.
20:38The kid from 20 years ago would not recognize you.
20:41You have learned things that kid could not have understood.
20:45You have lost things that kid never knew were at stake.
20:48Level 9.
20:49The Director's Circle
20:50You are now at headquarters.
20:53You are one of the Assistant Directors.
20:55There are only a handful of these positions in the entire agency.
20:59You report directly to the Director,
21:01who reports to the Secretary of Homeland Security.
21:05The Secretary reports to the President.
21:07You are three steps from the most powerful office in the world.
21:12You run a directorate.
21:14Maybe it is the Office of Protective Operations.
21:17Maybe it is the Office of Investigations.
21:20Maybe it is the Office of Strategic Intelligence.
21:23Maybe it is the Office of Training.
21:25Whatever it is, hundreds of people work under you.
21:29Billions of dollars flow through your budget over the course of a career.
21:33Your decisions affect every agent in the field.
21:36You set policy.
21:37You set training standards.
21:39You set the rules of engagement that determine when an agent can use deadly force
21:43and when they cannot.
21:45You sit in the Situation Room.
21:47You sit at the table with the Secretary of Defense
21:50and the National Security Advisor
21:52and the Director of the FBI
21:54when an incident is unfolding.
21:56A threat has been identified against the President.
21:59A package has arrived at the White House gate.
22:01A protester has jumped the fence.
22:04A foreign leader is making an unscheduled appearance.
22:07Every minute counts.
22:09Every decision is being made with incomplete information under crushing time pressure.
22:14You make the calls.
22:16The agency moves.
22:46You testify before Congress.
23:04You are closer than anyone outside the agency will ever know.
23:17They love you, but they do not really know you.
23:21They know the version of you that came home exhausted on Sundays for short windows of time
23:26before getting on another plane.
23:28You missed too much.
23:30You cannot get it back.
23:32You tell yourself the mission was worth it.
23:35Most days you believe that.
23:37Some days you do not.
23:39Level 10.
23:40The Legend.
23:41You retire after 30 years.
23:44The ceremony is small.
23:45A conference room at headquarters.
23:47Maybe 40 people are there.
23:49The Director gives a speech about your service.
23:51Your colleagues applaud.
23:53Your last partner from the working shift is there, with tears in his eyes.
23:57You receive a plaque and a flag that flew over the White House on the day of your retirement.
24:01You go home.
24:02You take off the suit.
24:04You hang the suit in the closet.
24:06And you know you will rarely wear a suit again.
24:09The first weeks are disorienting.
24:11You wake at 5 in the morning out of habit.
24:13There is nowhere to go.
24:15You walk through your house.
24:16You watch the news.
24:18You see the agency in the background of every shot of the President.
24:21You recognize the agents.
24:23You taught some of them.
24:24Some of them you served with.
24:26They look young to you now.
24:28They look the way you looked once.
24:29When you still believe the work could be done cleanly.
24:32The phone calls start.
24:34Private security firms want you.
24:37Defense contractors want you.
24:38Foreign governments want you, though you will not work for them.
24:41You took an oath once that does not expire.
24:44You take a consulting job.
24:46The work is easy after what you have done.
24:48You advise corporations on executive protection.
24:51You sit in boardrooms and explain things that seem obvious to you,
24:55but that wealthy people find revelatory.
24:57The money is good.
24:58The work is not the work.
25:00The work was the work.
25:02There is no replacement for it.
25:04You see things you cannot unsee.
25:07You wake at 3 in the morning sometimes.
25:09You walk through the house.
25:11You check the doors.
25:12You check the windows.
25:14You are not afraid.
25:15You are doing what your body knows how to do.
25:18Your wife is asleep upstairs.
25:20The dog watches you from his bed in the corner of the kitchen.
25:23The house is quiet.
25:25The world is quiet.
25:27Somewhere out there, an agent is standing in a hallway right now, watching the elevators.
25:33Somewhere out there, an advance team is walking a route through a city the president will visit next week.
25:38Somewhere out there, a young person is filling out an application online.
25:42They are dreaming of standing close to power, imagining the suit and the badge and the moment of consequence.
25:49They will pass through the same doors you passed through.
25:52They will take the same oath.
25:53They will pay the same price.
25:56They will not know what they are giving up until they have already given it.
26:00You sit at the kitchen table in the dark, and you sip your coffee, and you remember.
26:05You remember the man you protected, and the man before him.
26:08You remember the threats that came.
26:10You remember the threats that almost came.
26:13You remember the day in October when something almost happened, and you moved before you thought.
26:19Afterward, your hands shook for an hour.
26:21You remember being 26 years old, and standing in a hallway in your first hotel.
26:26You were very well, nervous and proud, and certain you would be different.
26:30You remember being 40 when your father died, and you could not get home in time.
26:34You remember the oath.
26:36You remember the badge.
26:37You remember the weight of it all.
26:39The cycle does not stop.
26:41The cycle goes on without you now.
26:44Somewhere, a young agent is being told to stand a post.
26:47They are nervous.
26:49They are proud.
26:50They are convinced they will be different.
26:52They will not be different.
26:54Nobody is different.
26:56The work does what the work does.
26:58It hollows you out.
27:00It fills you back up with duty, and silence, and discipline, and loss.
27:04You finish your coffee.
27:06You rinse the cup.
27:07The cycle continues.
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