Why the U.S. President Is Almost Impossible to Kill
fern
0:02 A shooter is taking aim at the president of the United States.
0:10 For the Secret Service, it's their worst case scenario,
0:13 the nightmare they've trained for for years.
0:16 In the next few seconds, each branch of the Secret Service springs into action.
0:21 the protective detail, the counter assault team, the airspace security branch,
0:26 the counter snipers, and the emergency response team.
0:30 What happens next will decide the course of history.
0:33 If the Secret Service succeeds, today will be forgotten soon enough.
0:38 Keeping the president alive is just business as usual,
0:41 the job the agency has successfully done every day since the death of JFK.
0:48 But if they fail, it will rock the nation
0:50 to its very core and threaten the stability of America's democracy.
0:55 This is the moment that determines everything.
0:58 When instinct, training, and sacrifice have to come together, or else.
1:04 Who are the people protecting the president?
1:06 How do they prepare for the unthinkable?
1:08 How does the Secret Service actually work?
1:17 Confirm.
1:17 This video is largely based on the books Zero Fail,
1:20 The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service by Carol
1:23 Lenick and In the President's Secret Service by Ronald Kesler.
1:26 Links in the description.
1:31 Fort Worth, Texas, 1963.
1:34 The Secret Service is exhausted.
1:37 JFK is their toughest assignment yet.
1:40 He's constantly traveling.
1:41 Miami one day, DC the next.
1:44 His predecessors were older and spent most of their days working inside
1:48 the White House where the president is considered to be the safest.
1:52 But JFK loves to travel the world and attend to his many adoring fans.
1:58 Ishb.
2:02 And he has a taste for danger, sneaking past his agents to swim in open water,
2:07 where he's swarmed by dozens of other swimmers, throwing himself into crowds,
2:13 letting all kinds of unvetted guests into his room night after night.
2:20 Keeping up with JFK is more than a full-time job.
2:23 It's a blur of double shifts and all-nighters.
2:27 So tonight, a few agents are blowing off some steam.
2:30 They heard about a famously shady nightclub called The Sellar,
2:34 where Texan beatnicks rub shoulders with offduty cops,
2:37 often resulting in brawls.
2:39 It's illegal to serve alcohol past midnight.
2:42 But The Seller is one place you're sure to get a stiff drink at any hour.
2:46 And the agents stay way past midnight, one as late as 5:00 a.m.
2:52 Four of them are assigned to protect Kennedy the next morning,
2:56 starting at 8:00 sharp.
2:59 Compared to today's Secret Service,
3:01 the agency protecting President Kennedy in the 60s is bare bones,
3:05 basically the size of a municipal police force.
3:08 There are just 350 agents, most of them spread throughout the US.
3:13 Only 36 are assigned to the White House
3:16 with a rotating team of six guarding the president.
3:19 Keeping the agency lean is partly due
3:22 to an American aversion to treating its presidents like kings.
3:25 Going back to the founding fathers,
3:28 people felt that the Secret Service shouldn't be anything like
3:31 a royal guard until that cool November morning in Dallas.
3:40 JFK likes to be seen.
3:43 For this trip through Dallas, he's insisted on riding around in a convertible.
3:47 And though the Secret Service doesn't like it,
3:49 he also insists that his usual bodyguards ride in separate cars.
3:54 He wants to appear accessible to the people.
3:57 Thousands are waiting to greet him in downtown Dallas.
4:00 At 1:25, the motorcade moves into the downtown area.
4:04 JFK and Jackie smile and wave as their limousine
4:07 inches through Dallas at just 11 mph.
4:10 It's following a route that Dallas newspapers published in advance.
4:14 None of the buildings on the route have been inspected.
4:19 This is Clint Hill, the agent assigned to protect Jackie Kennedy.
4:24 Normally, he stuck to her like a shadow,
4:26 but today he's following JFK's orders to give the couple a little space.
4:32 Of the agents who went to the seller last night,
4:35 Hill was the first to leave at 2:45 a.m.
4:39 Today, he's also the first agent on duty to recognize this sound for what it is.
4:46 An attempt on the president's life.
4:49 This is Bill Greer, the agent driving Kennedy's limo.
4:52 He's not trained in evasive driving.
4:55 He slows down, waiting for instructions on what to do next.
5:00 Another shot is fired.
5:02 Clint rushes out of the car.
5:04 He runs to the limousine,
5:05 hoping to be at the president's side before worse can happen.
5:09 But he's too late.
5:12 Clint throws himself on the trunk of the car, only to find a gruesome aftermath.
5:18 Within 6 seconds of the first shot, President Kennedy is dead.
5:23 If I had reacted just a little bit quicker, I could have, I guess.
5:33 Now live with that to my grave.
5:37 What happens next is history and it will haunt the agency for years to come.
5:42 President Kennedy's death revealed that something needed to change.
5:46 But he wasn't the first president to be killed in office.
5:50 1865, 1881, 1901.
5:55 But now the United States is a global superpower.
5:58 The president is the most powerful person on earth.
6:01 The threats to his life are multiplying and evolving.
6:04 And Kennedy's death traumatized the nation profoundly.
6:08 Nothing like this should ever happen again.
6:11 In the 60s and 70s, the Secret
6:13 Service massively expands its personnel and budget.
6:17 No longer will it be a small cadre of glorified bodyguards.
6:20 Gone are the days when the service will
6:22 hire any athletic ex-Marine or patriotic beat cop.
6:26 Recruitment, training, and operational protocols become way more rigorous.
6:31 And this is what six decades of evolution looks like.
6:37 Protecting a president isn't just about reflexes or muscle.
6:40 It's about training agents to think clearly under pressure,
6:42 spot patterns, and solve complex problems fast.
6:46 The good news is you don't need to join
6:47 the Secret Service to sharpen those same skills.
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7:44 Protecting the president is a roundthe-clock job.
7:48 It's hours and hours of mindn numbing
7:50 boredom with occasional moments of sheer terror.
7:54 When these moments come along, every split second counts,
7:58 and the agents response better be automatic.
8:01 There's no time to weigh options.
8:03 Their mission is zero fail.
8:06 The Secret Service calls any would-be assassin a jackal.
8:10 According to journalist Ronald Kesler,
8:12 jackals tend to strike outside of the White House.
8:16 A president is most vulnerable when arriving at or leaving an event.
8:20 So, the agents are currently on high alert.
8:23 At least 10 days before any external event, agents head to the destination.
8:28 Some high-profile events, like the president's inauguration,
8:31 take up to a year and a half.
8:33 That's because the Secret Service isn't just about
8:36 making sure a bullet doesn't hit the president.
8:38 It's about making sure it never enters the event to begin with.
8:45 Agents are sent in advance to assess the number of metal detectors needed,
8:49 scrutinize all access points, and prepare explosive detection.
8:53 Mainly, they're thinking of the ways a jackal could sabotage the event.
8:57 Could he cut the lights to create chaos?
8:59 Could he access the air conditioning units to introduce poison gas?
9:03 Could he sneak in through a forgotten basement staircase?
9:07 The bulk of Secret Service work is meticulous,
9:10 detailoriented preparation, making sure they're ready for days like this.
9:15 These special agents are the protective detail,
9:18 probably what you think of first when you hear the name Secret Service.
9:21 They're the agents expected to take a bullet
9:23 for the person they're protecting and then evacuate them to safety.
9:27 But they're just the tip of the iceberg.
9:30 There's the counter assault team.
9:31 They're the heavily armed agents with the most dangerous role.
9:34 They're meant to charge at the source of the attack and neutralize it before it
9:38 can reach the person they're protecting
9:40 with an automatic rifle or with a flashbang grenade.
9:45 Then the protective detail can evacuate the protectee
9:48 to the presidential limousine known as the beast.
9:52 The beast is a$ 1.5 million car weighing about 20,000 lb.
9:57 It takes the president wherever he needs to go.
9:59 It's Americanmade, of course, and quite a bit safer than Kennedy's convertible.
10:04 According to NBC News, it's bulletproof, blast resistant,
10:07 sealed off from chemical attacks and stocked with a supply of extra blood,
10:12 exactly the president's type.
10:14 Not all of its defense systems are known to the public,
10:17 but rumor has it it shoots tear gas.
10:20 Flanking the beast is the rest of the presidential motorcade.
10:23 Counter assault agents trained in motorcade ambush tactics
10:26 travel in a car close to the beast.
10:29 Another Secret Service carries intelligence agents
10:32 who are tracking people considered threats.
10:34 If necessary, they can jam these people's communications.
10:40 After this, you should definitely check out this fantastic
10:43 episode by our friend Neo for a full explanation.
10:48 In close communication with the counter assault
10:50 team is the eagle-eyed counter sniper team,
10:53 the best marksman in the Secret Service.
10:56 According to Ronald Kesler, every month counter snipers have to demonstrate they
11:00 can still make shots a thousand yards away.
11:03 If they fail, they're not supposed to work.
11:07 Here are plane closed agents who mingle
11:09 with crowds on high alert for threats and vulnerabilities.
11:13 To blend in, they don't wear the trademark earpiece.
11:16 They're looking for anyone suspicious, anyone sweaty,
11:20 anyone shifty, anyone who stands out in any way.
11:24 But it's a delicate operation, best handled discreetly.
11:28 Look it.
11:29 Look who it is.
11:30 Lots of people get starruck by a president and they tend to act a little weird.
11:35 It's not unheard of for people to weep,
11:37 faint, or even throw their babies in the air.
11:40 And the Secret Service can't go around tackling them all.
11:44 Agents in the crowd are also trained to think like assassins in any given space.
11:49 How could they breach security if they wanted to?
11:51 If they detect any vulnerability, they call the joint ops center at secret
11:55 service headquarters who alert the protective detail by earpiece.
11:59 Some Secret Service technicians are also photographing the crowds
12:02 to evaluate them later with facial recognition technology.
12:06 They're looking out for whether particular individuals keep showing up.
12:10 Outside the venue, we have the uniformed division's emergency response team,
12:14 the first line of defense,
12:16 often armed with P90 submachine guns and highly specialized canines.
12:20 Each dog sniffs up to a 100 cars a day
12:23 for explosives and is trained to attack any intruders.
12:27 Later, they're rewarded for their service with ball play.
12:31 The Secret Service is also supported
12:32 by local law enforcement and emergency medical technicians.
12:36 When they're not actively protecting anyone,
12:38 Secret Service agents are constantly training and reassessing past events.
12:42 Agents receive way more training than they did in the 60s when they
12:45 were just handed a manual and expected to learn the rest on the job.
12:49 And a split second from now, it'll be time to show their stuff.
12:55 Just like in 1981, back then, a mentally ill man named John Hinckley Jr.
13:06 became obsessed with and stalked the actress Jodie Foster,
13:10 who starred in Taxi Driver.
13:12 In the movie, an aimless drifter plots to kill a presidential candidate.
13:17 Hinckley, an aimless drifter himself,
13:19 believed that Foster would notice him if he did something really great,
13:24 like kill the president.
13:26 Just before his attack on Reagan,
13:28 he wrote to Foster, "You'll be proud of me, Jodie.
13:31 Millions of Americans will love me.
13:34 Us." Foster didn't alert the FBI to Hinckley's threats until after the fact.
13:41 The first time I knew that the FBI was
13:42 involved was when uh somebody called me up and said,
13:44 "Please come over and talk to the FBI." But he was already on their radar.
13:49 About 6 months before he attacked Reagan,
13:51 Hinckley had been arrested for attempting to board a plane with three pistols.
13:56 The plane was in the same city where
13:58 then President Jimmy Carter just so happened to be.
14:02 Now Hinckley is outside a hotel in DC, crouched in combat position.
14:08 If indeed he had wanted to kill Carter, he wasn't able to get him.
14:13 But Reagan will do.
14:15 Reagan is just six feet from his armored car when Hinckley fires his rounds.
14:24 Agent Tim McCarthy doesn't even stop to think.
14:27 Instinct propels him to cover and evacuate.
14:31 He hurls himself in front of the president.
14:33 Two others nearby have already been shot.
14:36 Hinckley's third bullet hits McCarthy squarely in the torso.
14:41 One bullet ricochets off the bulletproof limousine
14:44 and strikes Reagan in the left armpit.
14:47 Unluckily for him, Hinckley has used Devastator bullets
14:51 designed to explode on impact and cause maximum damage.
14:56 The president starts losing blood quickly.
14:59 All this happens in 2 seconds, and the seconds after that counted even more.
15:05 If Reagan had arrived at the hospital just a few minutes later,
15:08 he might not have made it.
15:11 Meanwhile, the agents pounced on Hinckley.
15:14 They could have left that to local police
15:16 and traveled behind Reagan to continue offering him protection.
15:20 Their thinking was that they didn't know whether Hinckley was acting alone.
15:24 But after this event, according to Kesler, a new policy was established.
15:29 Secret Service agents always stick to the president.
15:33 Every misstep becomes a teachable moment
15:35 that advances security protocols for later.
15:38 Hinckley's failed assassination is considered one
15:40 of the Secret Services great successes, but it was a close call.
15:44 A man with a gun was able to get just 4
15:46 and 1/2 m from the president and very nearly kill him.
15:50 Clearly, security protocols needed to be beefed up.
15:56 It's now standard procedure to have magnetometers
15:58 or metal detectors that screen crowds at events.
16:02 Beyond that, the Secret Service found they needed way better intelligence.
16:06 6 months before the assassination attempt,
16:08 Hinckley was arrested trying to board a plane with three handguns,
16:12 information known to the FBI.
16:14 But under DOJ guidelines,
16:16 the arrest was deemed too minor and never relayed to the Secret Service.
16:20 In hindsight, that omission deprived presidential
16:23 protectors of a major red flag,
16:25 a prior weapons arrest timed to coincide with a presidential visit.
16:31 The Secret Service now works more closely with the FBI.
16:34 They've also developed an elaborate system for classifying
16:37 just how threatening an agrieved person is.
16:40 Say you make the mistake of drunkenly boasting
16:43 to a crowded bar that you're going to kill the president.
16:46 If the Secret Service catches wind of it, according to Kesler,
16:49 you might be considered a class one threat and an agent
16:52 could show up at your house for a serious chat.
16:55 But unless you have prior military training,
16:58 a documented history of mental illness,
17:00 or a concrete reason for the service to believe
17:02 you might try to carry out your plans,
17:05 you won't be bumped up to class 2 or three.
17:08 Class 3 threats are considered the most dangerous,
17:11 those with a serious intent to kill and the ability to do so.
17:16 They're monitored very closely.
17:18 The Secret Service receives an average of 10 threats per day.
17:21 Most are against the president.
17:23 Not all can be taken seriously.
17:26 Many threats are mailed directly to the White House.
17:29 Would be assassins seem to think
17:30 that the president will read their letter personally,
17:32 and they want to be heard.
17:34 A letter can give the Secret Services forensic division a lot to work with.
17:39 DNA, fingerprints, and ink samples they can compare
17:43 with the ones in their international ink library.
17:46 Since the early 80s, profilers have interviewed and studied
17:49 assassins like Hinckley and Sirhan Sirhan,
17:52 who killed Robert Kennedy.
17:54 This helps the Secret Service understand the motivations of these individuals
17:57 who are often paranoid loners seeking attention and notoriety.
18:02 Often, but not always.
18:05 The first bullet narrowly misses the president.
18:08 A counter sniper tries to take the assassin out,
18:11 but he's already vanished into the chaos.
18:14 The protective detail pounces on the president, forming a human wall.
18:19 Another shot is fired, this time from the crowd.
18:22 Is that gun made of white plastic?
18:26 A bullet grazes the shoulder of an agent in the detail.
18:29 The counter assault team heads straight for the line of fire.
18:32 Meanwhile, the remaining detail escorts the president off the podium,
18:36 hoping they reach the beast in time and that the real threat isn't overhead.
18:41 the threat that the service has braced itself
18:43 for since the morning of September 11, 2001.
18:51 President George W.
18:52 Bush is in Florida for the morning.
18:55 He's joined a second grade class for their reading lesson.
18:57 He'll be back in the White House by lunchtime.
19:00 The event has been publicized for a week.
19:03 It's a feel-good photo op to celebrate Bush's commitment to education.
19:07 The Secret Service is well aware that the world
19:10 can see exactly where the president is.
19:13 When the first plane hits the World Trade Center,
19:16 an agent in Bush's security detail receives intelligence.
19:19 He asks if the attack is isolated to New
19:22 York and if the president's security is compromised.
19:26 No answer.
19:27 Nobody knows.
19:29 Minutes pass.
19:30 The Secret Service grows more agitated.
19:33 Both Twin Towers now are on fire.
19:35 The second plane hits and Bush is informed that America is under attack.
19:40 On page 153, the age-old tension between the White House
19:47 and the Secret Service has reached a fever pitch.
19:50 One team's job is to project a competent image of the president,
19:54 which requires the president to engage with citizens.
19:58 The other team's job is to keep the president safe.
20:01 The less he's seen in public, the easier that is to do.
20:04 Nobody knows what to do.
20:06 The Secret Service wants Bush out now,
20:09 but the White House press secretary doesn't want
20:12 to scare the children or the public watching.
20:15 So Bush stays put for seven excruciating minutes.
20:20 Good job.
20:20 Go on.
20:22 E, go on.
20:26 The chaotic aftermath of that morning revealed
20:28 more holes in the Secret Service coverage.
20:31 For one thing, not all important agents were briefed on how
20:34 to adequately protect their assignments in case of a national emergency.
20:38 There wasn't a system for getting them to military controlled shelters,
20:41 nor were the agents granted the power to do so.
20:45 Instead, they were treated like mere bodyguards, elite ones.
20:49 But still, they had to obey other staffers with no expertise in security,
20:54 like the White House press secretary.
20:57 The Secret Service had become really good
20:59 at preventing attacks from crazed lone gunmen.
21:02 But in the face of a sophisticated terrorist attack aimed at the president,
21:06 they needed a whole new playbook and more authority.
21:10 After 9/11, the Secret Service rewrote its emergency action plans.
21:14 It was made sure that no political staffer could overrule
21:17 a Secret Service agent attempting to evacuate a president to safety.
21:21 and the government decided that maybe, just maybe,
21:25 the president's bodyguards should work
21:27 closely with the people tracking terrorists.
21:29 A year and a half after 9/11,
21:32 the Secret Service was drafted into the new Department of Homeland Security.
21:36 The Protection Mission was now understood as a form of counterterrorism.
21:41 Shortly after the attack,
21:42 the Secret Service established a new unit, the Airspace Security Branch,
21:47 responsible for monitoring and controlling
21:49 the airspace of the president's current location.
21:55 Will today be the day they have to down a rogue drone?
21:59 But the sky remains calm.
22:01 The president makes it into the beast,
22:04 and that's when he starts exhibiting strange symptoms.
22:08 tiny pupils, profuse sweating, wheezing, and convulsions.
22:15 The nerve agent Navach is a swift and brutal killer.
22:19 It can take a victim down in less than 2 minutes.
22:23 To kill or incapacitate a victim,
22:25 a nerve agent needs to penetrate the skin or be ingested or inhaled,
22:30 meaning that only someone in very close
22:32 contact with the president could have administered it.
22:36 Is there a third assassin?
22:37 among them.
22:39 The Secret Service will deal with the holes in their security later.
22:43 Now, the focus is on saving the president.
22:46 That's where the hazardous agent mitigation
22:48 and medical emergency response team comes into play.
22:51 Also known as Hammer.
22:56 Today, Hammer agents will save the president's life.
23:05 The first wouldbe assassin was sniffed out and tackled
23:08 by the K-9 protective unit as he attempted to escape the venue.
23:12 He's now in jail awaiting trial.
23:14 The second assassin with the 3D printed gun,
23:17 was shot by the counter assault team.
23:19 He died on the spot.
23:21 And the third, the guy in the Secret Service itself,
23:24 a career agent who rose through
23:26 the ranks to the president's personal security detail,
23:29 turns out he's a sleeper agent sent by a foreign nation.
23:33 It isn't yet clear which and they don't know how he infiltrated the service.
23:38 Recently, the agency has been strained, struggling to fill key positions.
23:43 Could there have been a lapse in their vetting process?
23:46 They'll be sure to interrogate him intensively to find out.
23:52 Our story may be an unlikely scenario, but it's just one of many possibilities
23:57 that the Secret Service prepares for every day.
24:00 Threats to the president have only expanded in recent years.
24:03 So the service is now trained to deal with previously unheard of attacks.
24:09 The war on terror gave the Secret Service more power than ever.
24:13 More budget, more reach, more respect,
24:16 but also more responsibilities that stretched them beyond their capacities.
24:20 Internally, the machinery started to rust.
24:24 The Bush and Obama years saw waves of scandals that undermined
24:27 the AY's reputation and their motto worthy of trust and confidence.
24:32 In one case, a senior agent reportedly took
24:35 a female informant up to his hotel room.
24:38 She died that night from a drug overdose.
24:40 He was later promoted.
24:42 Other agents were caught stealing federal funds,
24:45 having sex with minors, drunk driving on White House grounds,
24:49 becoming embroiled in prostitution scandals,
24:52 engaging in racist hazing of black agents, brawling in bars.
24:56 Plus, there were several near misses during Barack Obama's presidency.
25:00 A bomb sniffing dog to the bag.
25:02 Obama received four times as many threats as previous presidents,
25:06 largely motivated by racism.
25:08 Some commentators have said it's a miracle he's still alive.
25:13 In the service, morale is often low and turnover is usually high.
25:17 It's not easy to find qualified replacement agents.
25:20 Not just anyone is willing to take a bullet for 48k a year.
25:24 Plus, the job requires agents to travel constantly,
25:28 move frequently, and work huge amounts of unpaid overtime.
25:32 It's common for agents to quit and find better pay and job
25:36 conditions at other federal agencies or start their own security firms.
25:40 Still, since JFK, the Secret Service has done its job.
25:44 No dead presidents since 1963.
25:48 But there was one particularly close call.
25:51 Want to really see something that said,
25:53 "Take a look at what happened." In Butler, Pennsylvania in 2024,
25:58 Donald Trump was nearly assassinated as he
26:00 was campaigning for his second presidency.
26:03 Check out our video that breaks down that event.
26:06 People still wonder, how could an assassin get to an unguarded
26:09 roof with a clear line of sight to Trump?
26:12 It's widely considered a major failure of the Secret Service.
26:16 Sir, this could have been our Texas schoolbook depository.
26:18 I have lost sleep over that for the last 17 days.
26:22 just like somebody to hold.
26:26 Six agents were suspended and the director stepped down.
26:30 Just 2 months later,
26:31 another attempted assassination of Trump rattled the service.
26:34 And it's possible there have been many more
26:36 incidents of nearly successful assassinations throughout US history.
26:41 We just didn't hear about them.
26:44 Maybe that's the real secret of the service.
26:46 all the times history almost changed then didn't.
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