SECRET AGENTS GUARDING OBAMA

I found the information in the Los Angeles Time Parade magazine. Pictures of the agents didi not come through. For more information please log onto www.parade.com to view the pictures of Obama's Secret Service Agents.

Njoy!!!!!!!

Meet the agents inside the Secret Service
They'd Take a Bullet For The President
By Christopher Reich
Publication Date: 01/04/2009
Special Agent in Charge Eric Zahren (center), joined by Special Agents Laura Topolski (left) and Malcolm D. Wiley Sr. (right) Special Agent Malcolm D. Wiley Sr., a former college-football player, has a winning smile and a handshake that could bend steel. He's been in the U.S. Secret Service for 17 years, part of that time directly guarding the President. How does it feel to go to work knowing that he may have to take a bullet? "It comes with the job," he says crisply. "It's an honor to protect the President. End of discussion." Secret Service agents have a job that they must literally be willing to die for. "Cops are trained to retreat when gunfire starts, but the Secret Service has to stand tall and go into the gunfire," says James Previtera, a Secret Service agent from 1998 to 2005 who now runs Florida's Hillsborough County jail system. Adds Special Agent in Charge Eric Zahren, an 18-year veteran, " From day one, you're part of a larger mission and operate as part of a team. It's not about you as an individual." With the inauguration of Barack Obama, the nation's first African-American President, just over two weeks away, more scrutiny than ever is on the members of the Secret Service--the anonymous, dark-suited men and women who guard his every move. Obama's Secret Service protection began earlier than that for any previous Presidential candidate--in May 2007, 18 months before Election Day--after top government officials expressed fears for his safety. Since his election, there's been speculation that the Secret Service has found a record number of individuals and groups to be plotting to harm him. Says Wiley, "We never comment on how many threats are made against the President."
From Lincoln to Obama: See the Secret Service Timeline »Observers point to extra measures that have been used to protect President-elect Obama, such as the bulletproof glass panels surrounding him during his acceptance speech at Chicago's Grant Park on Election Night. "Those are not new, nor do they reflect any specific threat to the President-elect's safety," says Wiley. "They are one more tool in the arsenal that we deploy." Agents joke that to want to join the Secret Service, you have to be "type-A squared." Says Thomas D. Sloan, who served on President Clinton's detail and now heads international security at the New York Stock Exchange, "Failure is not an option." So how do they prepare? I visited the Secret Service's James J. Rowley Training Center in Beltsville, Md., on a warm, sunny morning. Located 30 minutes outside Washington, D.C., the center is tucked away on 500 acres of rolling countryside. Trainees wear khakis and polo shirts and carry mock pistols on their belts. They undergo four months of intense instruction that focuses on responding to real-life scenarios. In simulated encounters, "you're attacked with guns and knives, then observed and graded on how you react," says Tim McCarthy, who was in the Secret Service for 22 years. He infamously took a bullet when John Hinckley Jr. shot at President Ronald Reagan in 1981. "What I did at that moment was based on training more than anything else." (McCarthy recovered completely from his injury and is now chief of police in Orland Park, Ill.) Firearms qualification was under way when I arrived. Putting on a pair of protective goggles and noise-suppressing earplugs, I watched as a candidate went through the demanding course. He was a young, athletic man who looked as if he could bench-press me with one arm. He started with a submachine gun, firing at a moving mix of paper targets. He shot slowly, not rapidly like you see in the movies. Later, I learned it's because Secret Service agents are accountable for every bullet they fire. They know that in a real-life crisis, a stray bullet will most likely strike an innocent bystander. His shots were right on, and he switched to a shotgun. Sweating now, he had difficulty loading it. Rattled, he hit the wrong target: a policeman with a badge around his neck. Finally, he picked up the last weapon that he was being tested on--a handgun--and hit just three of 10 targets. Test over. He had failed. "The bad guys only have to do their job one time in 100 to be successful. We have to do it 100 times out of 100," says Mark Sullivan, the agency's director for the past three years. Secret Service agents learn to drive the Presidential limousine, affectionately nicknamed "the Beast." The vehicle is built from Cadillac components at a secret facility. After being delivered to the Secret Service, it's promptly disassembled to search for GPS, eavesdropping, or surveillance devices and then reassembled. From this point on, it's never without a pair of eyes watching over it. Never. The limo is guarded as closely as a politician. The limo is like "a bank vault on wheels," according to agents. The doors appear to be 18 inches or so thick; the windows, 5 inches. I could see that the seats were covered in velour with the Presidential seal embroidered on them. Not leather--because it wouldn't do for the Chief Executive to be sliding around during a high-speed chase. Agents must master defensive moves such as the "J-turn," where a driver goes in reverse at full speed, makes a 180-degree turn, and heads off in the opposite direction, all without slowing down or leaving the lane. At Rowley, an instructor offered to give me a taste of what it takes to drive the President. When I stepped out of the vehicle 10 minutes later, my head was spinning. After graduating, agents are posted to one of the Secret Service's domestic or international offices. After five to seven years on the job, an agent can apply for the Presidential Protective Detail (PPD), which consists of a few hundred members. Drawn from the PPD is a rotating group of five to seven agents who surround the President at all times. They're known as "the shift," or what Director Sullivan calls "the sharp end of the spear." The Secret Service maintains a 24-hour mobile security "bubble" around the President--a protective sphere extending 360 degrees in every direction: on the ground, with agents and bomb-sniffing dogs; and above, with snipers on rooftops and helicopters in the air. Before every one of the President's public appearances--in and out of the country--agents must do painstaking advance work, negotiating with everybody from hotel maintenance engineers to high-level political staffers and creating a customized security plan for each venue. "If we've done a thorough job, then we've envisioned any theoretical incident and taken the steps to prevent it," says Special Agent Laura Topolski, who has been with the Secret Service for close to 10 years.The other major part of protecting the President lies in responding to threats. Many of them continue to be in the form of handwritten notes or voice messages left with the White House operator, and every one is seriously assessed. Says Richard Elias, deputy assistant director of the Secret Service and a 28-year veteran, "If a threat is made against the President, we want to know it. Whether it's a drunk in a bar or an identified terrorist, we're going to investigate it." During my days inside the Secret Service, I'm struck by two things. Number one is how sharp the agents are. They're personable and intelligent, but all of them have a glint of steel lurking just below the surface. The other quality isn't as easy to describe. It's a sense of purpose and mission I feel that permeates everything the Secret Service does and sends a buzz through the air. "All agents are aware of the responsibility of protecting the President of the United States," says Sloan. "And we're aware of the consequences should we fail, both for the agency and for the nation."