Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy

Secret Service Performance Findings

Secret Service Performance Findings The Commission acknowledges the Secret Service faces inherent limitations in protecting the President due to the demands of the office and the President’s willingness to adhere to safety plans, but finds that improvements to presidential protection are required by the investigation’s facts. Its performance findings include: (a) the rapidly increasing complexities of the presidency have outpaced the Secret Service’s ability to secure adequate personnel and facility resources, a situation that requires prompt remediation; (b) pre-assassination Secret Service criteria and procedures for identifying and protecting against presidential threats were inadequate: the Protective Research Section lacked sufficient trained personnel and technical/mechanical support to fulfill its preventive duties, and the Service’s criteria only focused on direct threats to the President, failing to identify other potential danger sources, and relied heavily on other federal or state agencies for relevant information rather than developing its own specific threat criteria; (c) there was insufficient liaison and information coordination between the Secret Service and other federal agencies involved in presidential protection: the FBI had extensive information on Oswald but had no official responsibility under existing Secret Service criteria to share that information with the Service prior to the Dallas trip, and the FBI took an unduly restrictive view of its preventive intelligence role, with more coordinated handling of the Oswald case likely bringing his activities to the Secret Service’s attention; (d) some advance Dallas security preparations were thorough (e.g., Love Field and Trade Mart measures), but others were deficient: pre-trip procedures did not define clear responsibilities for local police and other protection personnel, and procedures for detecting assassins in buildings along the motorcade route were inadequate, as the Service did not check buildings along the route and relied on divided street police and motorcade agent responsibilities for window monitoring, arrangements the Commission found clearly insufficient; (e) the Presidential car’s configuration and Secret Service agent seating arrangements did not allow agents the opportunity to immediately assist the President at the first sign of danger; (f) within these limitations, the agents most directly responsible for the President’s safety reacted promptly when shots were fired from the Texas School Book Depository.

Presidential Protection Recommendations

Presidential Protection Recommendations The Commission offers the following recommendations for improving presidential protection, prompted by the assassination and aligned with a Secret Service planning document dated August 27, 1964: 1. A committee of Cabinet members (including the Secretary of the Treasury and Attorney General) or the National Security Council should be assigned to review and oversee Secret Service protective activities and the work of other federal agencies supporting presidential safety, to ensure maximum federal resources are engaged in protection efforts and to guide definition of domestic and foreign threats to presidential security. 2. Any determination to transfer all or part of the Secret Service’s presidential protective responsibilities to another department or agency should be made by the Executive branch and Congress, potentially based on recommendations from the proposed oversight committee.

KAPITEL I.

Chapter I presents a series of recommendations from the Commission focused on strengthening the protection of the President through reforms to the Secret Service and related governmental processes. The recommendations address organizational supervision, threat detection capabilities, motorcade security, interagency and local cooperation, resource allocation, the role of the President’s physician, federal jurisdiction over presidential assassination, the handling of disloyal defectors, and the establishment of ethical standards for information collection and presentation.

Appointment of Special Assistant for Secret Service Supervision

The Commission recommends that the Secretary of the Treasury appoint a special assistant dedicated to supervising the Secret Service on a daily basis within the Department of the Treasury. This special assistant should possess significant stature and experience in law enforcement, intelligence, and related fields, so as to provide effective ongoing supervision and to keep the Secretary fully informed of the Secret Service’s performance. An initial responsibility of this special assistant should be overseeing the Secret Service’s current effort to revise and modernize its basic operating procedures.