MikhailT/lj-speech huggingface dataset:
Had there been reason to believe that the assassination was the result of a conspiracy, Federal jurisdiction could have been asserted;
it has long been a Federal crime to conspire to injure any Federal officer, on account of, or while he is engaged in, the lawful discharge of the duties of his office.
Murder of the President has never been covered by Federal law, however, so that once it became reasonably clear that the killing was the act of a single person,
the State of Texas had exclusive jurisdiction.
It is anomalous that Congress has legislated in other ways touching upon the safety of the Chief Executive or other Federal officers,
without making an attack on the President a crime. Threatening harm to the President is a Federal offense,
as is advocacy of the overthrow of the Government by the assassination of any of its officers.
The murder of Federal judges, U.S. attorneys and marshals, and a number of other specifically designated
Federal law enforcement officers is a Federal crime.
Equally anomalous are statutory provisions which specifically authorize the Secret Service to protect the President,
without authorizing it to arrest anyone who harms him. The same provisions authorize the Service to arrest without warrant
persons committing certain offenses, including counterfeiting and certain frauds involving Federal checks or securities.
The Commission agrees with the Secret Service that it should be authorized to make arrests without warrant
for all offenses within its jurisdiction, as are FBI agents and Federal marshals.
There have been a number of efforts to make assassination a Federal crime, particularly after the assassination of President McKinley
and the attempt on the life of President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt.
In 1902 bills passed both Houses of Congress but failed of enactment when the Senate refused to accept the conference report.
A number of bills were introduced immediately following the assassination of President Kennedy.
The Commission recommends to the Congress that it adopt legislation which would:
Punish the murder or manslaughter of, attempt or conspiracy to murder, kidnaping of and assault upon
the President, Vice President, or other officer next in the order of succession to the Office of President, the President-elect and the Vice-President-elect,
whether or not the act is committed while the victim is in the performance of his official duties or on account of such performance.
Such a statute would cover the President and Vice President or, in the absence of a Vice President, the person next in order of succession.
During the period between election and inauguration, the President-elect and Vice-President-elect would also be covered.
Restricting the coverage in this way would avoid unnecessary controversy over the inclusion or exclusion of other officials who are in the order of succession
or who hold important governmental posts.
In addition, the restriction would probably eliminate a need for the requirement which has been urged as necessary for the exercise of Federal power,
that the hostile act occur while the victim is engaged in or because of the performance of official duties.
The governmental consequences of assassination of one of the specified officials give the United States ample power to act for its own protection.
The activities of the victim at the time an assassination occurs and the motive for the assassination
bear no relationship to the injury to the United States which follows from the act.
This point was ably made in the 1902 debate by Senator George F. Hoar, the sponsor of the Senate bill, quote,
what this bill means to punish is the crime of interruption of the Government of the United States and the destruction of its security by striking down the life
of the person who is actually in the exercise of the executive power, or
of such persons as have been constitutionally and lawfully provided to succeed thereto in case of a vacancy. It is important to this country
that the interruption shall not take place for an hour, end quote.
Enactment of this statute would mean that the investigation of any of the acts covered and of the possibility of a further attempt
would be conducted by Federal law enforcement officials, in particular, the FBI with the assistance of the Secret Service.
At present, Federal agencies participate only upon the sufferance of the local authorities.
While the police work of the Dallas authorities in the early identification and apprehension of Oswald was both efficient and prompt,
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who strongly supports such legislation, testified that the absence of clear Federal jurisdiction
over the assassination of President Kennedy led to embarrassment and confusion in the subsequent investigation by Federal and local authorities.
In addition, the proposed legislation will insure
that any suspects who are arrested will be Federal prisoners, subject to Federal protection from vigilante justice and other threats.
Committee of Cabinet Officers. As our Government has become more complex,
agencies other than the Secret Service have become involved in phases of the overall problem of protecting our national leaders.
The FBI is the major domestic investigating agency of the United States,
while the CIA has the primary responsibility for collecting intelligence overseas to supplement information acquired by the Department of State.
The Secret Service must rely in large part
The Commission believes that it is necessary to improve the cooperation among these agencies
and to emphasize that the task of Presidential protection is one of broad national concern.
The Commission suggests that consideration might be given to assigning to a Cabinet-level committee or the National Security Council
(which is responsible for advising the President respecting the coordination
of departmental policies relating to the national security) the responsibility to review and oversee the protective activities of the Secret Service
and the other Federal agencies that assist in safeguarding the President. The Committee should include the Secretary of the Treasury and the Attorney General,
and, if the Council is used, arrangements should be made for the attendance of the Secretary of the Treasury
and the Attorney General at any meetings which are concerned with Presidential protection.
The Council already includes, in addition to the President and Vice President, the Secretaries of State and Defense and has a competent staff.
The foremost assignment of the Committee would be to insure that the maximum resources of the Federal Government are fully engaged in the job of protecting the President,
by defining responsibilities clearly and overseeing their execution.
Major needs of personnel or other resources might be met more easily on its recommendation than they have been in the past.
The Committee would be able to provide guidance in defining the general nature of domestic and foreign dangers to Presidential security.
As improvements are recommended for the advance detection of potential threats to the President, it could act as a final review board.
The expert assistance and resources which it could draw upon would be particularly desirable in this complex and sensitive area.
This arrangement would provide a continuing high-level contact for agencies that may wish to consult respecting particular protective measures.
For various reasons the Secret Service has functioned largely as an informal part of the White House staff, with the result
that it has been unable, as a practical matter, to exercise sufficient influence over the security precautions which surround Presidential activities.
A Cabinet-level committee which is actively concerned with these problems would be able to discuss these matters more effectively with the President.
Responsibilities for Presidential Protection
The assignment of the responsibility of protecting the President to an agency of the Department of the Treasury was largely an historical accident.
The Secret Service was organized as a division of the Department of the Treasury in 1865, to deal with counterfeiting.
In 1894,
while investigating a plot to assassinate President Cleveland, the Service assigned a small protective detail of agents to the White House.
Secret Service men accompanied the President and his family to their vacation home in Massachusetts
and special details protected him in Washington, on trips, and at special functions.
These informal and part-time arrangements led to more systematic protection in 1902, after the assassination of President McKinley;
the Secret Service, then the only Federal investigative agency, assumed full-time responsibility for the safety of the President.
Since that time, the Secret Service has had and exercised responsibility for the physical protection of the President
and also for the preventive investigation of potential threats against the President.
Although the Secret Service has had the primary responsibility for the protection of the President,
the FBI, which was established within the Department of Justice in 1908, has had in recent years an increasingly important role to play.
In the appropriations of the FBI there has recurred annually an item for the, quote, protection of the person of the President of the United States, end quote,
which first appeared in the appropriation of the Department of Justice in 1910 under the heading, quote, Miscellaneous Objects, end quote.
Although the FBI is not charged with the physical protection of the President, it does have an assignment, as do other Government agencies,
in the field of preventive investigation in regard to the President's security.
As discussed above, the Bureau has attempted to meet its responsibilities in this field by spelling out in its Handbook
the procedures which its agents are to follow in connection with information received, quote,
indicating the possibility of an attempt against the person or safety of the President, end quote, or other protected persons.
With two Federal agencies operating in the same general field of preventive investigation,
questions inevitably arise as to the scope of each agency's authority and responsibility.
As the testimony of J. Edgar Hoover and other Bureau officials revealed, the FBI did not believe that its directive required the Bureau
to notify the Secret Service of the substantial information about Lee Harvey Oswald which the FBI had accumulated
before the President reached Dallas.
On the other hand, the Secret Service had no knowledge whatever of Oswald, his background, or his employment at the Book Depository,
and Robert I. Bouck, who was in charge of the Protective Research Section of the Secret Service, believed that the accumulation of the facts known to the FBI
should have constituted a sufficient basis to warn the Secret Service of the Oswald risk.
The Commission believes that both the FBI and the Secret Service have too narrowly construed their respective responsibilities.
The Commission has the impression
that too much emphasis is placed by both on the investigation of specific threats by individuals and not enough on dangers from other sources.
In addition, the Commission has concluded that the Secret Service particularly tends to be the passive recipient of information
regarding such threats and that its Protective Research Section is not adequately staffed or equipped
to conduct the wider investigative work that is required today for the security of the President.
During the period the Commission was giving thought to this situation,
the Commission received a number of proposals designed to improve current arrangements for protecting the President.
These proposals included suggestions to locate exclusive responsibility for all phases of the work
in one or another Government agency, to clarify the division of authority between the agencies involved, and to retain the existing system
but expand both the scope and the operations of the existing agencies, particularly those of the Secret Service and the FBI.
It has been pointed out that the FBI, as our chief investigative agency,
is properly manned and equipped to carry on extensive information gathering functions within the United States.
It was also suggested that it would take a substantial period of time for the Secret Service to build up the experience and skills necessary to meet the problem.
Consequently the suggestion has been made, on the one hand, that all preventive investigative functions relating to the security of the President
should be transferred to the FBI,
leaving with the Secret Service only the responsibility for the physical protection of the President, that is, the guarding function alone.
On the other hand, it is urged that all features of the protection of the President and his family should be committed to an elite and independent corps.
It is also contended that the agents should be intimately associated with the life of the Presidential family
in all its ramifications and alert to every danger that might befall it,
and ready at any instant to hazard great danger to themselves in the performance of their tremendous responsibility.
It is suggested that an organization shorn of its power to investigate all the possibilities of danger to the President
and becoming merely the recipient of information gathered by others would become limited solely to acts of physical alertness and personal courage
incident to its responsibilities.
So circumscribed, it could not maintain the esprit de corps or the necessary alertness for this unique and challenging responsibility.
While in accordance with its mandate
this Commission has necessarily examined into the functioning of the various Federal agencies concerned with the tragic trip of President Kennedy to Dallas
that it was not within the Commission's responsibility to make specific recommendations as to the long-range organization of the President's protection,
except as conclusions flowing directly from its examination of the President's assassination can be drawn.
The Commission was not asked to apply itself as did the Hoover Commission in 1949,
for examples to a determination of the optimum organization of the President's protection.
It would have been necessary for the Commission to take considerable testimony, much of it extraneous to the facts of the assassination of President Kennedy,
to put it in a position to reach final conclusions in this respect.
There are always dangers of divided responsibility,
duplication, and confusion of authority where more than one agency is operating in the same field; but on the other hand
the protection of the President is in a real sense a Government-wide responsibility which must necessarily assumed by the Department of State,
the FBI, the CIA, and the military intelligence agencies as well as the Secret Service.
Moreover, a number of imponderable questions have to be weighed if any change in the intimate association now established
between the Secret Service and the President and his family is contemplated.
These considerations have induced the Commission to believe
that the determination of whether or not there should be a relocation of responsibilities and functions should be left to the Executive and the Congress,
perhaps upon recommendations based on further studies by the Cabinet-level committee recommended above or the National Security Council.
Pending any such determination, however, this Commission is convinced of the necessity of better coordination
and direction of the activities of all existing agencies of Government which are in a position to and do, furnish information
and services related to the security of the President.
The Commission feels the Secret Service and the FBI, as well as the State Department and the CIA when the President travels abroad,
could improve their existing capacities and procedures so as to lessen the chances of assassination.
Without, therefore, coming to final conclusions respecting the long-range organization of the President's security,
the Commission believes that the facts of the assassination of President Kennedy point to certain measures which,
while assuming no radical relocation of responsibilities,
can and should be recommended by this Commission in the interest of the more efficient protection of the President.
For more information, or to volunteer, please visit librivox dot org. Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy.
The Warren Commission Report.
By The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy. Chapter 8. The Protection of the President. Part 5.
General Supervision of the Secret Service
The intimacy of the Secret Service's relationship to the White House
and the dissimilarity of its protective functions to most activities of the Department of the Treasury
have made it difficult for the Treasury to maintain close and continuing supervision.
The Commission believes that the recommended Cabinet-level committee will help to correct many of the major deficiencies of supervision
disclosed by the Commission's investigation. Other measures should be taken as well to improve the overall operation of the Secret Service.
Daily supervision of the operations of the Secret Service within the Department of the Treasury should be improved.
The Chief of the Service now reports to the Secretary of the Treasury
through an Assistant Secretary whose duties also include the direct supervision of the Bureau of the Mint
and the Department's Employment Policy Program, and who also represents the Secretary of the Treasury on various committees and groups.
The incumbent has no technical qualifications in the area of Presidential protection.
The Commission recommends that the Secretary of the Treasury appoint a special assistant with the responsibility of supervising the Service.
This special assistant should be required to have sufficient stature and experience in law enforcement, intelligence, or allied fields
to be able to provide effective continuing supervision
and to keep the Secretary fully informed regarding all significant developments relating to Presidential protection.
This report has already pointed out several respects
in which the Commission believes that the Secret Service has operated with insufficient planning or control.
Actions by the Service since the assassination indicate its awareness of the necessity for substantial improvement in its administration.
A formal and thorough description of the responsibilities of the advance agent is now in preparation by the Service.
Work is going forward
toward the preparation of formal understandings of the respective roles of the Secret Service and other agencies with which it collaborates
or from which it derives assistance and support.
The Commission urges that the Service continue this effort to overhaul and define its procedures.
While manuals and memoranda are no guarantee of effective operations,
no sizable organization can achieve efficiency without the careful analysis and demarcation of responsibility
that is reflected in definite and comprehensive operating procedures.
The Commission also recommends
that the Secret Service consciously set about the task of inculcating and maintaining the highest standard of excellence and esprit, for all of its personnel.
This involves tight and unswerving discipline as well as the promotion of an outstanding degree of dedication and loyalty to duty.
The Commission emphasizes that it finds no causal connection between the assassination
and the breach of regulations which occurred on the night of November 21 at Fort Worth.
Nevertheless, such a breach, in which so many agents participated,
is not consistent with the standards which the responsibilities of the Secret Service require it to meet.
Preventive Intelligence
In attempting to identify those individuals who might prove a danger to the President,
the Secret Service has largely been the passive recipient of threatening communications to the President
and reports from other agencies which independently evaluate their information for potential sources of danger.
This was the consequence of the Service's lack of an adequate investigative staff,
its inability to process large amounts of data, and its failure to provide specific descriptions of the kind of information it sought.
The Secret Service has embarked upon a complete overhaul of its research activities. The staff of the Protective Research Section (PRS)
has been augmented, and a Secret Service inspector has been put in charge of this operation. With the assistance of the President's Office of Science and Technology,
and of the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department of Defense,
it has obtained the services of outside consultants, such as the Rand Corporation,
International Business Machines Corporation, and a panel of psychiatric and psychological experts.
It has received assistance also from data processing experts at the CIA
and from a specialist in psychiatric prognostication at Walter Reed Hospital.
As a result of these studies, the planning document submitted by the Secretary of the Treasury to the Bureau of the Budget on August 31,
1964, makes several significant recommendations in this field.
Based on the Commission's investigation, the following minimum goals for improvements are indicated:
Broader and more selective criteria
Since the assassination, both the Secret Service and the FBI have recognized
that the PRS files can no longer be limited largely to persons communicating actual threats to the President.
On December 26, 1963, the FBI circulated additional instructions to all its agents,
specifying criteria for information to be furnished to the Secret Service in addition to that covered by the former standard,
which was the possibility of an attempt against the person or safety of the President.
he new instructions require FBI agents to report immediately information concerning, quote,
Subversives, ultrarightists, racists and fascists (a) possessing emotional instability or irrational behavior,
(b) who have made threats of bodily harm against officials or employees of Federal, state or local government or officials of a foreign government,
(c) who express or have expressed strong or violent anti-U.S. sentiments
and who have been involved in bombing or bomb-making or whose past conduct indicates tendencies toward violence, and (d)
whose prior acts or statements depict propensity for violence and hatred against organized government, end quote.
Alan H. Belmont, Assistant to the Director of the FBI, testified that this revision was initiated by the FBI itself.
The volume of references to the Secret Service has increased substantially since the new instructions went into effect;
more than 5,000 names were referred to the Secret Service in the first 4 months of 1964.
According to Chief Rowley, by mid-June 1964,
the Secret Service had received from the FBI some 9,000 reports on members of the Communist Party.
The FBI now transmits information on all defectors, a category which would, of course, have included Oswald.
Both Director Hoover and Belmont expressed to the Commission the great concern of the FBI, which is shared by the Secret Service,
that referrals to the Secret Service under the new criteria might, if not properly handled,
result in some degree of interference with the personal liberty of those involved.
They emphasized the necessity that the information now being furnished be handled with judgment and care.
The Commission shares this concern.
The problem is aggravated by the necessity that the Service obtain the assistance of local law enforcement officials in evaluating the information which it receives
and in taking preventive steps.
In June 1964, the Secret Service sent to a number of Federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies
guidelines for an experimental program to develop more detailed criteria.
The suggestions of Federal agencies for revision of these guidelines were solicited.
The new tentative criteria are useful in making clear that
the interest of the Secret Service goes beyond information on individuals or groups threatening to cause harm or embarrassment to the President.
Information is requested also concerning individuals or groups who have demonstrated an interest in the President