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Secret Service additional resources may not be justified

Letter to the Editor (Graphic Illustration/MetroCreative)

The United States Secret Service has “bitten off” more than they can chew over the last few decades. In addition to its original mandate of combating the counterfeiting of U.S. currency and executive protection, the passage of federal laws in the 1980s gave the Secret Service primary authority for the investigation of access device fraud, including credit and debit card fraud, and authority for identity theft. These financial crimes are probably more efficiently handled by the FBI who often has concurrent jurisdiction and primary responsibility for most similar federal crimes and in addition they have thousands of more agents. Even though the Secret Service has primary responsibility for ensuring the safety and security of the United Nations delegations in the Fall, they receive manpower assistance from the U.S. Marshals Service, Homeland Security and several other federal agencies for this major detail. The Secret Service needs to utilize their agents to concentrate on their primary mandate of counterfeiting and executive protection.

A review/reorganization of the Secret Service should be conducted as follows: 1. All Secret Service agents assigned to financial crimes should be reassigned to the Secret Service’s protective functions. 2. Present protective details need to be reviewed to determine their continuing necessity and/or the possibility of transferring the details to other agencies.

All too often federal agencies that fail in their mandates, like the FBI’s failures in preventing 911, are “penalized” with hundreds of millions of additional funding and thousands of new positions. The Secret Service may well need additional funding; however, only after they utilize their agents for their primary mandates and a review of all protective assignments their agents are currently being used for.

However, the Secret Service is now using the recent events to request millions of dollars more for manpower and equipment. If this was necessary these requests should have been made through the normal procurement process. No emergency funding should be approved for the U.S. Secret Service until a new director is in place and legitimate needs are verified.

John D. Gainer

Parkersburg

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