Secret Service idiots

The recent White House party dinner crash incident has reminded me of several, very unusual, experiences I have had with the Secret Service in my life.
It is probably accurate to say that few ordinary Americans ever have contact with the Secret Service.
I have had five I can recall. Looking back, one can only conclude the SS is completely incompetent and unable to protect the president, or anyone else, from potential assassins.
My first experience with the SS happened when I was only ten years old. It was 1948 and Thomas Dewey was running against Harry Truman for the presidency.
My mother and I were taking a trip to visit relatives in Lincoln, Nebraska. To get there, we had to catch a train out of Union Station in Chicago.
We were a little late and as we walked on the platform our train began moving. We jumped onto the rear deck of the last car and went inside. To our surprise, the car was very elegantly decorated, much unlike a regular car. We saw two men standing with machine guns and one man sitting. The sitting man we instantly recognized as Tom Dewey. We spent the entire trip visiting with him, me sitting on his lap most of the time.
As unique an experience as this was, I look back now and wonder why the SS men even let strangers into the car. All they would have had to do to protect Mr. Dewey was lock the deck door but they didn’t.
In 1964, Barry Goldwater was running for president against incumbent Lyndon Johnson. Goldwater was making a campaign speech at the football field of Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois.
I was then the President of the local Young Republicans and greatly admired Goldwater. After the speech, I wanted meet him and shake his hand. I saw him walk behind the end zone after speaking. I hurried to the spot and saw him standing outside a limousine surrounded by SS agents.
I walked right past the agents without being challenged and introduced myself to Mr. Goldwater. I recall he was very cordial and not at all bothered by my intrusion. While we were chatting it started to rain and he invited me inside his limousine to continue our conversation which lasted almost an hour.
Several years later I was working in Chicago and had occasion to go to a hotel on South Shore Drive. I was walking through the halls when I saw a glass walled room with Richard Nixon sitting alone at a table. I waved to him and he gestured back indicating I should come inside.
I went inside and introduced myself. We chatted for a few minutes when a waiter brought a tray with coffee and cookies. For more than an hour we talked politics. At no time did I see a single SS agent who was supposed to be guarding him.
A few years later, 1967, President Lyndon Johnson was scheduled to visit Chicago. It had been announced he would be staying at the same hotel where I had my chance meeting with Richard Nixon.
I wanted to get a good photograph of him entering the hotel. To accomplish this, I, literally, convinced the SS agents inside the lobby I had authority to go up to a restricted floor and take pictures. I suspect my line of baloney was not unlike what the party crashers used. I got my pictures but, just as easily could have shot the President with a rifle. And with the friendly cooperation of the idiot SS agents.
The next night, Johnson was speaking to a very large audience at McCormick Place convention center. I wanted pictures there also. As I approached, I saw the front door was heavily guarded so I drove to the far south side of the building and parked. The door there was unguarded and unlocked. I walked into the back of the huge building only to find it empty.
I could see large curtains dividing the back part of the room where I stood from the front which had been converted to a dining room for the event. The theatre type curtains allowed me to see the President standing while giving his speech.
I walked to within about thirty feet of the President and took some pictures. I could just as easily have shot him and run outside for an easy get-away if that had been my intention. The SS was nowhere to be seen.
Historically, most assassination attempts have been from the attacker simply walking up to the President and shooting with a pistol. The SS has proven to be completely impotent in all instances of assassination attempts.
With the recent party crashers, if they had wished to attack President Obama they could have done so with impunity. The news is making much of the fact that a metal detector found no guns on them. What is not much discussed is the fact they were close enough to the President to shake his hand.
I own two non-metallic knives that would be very deadly in a close contact attack. Even lacking those, a knife snatched from a dinner table could be just as effective. And, in this day and age, there are many exotic poisons and chemicals that could have been used to commit assassination.
My opinion, from these experiences, is that the presidential protection team, known as the Secret Service is completely incompent and does little, if anything, that would save a president from a determined would-be assassination.