The most stressful job for the United States Secret Service is when a protectee travels abroad. The uncertainties and challenges are far greater overseas.
Unlike at home, on foreign visits, the Secret Service does not have supreme authority for the security surrounding its protectees and cannot rely upon the long-standing professional and cultural relationships that characterize its engagement with domestic law enforcement partners. On foreign visits, the Secret Service has limited means of knowing who is getting close to its protectees and what threats they might pose.
One particular fear centers on the possibility that a foreign security agent might secretly be an extremist. This explains why, for example, the Secret Service will often push for military honor guards to remove their bayonets from their unloaded rifles (in 1987, then-Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi suffered an attack in this vein). Put simply, the Secret Service’s foreign visit stress factor is always very high.
In the aftermath of the July 13 assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, however, that stress level will be figuratively and literally through the roof. And that stress will mean the Secret Service puts even more pressure on foreign law enforcement agencies to adopt strict security arrangements.
Those foreign agencies won’t be looking forward to this dynamic. I once asked a protection officer from a close U.S. ally what she thought of the Secret Service’s intensive approach to protection. In response, she simply raised her eyebrows. This speaks to a broad foreign law enforcement perception that the Secret Service is very difficult to work with.
It is difficult not because Secret Service agents are impolite (that’s the predilection of the Chinese Central Guard Unit) or unprofessional (that’s the Turkish Counter Attack Team). Rather it is difficult because the Secret Service demands a lot from agencies that prefer a more relaxed approach to protection. Unlike many of its foreign counterparts, the Secret Service pushes for fixed versus rolling road closures for motorcade movements, the use of the presidential limousine for all presidential ground movements (instead of state ceremonial carriages as on state visits to the United Kingdom, for example), large and heavily manned security perimeters, and the employment of extensive SWAT and special forces capabilities.
This inevitably leads to tensions.
On visits to the U.K., for example, the Secret Service is often frustrated by the country’s insistence on rolling roadblocks that balance civilian traffic flows with protectee movements. In December 2019, the Secret Service was aggravated by the delays this approach caused to Trump’s transit through London. In September 2022, the Secret Service was infuriated when President Joe Biden was temporarily stuck in London traffic (being static increases the motorcade’s vulnerability). The Secret Service also grates at not being able to carry their firearms on U.K. soil (though they sometimes employ beastly ways of getting around this restriction) and is uncomfortable being prevented from deploying its counterassault and countersniper teams, instead having to rely on foreign partners to provide those capabilities.
Ironically, this means the Secret Service often has an easier working relationship with counterparts from U.S. adversaries than those of foreign allies. Protective services in autocratic governments generally have greater latitude to impose extensive security arrangements, leading to otherwise strange partnerships. Where the CIA and its Russian SVR/GRU counterparts despise one another, the Secret Service worked well with the Soviet KGB 9th Directorate (responsible for protecting senior Soviet leaders) and has a (generally) effective working relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s protection service, the SBP.
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Top line: The Secret Service very nearly suffered the loss of a former president who seems likely to become president again. For an agency that prides itself on its “zero fail” mentality but so nearly failed catastrophically, foreign visits will now come with even greater stress and concern.
Foreign law enforcement agencies won’t be excited for the next high-level U.S. visit.