After conducting exclusive interviews with more than 100 current and former Secret Service agents, bestselling author and award-winning reporter Kessler reveals their secrets for the first time.

Never before has a journalist penetrated the wall of secrecy that surrounds the U.S. Secret Service. After conducting exclusive interviews with more than one hundred current and former Secret Service agents, bestselling author and award-winning reporter Ronald Kessler reveals their secrets for the first time.

• George W. Bush's daughters would try to lose their agents.
• Based on a psychic's vision that a sniper would assassinate President George H. W. Bush, the Secret Service changed his motorcade route.
• To make the press think he came to work early, Jimmy Carter would walk into the Oval Office at 5 a.m., then nod off to sleep.
• Lyndon Johnson gave dangerous instructions to his Secret Service agents and -engaged in extensive philandering at the White House.

Review
“Rips the lid off the inside world of Secret Service agents and the presidents they protect.” —"New York Post
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"[A] fascinating expose . . . high-energy read . . . amusing, saucy, often disturbing anecdotes about the VIPs the Secret Service has protected and still protects." —“USA Today”
From USA TODAY, Reviewed By Don Oldenburg, Special for USA TODAY
The recent news report that corner-cutting at the U.S. Secret Service has put President Obama's life at greater risk may be the most attention-grabbing disclosure emerging from Ron Kessler's latest book. But there's a lot more in this fascinating expose, which penetrates that federal agency's longstanding mission and tradition of sworn secrecy.
Never mind that the book's title is stiffer than the Secret Service's public persona — dour-faced agents wearing pressed suits, dark sunglasses and earphones, scouring crowds for potential threats. Inside the covers, Kessler's lively narrative is loaded with details of how the federal agents, authorized to protect the president and other national leaders, get the job done — and sometimes don't.
But what fuels this high-energy read isn't Kessler's investigation of the Secret Service's training, procedures and strategies — from guaranteeing the safety of the president's food to analyzing daily threats. Instead what turns these pages are the amusing, saucy, often disturbing anecdotes about the VIPs the Secret Service has protected and still protects. The secrets, in other words.
Some of it would border on tabloid sensationalism if it hadn't come directly from current and retired agents (most identified by name, to Kessler's credit). Of course, you'd expect the salacious stories of John Kennedy's libido, but the less-told tales of an often-drunken and philandering Lyndon Johnson caught with his pants down are shocking. Family-values champion Spiro Agnew had his hotel-room peccadilloes, it seems, and nice Jimmy Carter his animosities. R

Ronald Kessler is the “New York Times” bestselling author of “Inside the White House, The FBI, Inside the CIA, The Sins of the Father: Joseph P. Kennedy and the Dynasty He Founded, Moscow Station, ” and “The Richest Man in the World.” A former “Washington Post” and “Wall Street Journal” investigative reporter, Kessler has won sixteen journalism awards, including two George Polk Awards. He lives in Potomac, Maryland.