Secret Service agents should act more like Frank Horrigan than Frank Drebin
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Version 0 of 1. Agent Frank Horrigan would be angry reading about the latest comedy of errors attributed to the drunken shenanigans of Secret Service agents who wanted to party so hard that they brought it to the White House lawn. Agent Aaron Pierce would be mortified and dumbfounded that superiors reportedly ordered agents on the scene to ignore the accident and send the drunken perpetrators home. Like many others before them, Agents Horrigan and Pierce worked for years as Secret Service agents, made many sacrifices in the name of their jobs and did their best to never betray the trust of the presidents they guarded or the public they served. Unfortunately, Agents Horrigan and Pierce are fictional characters: Clint Eastwood played Horrigan in the 1993 thriller In the Line of Fire; Glenn Morshower played Pierce on the television series 24. That they’re fictional might be for the best – except for the safety of the president of the United States – given that the real life Secret Service has shown itself capable of repeated flagrant miscalculations, mismanagement and terrible choices worthy of a bunch of callow fraternity brothers rather than the steady and steadfast protectors of the president. Eastwood’s characters are hardly known for their kind words for silly, wanton or careless behavior (unless one counts as evidence his conversations with furniture); Morshower’s character was a steadfast professional who remained dedicated and devoted to the nation and the ideals he served to protect, even when he had his reservations about the motives and ethics of the politicians jockeying for power near the president. Whomever they might’ve once been based on, those agents apparently retired and left a bunch of numbnuts with the keys to the armory. Hollywood imagines the Secret Service as an agency full of men and women of nearly superhuman grit, determination and (in Eastwood’s case), total indestructibility. Fictional Secret Service agents like Horrigan, Pierce and the agents seen in action films like Vantage Point and The Sentinal and even comedies like First Daughter, Dave and Guarding Tess are stalwarts who guard the nation’s leaders and visiting dignitaries. On-screen agents might seem at worst robotic, but it is obvious that, like any finely trained operatives, they are excellent at their jobs. It’s comforting to think that the men and women serving our country are nearly indestructible and disobey protocol only when it stands in the way of catching the real bad guys. If only real life were so filled with honor and duty: recent reports of the Secret Service’s multiple debacles protecting the White House, from missing gunshots aimed at the residence to letting an armed man into the East Room, are almost less embarrassing than the latest, juvenile prank. Following a retirement party, two agents reportedly hopped into a government vehicle, put on the flashing lights and then drove through White House security checkpoints and right into a security barricade at the scene of an ongoing investigation of a suspicious package. It makes the agents who got caught carousing and paying for sex in Cartagena, Colombia seem positively dignified by comparison. Adding insult to injury, officers on the scene allegedly wanted to arrest the joyriding Secret Service agents but were ordered by a supervisor to let the malefactors go home. That is the exact sort of tail-covering that has offended Americans when exposed in places like Ferguson, Missouri or other localities where law enforcement seems like it would rather protect its own than live up to its responsibilities to protect and serve the public. The Secret Service was supposed to be different and better: more Frank Horrigan, less Frank Drebin. Fictional depictions of the Secret Service and other government organizations usually highlight employees’ devotion to duty and getting an important job done. The truth – which the Secret Service seems intent on reminding us – is that actual government agencies are made up of people who are perfectly capable of making terrible choices, terrible people who would rather not get into trouble, and those who would rather cover up the formers’ mistakes than deal with the paperwork. The Secret Service does difficult and dangerous work, and they’re supposed to be protecting the president, not drunkenly toilet-papering his front yard. In a movie, the agents involved would all be walking out of the building with boxes of their stuff, only to save the president in the third act because they couldn’t let the job go. In real life, it’s clear that none of them cared enough about the people they were sworn to protect to catch a cab home to their wives. Horrigan would be so pissed off. |