Secret Service May Look To TSA For Help During 2008 Presidential Campaign

Today's issue of the Washington Post has a story (see here for free, but registration required) by Spenser Hsu on how the U.S. Secret Service needs to "borrow" more than 2000 Transportation Security Admininstration (TSA) and immigration officers to help it guard the large field of presidential candidates in 2008.  The agency, part of the Dept. of Homeland Security also plans to transfer 250 of its own agents from investigations to security.  (photo courtesy of the Secret Service)

The Secret Service provides protection for the president, vice president, president-elect, vice president-elect, past presidents and their spouses, certain candidates for the offices of president and vice president within 120 days of a presidental election, children of former presidents until age 16 and visiting foreign heads of state and government and their spouses and anyone designated by Executive Order of the president.  But it also investigates crimes that involve financial institution fraud, computer and telecommunications fraud, false identification documents, access device fraud, advance fee fraud, electronic funds transfers and money laundering.

The agency had already been struggling to handle the White House's wartime security needs, increased terrorism threats and including presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), said the report.  And it did not expect to have to start tapping into its $110 million-plus budget for campaign protection until January, but threats on Obama's life forced a change in plans.

This cannot be good news for the nation's airports, many of which continue to struggle to not only get more TSA screeners on site to keep lines down, but just try and stem the tide of TSOs quitting the job.  And I wrote a story (subscribers only) in Aviation Daily in March on a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report saying TSA needed to continue to reasses its staffing allocation model to perform passenger and bag screening at the more than 400 airports where it covers these duties. As of Oct. 31, 2006, these airports had 761 checkpoints and 2,002 screening lanes.

And I just did a post on May 25 about how airports are facing a summer of shortages among the Customs and Immigration agents that help process travelers in and out of the country. A USA Today story on May 21 quotes a Customs official as saying that it has hired all the agents that were in its FY 2007 budget.  And the trade group Travel Industry Association has called on Congress to pay for 200 more agents at airports in a move to get average processing times down to 30 minutes, versus Customs' current goal of 45 minutes.

So the industry will play the wait-and-see game while the Secret Service decides exacly how many screeners and agents it will borrow to handle its upcoming shortage.  Watch this space!!