(Testimony of James J. Rowley)
Mr. Rowley.
That is right. And this is the point that we have to develop with IBM, or, as I said initially, with the CIA.
Now, they have facilities that would be available to us, if it works.
Mr. Rankin.
And you are also inquiring into the question of the sufficiency of the number of agents you have for this area as well as other Secret Service tasks?
Mr. Rowley.
Yes, sir.
Mr. Rankin.
And you are going to present that to the Congress as soon as you have something definite that you can support?
Mr. Rowley.
That is right--in response to Congressman Ford's inquiry.
Mr. Rankin.
Now, I think the Commission would be interested in the requirements or standards that you have for agents. Do you require a college education now?
Mr. Rowley.
Yes, sir.
Mr. Rankin.
And are there any other conditions or standards that you would like to describe?
Mr. Dulles.
May I inquire for one point? Is that a college education for the White House detail?
Mr. Rowley.
No; that is for all the agents that we recruit for our work, for both criminal and protective, Mr. Dulles. We require a minimum academic achievement of 4 years of college or university, and preferably those who attend police administrative schools, where they have in their curricula subjects on science, criminology, and law. We find that these people are better adapted, they have an inclination, and they are interested.
But we do take people with B.A.'s and B.S.'s, because they, too, have been most satisfactory. But we find when we need to recruit the men, we go to these colleges with special courses. As I mentioned earlier we first started recruiting them from Michigan State, because that was one of the first universities with a police administration curriculum. And we found each and every one of them have been most satisfactory and have excellent records.
As a matter of fact, a good portion of them are agents in charge of our 65 offices throughout the country.
Mr. Rankin.
What do you do as a matter of procedure in assigning your agents? Do you keep them in Presidential protection, or do you shift them from that to other functions in the Secret Service?
Mr. Rowley.
Well, when they are first sworn into duty, we assign them to an office, so during the period, the first 6 months, you would call it in service training, because we are not in the position that the FBI is where they take in, say, a given number of agents--let's set a figure at 30--and then they can start them immediately with their school of 12 weeks. We are not in a position to hire that many at a time. We are in a position to hire 10. So that after 6 months, 10 now, after the character investigations are completed, and then we may get 10 more later.
Then we send them to what we call the Treasury Basic School, after which we try to send them as soon as practical to our Secret Service School.
Now, sometimes a new man might be a year in the Secret Service, and during that period he is on probation, after which we determine through the agent in charge whether his service is satisfactory, and whether he will develop into an agent.
Mr. Dulles.
Is the FBI School open to any of your respective recruits?
Mr. Rowley.
Well----
Mr. Dulles.
FBI Academy.
Mr. Rowley.
The Police Academy would be if we had occasion to send them there, if there was something they could benefit from. We do send the White House Police to the FBI Police Academy, because that is more in connection with their police function.
Mr. Rankin.
How does your agent get into the Presidential protection?
Mr. Rowley.
Well, some of the agents have indicated in their personal history questionnaires submitted each year whether they wish to select an office of duty preference, and there are three offices listed. If an agent wants for one reason or another after a period of 3 years on the White House detail to make a request for a transfer, we consider which of the three offices he selected has a vacancy,
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