Can you tell us briefly the nature of your supervision of the Secret Service, prior to the assassination?
Secretary DILLON. Yes. Prior to the assassination. when I first took office as Secretary of the Treasury, I naturally tried to find out, in as much detail as seemed practical, how the various offices of the Department functioned. One of the important ones was the Secret Service. So I had a number of interviews with Chief Baughman who was the Chief of the Secret Service at that time.
I got the general description from him of how the Secret Service operated, what their responsibilities were, what their problems were. After he retired, which was early, after I had only been there for a few months, I spoke with the President about this matter--President Kennedy--and it was my responsibility to find a new Chief of the Secret Service.
He had known James Rowley very well as head of the White House detail, and he felt that he would be an appropriate head of the Secret Service. I talked with Chief Baughman, and he thought there were two or three men, of whom Rowley was one, qualified to be head of the Secret Service; so I tided to appoint Rowley and thereafter talked with him considerably about the White House detail which he was more familiar with than Chief Baughman.
However, I did not in any sense conduct a day-to-day supervision, or close following, of its day-to-day operations. The Secret Service had been functioning for many years and the presumption from its record was that it had been functioning successfully. I think that the events that have developed since November have very clearly shown that some of the procedures, many of them, need to be changed and improved. I think this is probably largely due, to a considerable extent due, to a very rapid change which probably took place without our fully realizing its importance in the last 3 years, and which greatly increased the responsibility of the Secret Service. That is the greatly changed nature of Presidential travel.

Mr. Rankin.

Will you describe to us how that affects the problems of the Secret Service?
Secretary DILLON. Yes. In earlier times, the Presidents did not travel very often. When he did travel, he generally traveled by train, which was a protected train. Doing that, he could not cover very many parts of the country, and the Secret Service could move easily right along with him on the train that he was on.
What happened since has been, first, the advent of airplanes. Presidents beginning with President Eisenhower began to move more rapidly and were able to travel considerably more, and on very short time differentials they could be in cities that were thousands of miles apart.
However, this only just began with President Eisenhower because, in the first place, jets were not yet available, and in the second place, in the last years of his term, he had to take greater care of his health, and he didn't travel around the country quite as much as his successors have. So when President Kennedy came into office with the availability of, the relatively recent availability, of jets and his desire to travel, this greatly increased the burden on the Secret Service. Formerly when they had a trip, they used to send out an advance agent to some big town. Now the trip would be a 3-day trip, and there might be four towns, each one 1,000 miles apart, that would have to be covered thoroughly at the same time. I think that probably there was not a full realization by anyone of this problem.
Certainly the Secret Service came to me and said they needed more personnel, and we tried to get them more personnel. Chief Rowley testified, I thought quite convincingly, in 1962 before the various Appropriations Committees of the Congress and met with very little success because I think that this was not fully understood by the public. The Appropriations Committees were a reflection of public understanding, and probably it was not even fully understood within the Secret Service.
I would like----

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