Threats against the President of the U.S., members of his immediate family, the President-elect, and the Vice-President

Investigation of threats against the President of the United States, members of his immediate family, the President-Elect, and the Vice-President is within the exclusive jurisdiction of the U.S. Secret Service. Any information indicating the possibility of an attempt against the person or safety of the President, members of the immediate family of the President, the President-Elect or the Vice-President must be referred immediately by the most expeditious means of communication to the nearest office of the U.S. Secret Service. Advise the Bureau at the same time by teletype of the information so furnished to the Secret Service and the fact that it has been so disseminated. The above action should be taken without delay in order to attempt to verify the information and no evaluation of the information should be at tempted. When the threat is in the form of a written communication, give a copy to. local Secret Service and forward the original to the Bureau where it will be made available to Secret Service headquarters in Washington. The referral of the copy to local Secret, Service should not delay the immediate referral of the information by the fastest available means of communication to Secret Service locally.38

The State Department advised the Secret Service of all crank and threat letter mail or crank visitors and furnished reports concerning any assassination or attempted assassination of a ruler or other major official anywhere in the world. 39 The several military intelligence agencies reported crank mail and similar threats involving the President. 40 According to Special Agent in Charge Bouck, the Secret Service had no standard procedure for the systematic review of its requests for and receipt of information from other Federal agencies. 41

The Commission believes that the facilities and procedures of the Protective Research Section of the Secret Service prior to November 22, 1963, were inadequate. Its efforts appear to have been too largely directed at the "crank" threat. Although the Service recognized that its advance preventive measures must encompass more than these most obvious dangers, it made little effort to identify factors in the activities of an individual or an organized group, other than specific threats, which suggested a source of danger against which timely precautions could be taken. Except for its special "trip index" file of 400 names, none of the cases in the PRS general files was available for systematic review on a geographic basis when the President planned a particular trip.

As reported in chapter II, when the special file was reviewed on November 8, it contained the names of no persons from the entire