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Show (Jeliind tlie J4eadiine6 J Kennedy is giving the Secret Servicemen the jitters by continually con-tinually ignoring their cautions, by slipping out of the White House, by walking about town incognito, by driving his own car by constantly departing from carefully planned itineraries and by such rough and tumble athletics ath-letics as speed swimming and touch football. The protection the Kennedy children require is an unfamiliar responsibility. Always, there is the unspoken fact that Kennedy was elected President in one of America's "fateful years." It is a really intriguing fact that every American President elected or re-elected every 20 years since 1840 has died in office of-fice or been assassinated. The first President dying in office was William Henry Harrison, Har-rison, elected in 1840. Lincoln, elected in 1860 was slain. Gar-filed, Gar-filed, elected in 1880, was shot and killed. McKinley was killed after his 1900 re-election. Harding, Hard-ing, elected in 1920, died in office of-fice as did FDR, who was reelected re-elected in 1940. Whoever won the 1960 election "tempted fate" by assuming the Presidency in another "fateful year" of the unbroken 20 year cycle. But Kennedy has already defied the other "precedents." Kennedy, reminded of this recently, re-cently, indicated that he was neither morbid or worried. But when asked about the problem of Presidential succession in case of injury, illness of "some incapacitation." in-capacitation." said "I think a study woud be a good matter on which he could proceed," and the always thorough Mr. Kennedy has already agreed to bring his Vice President, Lyndon Johnson more into the inner workings of the Presidency than any other VicePresident in history, including includ-ing Nixon. LBJ was to have served chiefly as White House liaison with the Senate, but the President is making him a strong "right arm." One of the open secrets in Washington which every one only whispers about is that the U.S. Secret Service is uneasy and perhaps worried over the President's personal safety and that of his family. The Secret Service, an arm of the Treasury Department, and its Chief. U. E. Baughman, are not only charged with preventing counterfeiting and violations of the gold laws, but are also responsible re-sponsible for the personal safety of the President and his family. Secret Service protection has also been extended by custom to the Vice President, too, but the relative unimportance that the office is viewed may be measured meas-ured by the fact that in all U.S. history there have been only two serious attempted assassinations of our vice presidents. These were the Confederate plot against Mr. Lincoln's Vice President, Andrew Johnson, which was foiled although Mr. Lincoln was shot, and the Communist Com-munist plot on the former Vice President, Nixon, which the Secret Se-cret Service foiled during the Latin American tour in 1958. Otherwise, it is the President who usually is the prime target of the lunatic fringe. The Cold War, with its traveling diplomacy, diplo-macy, has increased the burden of the Secret Service in protecting protect-ing the President. It is well known, for example that the Service faced a formidable formid-able task in protecting former President Eisenhower from real! and crank assassintion plots during dur-ing his 1959 Mideast and Asian treks, and angry letters threatening threat-ening the President poured into the White House during Khrush-chevs' Khrush-chevs' 1959 visit. It is no secret that the Secret Service was relieved when the planned Eisenhower visits to Japan and Russia were called off in the face of hostile anti-Americanism, following the U-2 spy plane affair. Even Ike, who may go down in history as one of our most popular popu-lar Presidents, whatever else faults or achievements, was not immune to assassins' threats. It is small wonder then that, despite his apparent popularity, President Kennedy should be subjected to an almost unprece dented torrent of threatening letters. His age, wealth, narrow election elec-tion victory over Nixon and his Catholicity have all inspired the lunatic fringe of crackpots to pen so many threatening letters to the White House, threatening Kennedy, his wife and children, that the Secret Service has been working overtime. First of the crackpots to be nabbed was Richard Pavlick, 73, who planned to wire himself with dynamite and blow up both himself him-self and Kennedy. A harmless crank? Secret Service agents picked him up near Kennedy's Palm Beach haven with 10 sticks of dynamite wired to his body as he waited to "shake hands with the Prseident." The Secret Service, which consists of a staff of 600 trained people, is busy scrutinizing all anti-Catholic mail in particular via handwriting, ink and paper. The classification of all threatening threat-ening mail makes it easier for the Secret Service to locate a really dangerous crackpot who writes a threatening letter today to-day and a death warning later. When the President travels, the authors of all these missives are shadowed days before the President might visit areas in which they live. Known cranks are under constant scrutiny just in case. The Secret Service is especially espe-cially uneasy over Kennedy's habit of slipping away from the scrutiny even of its best gumshoes. gum-shoes. Wartime safeguards and polio handicapped the late FDR in eluding his protectors. Eisenhower Eisen-hower cooperated with body guards as a matter of course ever since he was a top target of Nazi assassins during World War II. Nixon became accustomed to heavy protection as a result of his risky goodwill trips abroad to the Austrian border during the Hungarian revolt, behind the Iron Curtain and Latin America. However, former President Truman used to enjoy giving his "shadows" the slip, until Mrs. Truman lectured him to be more careful following the Puerto Rican Nationalist assassination atempt on Truman and the shoot up in Congress. |