Inside the Secret Service
Skullduggery
Michael Isikoff, Daniel Klaidman, Victoria Bassetti
4.0 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 27 May 2021
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Given the lack of any successfully carried out assassination attempt on a President in the past 40 years, the Secret Service seems, at a first glance, to be an efficient and effective law enforcement agency. But author and Washington Post reporter Carol Leonnig has spent years talking to individuals inside the agency, and her new book Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service paints a very different picture. Leonnig joins Michael Isikoff, Daniel Klaidman and Victoria Bassetti on this episode to discuss the agency. She takes us through some of their recent newsmaking scandals, the unique relationship between the Secret Service and the Trump administration, as well as what she identifies as a toxic and confused culture, both among the leadership as well as the rank and file.
Plus, an update on the scandal at the Post Office, and some real world effects from Yahoo News' reporting.
GUEST:
- Carol Leonnig (@CarolLeonnig), Reporter, Washington Post; author
HOSTS:
- Michael Isikoff (@Isikoff), Chief Investigative Correspondent, Yahoo News
- Daniel Klaidman (@dklaidman), Editor in Chief, Yahoo News
- Victoria Bassetti (@VBass), fellow, Brennan Center for Justice (contributing co-host)
RESOURCES:
- “Kevin McCarthy Leads House GOP In Blasting Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Holocaust Remarks” by Barbara Spunt (May 25, NPR)
- Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service (Random House, May 2021)
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| 0:00.0 | We all know about the risk secret service agents face every day in their mission to protect |
| 0:07.8 | the life of the President of the United States. |
| 0:10.9 | But here's one that agents in the public at large probably had never thought about it |
| 0:14.6 | until last year. |
| 0:17.4 | As they were protecting then President Trump and his family, more than 300 secret service |
| 0:22.6 | agents and officers tested positive for COVID-19. |
| 0:27.2 | Not surprising perhaps given that they were guarding a chief executive who repeatedly |
| 0:31.5 | minimized the threat of the disease, downplayed mass wearing, staged mass into our rallies, |
| 0:37.7 | and ultimately got COVID himself. |
| 0:40.7 | The real risk that secret service agents faced in the Trump era is just one of the eye-popping |
| 0:45.2 | revelations in Carol Lennox' new book, Zero Fail, The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service. |
| 0:51.8 | Lennox is a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter for the Washington Post, who has been |
| 0:55.8 | chronicling the secret service, its triumphs, its mishaps, and its scandals for years. |
| 1:01.3 | She paints a portrait of an agency that is understaffed, underworked, and beleaguered, compromised |
| 1:06.4 | in its core mission that is essential to our democracy. |
| 1:10.4 | We'll talk to Lennox about our new book on this episode of Skull Duggery. |
| 1:15.2 | Hi, do solemnly swear. |
| 1:21.2 | I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States. |
| 1:25.8 | Well, to the best of my building. |
| 1:27.5 | Reserve, protect, and defend. |
| 1:30.0 | Constitution of the United States. |
| 1:31.7 | So help me God. |
... |
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