0:02

Okay, let's do this. Bill Clinton. You

0:05

want me to give him to you? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:07

Okay. Eagle. George W. Bush. George

0:10

W. Treblezer. Obama. Renegade.

0:14

Donald Trump. You

0:17

know what? That one, I don't know, because

0:19

I was out by that time. I

0:21

retired in 2016. That's

0:23

Cindy Marble. She worked for the Secret Service

0:26

for almost 27 years,

0:28

which included stints guarding George W. Bush

0:30

and his father, George H. W. Bush.

0:33

I was asking her about the code

0:35

names used for different presidents. Donald

0:37

Trump is mogul, by the way, and Joe

0:40

Biden is Celtic. One of

0:42

the things I didn't know about code

0:44

names was that the code names of

0:46

everyone in a president's family will share

0:48

the same first letter. So,

0:50

as she said, George W. Bush was trailblazer.

0:53

Laura Bush, tempo. Barbara

0:56

Bush, turquoise. Jenna Bush

0:58

was twinkle. Nice alliteration

1:00

there. I asked Cindy,

1:02

where those code names come from? White

1:04

House Communication Agency. WACA gives those. So

1:07

they'll assign them? Mm-hmm. Do

1:10

the candidates or, I guess, presidents have any choice

1:12

in those? They do. I

1:14

mean, I know that some protectees have gotten

1:16

them and then changed them. They

1:18

didn't get a name they wanted. They wanted a

1:20

sexier name. Right, and it was Vice President Gore

1:23

got Saw Horse. That was the first one that

1:25

was picked for him. And it was, first of

1:27

all, it was just hard to say. So then

1:29

he went with, I believe it was Sundance. Yeah,

1:32

I think that was a good call. Yeah, yeah. I'm

1:37

Dan Heath, and this is What It's Like

1:39

To Be. In

1:47

every episode, we walk in the shoes of someone

1:49

from a different profession. An FBI

1:52

special agent, a nurse, a

1:55

forensic accountant. We want to

1:57

know what they do all day at work. Today, we're going to

1:59

have a conversation. ask Cindy Marble what

2:01

it's like to be a secret service

2:03

agent. We'll talk about what an

2:05

agent is looking for when they scan a rope

2:07

line, what kind of hours you have

2:09

to work when you're on the campaign trail, and

2:12

what it's like to have a conversation

2:14

with somebody who has threatened the president.

2:17

Stay with us. So

2:23

probably everybody listening to this

2:26

has seen multiple portrayals of secret

2:28

service agents in movies

2:30

and TV shows and so forth. And

2:33

so our associations are motorcades

2:35

and watching over presidents at public

2:39

rallies and things like that. Is

2:42

that accurate? Like what is a

2:44

normal day like in the real world? So

2:46

it depends on what your role is. If you

2:49

are working the shift, it's

2:51

a number of people that are basically around

2:53

the president all the time. And if it's

2:55

a typical day at the White House, they're

2:57

holding posts at the White

2:59

House. You could be assigned to the

3:01

transportation section, which is the cars. So

3:03

you're either preparing or running routes or

3:06

doing advance work. You could be on

3:08

the first lady's detail. It's the same

3:10

type of thing where you're responsible for

3:12

her movements. So do you get to

3:14

know the people that you're

3:17

protecting personally? Yes.

3:19

In the positions that I held

3:21

when I was with George Sr.,

3:23

it's a smaller detail and

3:26

they get to know everybody. And of course

3:28

they were just such wonderfully gracious people. They

3:30

made it a point to get to know

3:33

all of us. So very fortunate with them.

3:35

And then my second time that I was

3:37

on the president's detail, I was a senior

3:39

supervisor. So I worked directly, you know, with

3:42

the president closest to him and sometimes the

3:44

primary supervisor with him. So got

3:46

to know him as well. And

3:49

so what are those dynamics like

3:51

if you're in a room with, you know,

3:53

George Bush, Sr., are you

3:55

supposed to pretend like you're kind of not

3:58

there or can you make small talk

4:00

or what happens? If,

4:02

you know, if he was talking to me, certainly I

4:04

would make small talk with him. But no, I mean,

4:06

it's like you go into a room and, you know,

4:09

you're at a point where you can observe and

4:11

ensure that everything is the way it should

4:14

be and that you just leave them to

4:17

do their thing and to socialize and things

4:19

like that. And you just kind of, you

4:21

know, stand off and observe and, again,

4:23

just make sure everything is the way that it should be. So

4:27

is the day-to-day work physically

4:30

challenging? Some of

4:32

it is. The day-to-day work of the

4:34

protection mission is physically

4:36

challenging and mentally challenging as

4:39

well. But it can take a toll

4:41

on the body, that's for sure. If you're, you know,

4:43

there are long days and

4:45

sometimes some pretty short nights if you're

4:47

talking about sleep time. I mean,

4:49

if you look at the pace that

4:51

a president keeps and it's just

4:53

amazing to me, you think

4:56

about all the people that are going along with

4:58

that and there's not a

5:00

lot of sleep time. I mean, how

5:02

long would a normal day be for a

5:04

Secret Service agent? You know, it would

5:06

depend. I mean, you could be working a

5:09

shift for 12 hours. You could be

5:11

doing a 12-hour shift, getting on a

5:13

plane, flying to somewhere else, getting

5:16

a few hours sleep. The campaign years

5:18

are probably the most grueling because you're

5:20

typically, at least back in the day,

5:23

I don't know what it is now,

5:26

but it was a 21-day rotation. So you would

5:28

be out, you know, you would leave your home,

5:31

you'd be gone for 21 days and you'd work

5:34

the three different shifts within those

5:36

three weeks. So you'd be on midnights,

5:39

days and then afternoons. And, you know,

5:41

oftentimes you'd finish up a midnight shift

5:43

at maybe 8 a.m., hop

5:45

a plane to the next city wherever the

5:47

protectee was going. And you may get in,

5:50

you know, you think about weather delays and

5:52

all of everything that happens when you travel

5:54

and you might get in two hours before

5:56

your shift starts again and you're on a

5:58

midnight shift again. That can

6:00

be pretty physically demanding. And

6:03

when you're following the president, like, are you on

6:05

Air Force One or like, how do you get

6:07

from place to place? Again, it

6:09

just depends. If you're the working shift with

6:12

the president, you're going to be on Air Force

6:14

One. If you are the

6:16

non-working shifts or have

6:18

another role, you could be on what we

6:21

call a car plane, which is a military

6:23

transport and we call them car planes because

6:25

they carry our cars. You could

6:27

be on that, either a C5 or a 141, or you could

6:29

be commercial, or you could be in

6:31

a car. It's depending. So,

6:34

what do you think people get the

6:37

most wrong about the job? Because we

6:39

have, as I've mentioned, been, had

6:42

our perceptions skewed by media portrayals over the years.

6:44

Like, what do you think is the biggest difference

6:46

between what we think the job is and what

6:48

it really is? I think

6:50

people think of it just as bodyguards and

6:53

not understanding all the

6:55

work that not just goes into doing that

6:57

physical protection piece, but all the work that's

6:59

going on around that they don't see. I've

7:02

had people say to me, your job must be

7:04

really boring when they've seen me

7:07

standing post somewhere and I just

7:09

smile. Boring. That was never

7:11

one of my stereotypes about the job.

7:13

Yeah, and I just smiled because I

7:16

know what I'm doing and

7:19

I know what I'm thinking and what

7:21

goes into the job and everything. And no,

7:24

not boring. I have to say

7:26

on this topic of boring, I was looking

7:28

at one of the training agendas. This is

7:30

on the government website. It's

7:32

called the protective detail refresher. And

7:35

some of the bullet points just

7:37

absolutely dazzled me. There was like

7:39

skid control, motorcade formations, high

7:42

center of gravity vehicles,

7:44

vehicle ambush countermeasures. I

7:46

mean, I've seen a lot of corporate training and

7:48

none of it is that good. There's

7:51

not a one. So does

7:53

that list of things spark any

7:55

memories? Oh, I mean out

7:57

at our training facility in Beltsville, truly.

8:00

it's one of those things where it's like, I can't

8:02

believe I get paid for this because you're

8:05

out having fun. I mean, you're out, you

8:07

know, you're doing a serious job and

8:09

you're learning, you know, and

8:11

training, but it is, you

8:13

know, it's physical and you're driving

8:15

fast or you're shooting, you're

8:18

doing all kinds of things that are, no,

8:22

it's not a corporate environment where you're going

8:24

in every day and looking at

8:26

papers. What's the craziest thing you've

8:28

gotten to do as part of a training

8:31

exercise? You know, there's the basic

8:33

driving that we all do and

8:35

the, you know, jumping out

8:37

of moving vehicles. Wow.

8:40

So how do you learn how to jump out of a vehicle?

8:44

Very carefully. So,

8:48

Cindy, we're recording this during

8:50

campaign season and one

8:52

of the things I wanted to ask you about was when

8:55

candidates do the thing where they, you

8:57

know, visit a diner in New

8:59

Hampshire, I know it's your

9:02

job to keep them safe during that visit.

9:04

What do you have to do before the

9:06

visit happens? Like what's the protocol? Right,

9:09

you would do an advance. So, you know,

9:11

given the information that the protective was going

9:13

to go there, you'd go out ahead of

9:16

time, advance, speak to

9:18

local law enforcement there, you

9:20

know, make connections with

9:22

those folks, speak to the people at the

9:24

diner. And what are you asking them? What

9:27

do you ask law enforcement and what do

9:29

you ask the diner owner? Well,

9:31

with law enforcement, you're basically setting everything up

9:33

from a security, you know, standpoint of how

9:35

you're getting in, how you're getting out, you

9:38

know, the support that they're gonna provide you,

9:41

you know, from the time you land at the airport,

9:43

you know, to the time you depart. You're

9:45

speaking with the folks at the diner

9:47

to know that you're coming, that there's,

9:50

you know, you

9:52

wanna make sure that you're respectful

9:55

of their business. So, you know, you

9:57

don't wanna just go in there and... and

10:00

not give them any notice or be

10:02

able to prepare. When

10:04

you're monitoring a crowd

10:06

like on a rope

10:08

line or something or a campaign event,

10:10

you always see the agent scanning. Like

10:12

what are you scanning for? Like what

10:14

are the warning flags? You

10:16

know, a lot of it has to do with

10:19

somebody's presence, their demeanor. You're

10:21

looking at how they're carrying themselves,

10:24

how they're dressed, do they look

10:26

different than everyone else? Is everyone

10:28

else excited and they're not or

10:30

vice versa? Where are their hands?

10:33

I mean, a lot of the time, you know,

10:35

especially when you're in a rope line situation

10:37

and things are moving quickly and you're

10:39

watching, you wanna know where people's hands are

10:42

so that you can react. But

10:44

it really is that instinct that I

10:46

think is developed through all the training

10:48

and through all the experience of looking

10:51

at people and knowing, again,

10:53

instinctively, like something's not right

10:55

here. And

10:57

you'll react accordingly. One

11:00

of the other things that I feel like

11:02

we've all picked up from the media is

11:04

the idea that any threat of the president

11:06

is taken seriously, even if it was supposedly

11:09

a joke. Is that true?

11:12

Absolutely, 100%. Every

11:14

threat is investigated. I

11:17

was assigned to the protective intelligence division and

11:19

it's, you know, 24-7 operation, just

11:22

like everything is in the secret service. And

11:24

we would get some interesting phone calls at

11:27

two or three in the morning. Oftentimes you

11:29

would know that it was somebody calling from

11:31

a bar or something like that. But

11:33

even with that, it was something that was

11:35

always investigated. Wait, somebody would call

11:38

you, like, to say that

11:41

they had heard someone else threaten? Is that what you

11:43

mean? Oh, yes. Cindy said that

11:45

in a situation like somebody calling from a

11:47

bar, the secret service would get someone from

11:50

the nearest local field office to start an

11:52

investigation and they would go track down the

11:54

person who made the threat. I

11:57

asked if she'd ever been part of those

11:59

conversations. Oh, yeah. Quite

12:01

a few, actually. I mean,

12:03

what is that like? They

12:05

can be interesting, you know, being

12:07

part of the protective intelligence

12:10

division. And even my

12:12

time before that was at the Washington field

12:14

office, and the Washington field office would be

12:16

the ones responsible for responding over to

12:18

the White House if there was a White House, what we

12:20

would call a White House gate caller. You

12:22

know, somebody would come up to the gate and, you

12:25

know, either want to speak to the president or claim

12:27

that they were related to the president or something

12:29

like that. So we would be brought out to

12:32

talk with them. And it was interesting, you were

12:34

sort of a part psychologist hat and,

12:37

you know, part police,

12:39

part investigator, and you would just

12:41

listen and, you know, hear what they had to say.

12:44

And a lot of the time you would be connecting

12:47

that person back to whether

12:49

it was a family member or

12:53

maybe their physician. Oh, my gosh.

12:57

It never dawned on me that this, I mean, it's

12:59

almost like there's some social work

13:02

aspects to this. Very

13:04

much so. There are a lot

13:06

of people that are dealing with some mental health issues,

13:08

for sure. You know, and

13:10

you hit the nail on the head with the social

13:12

work because it truly is a lot

13:14

of that. And that's something that people certainly

13:17

don't know about the job is that, you

13:19

know, sometimes we'd be talking to folks and,

13:21

you know, we'd ask them, do you feel like you

13:23

need to see a doctor? And, you know, we

13:26

would take them to the hospital or there would

13:28

be times not that

13:30

often, but where we would have to take

13:33

somebody even if they didn't feel like they

13:35

needed to go, they, you know, we felt

13:37

they needed to be checked out by a

13:39

physician. But more

13:41

often than not, I was taking people down

13:43

to the Greyhound bus station or to Travelers

13:45

Aid to get money to go

13:47

back to wherever they came from. Have

13:50

you ever had a conversation with someone where

13:52

you felt like they really

13:54

were a legitimate threat? I

13:58

think. Yes,

14:01

I did work one particular case that

14:03

when I was assigned to the protective

14:05

intelligence division of someone that I was

14:08

very concerned about. And you

14:10

know, disguising whatever details you need to disguise,

14:13

what can you tell us about that? It

14:18

was a situation where I felt that

14:20

this person would really do anything to

14:22

get the attention

14:24

of the Protect E. So

14:26

it was a situation where we

14:29

just, again, putting those protective measures

14:31

into place, spending a lot of

14:33

time with that person and ensuring

14:35

that they were getting the proper

14:38

treatment that they needed. So

14:40

a combination of physical protection and

14:43

the intervention and help getting

14:45

that person the assistance that they needed.

14:48

Gosh, I didn't think about how... I

14:51

guess my mental model was that a

14:53

lot of the people making threats would

14:55

be some kind of political extremists, but

14:58

it sounds like it's a lot more common

15:01

that it's just a function of some kind

15:03

of severe mental health issue, which totally changes

15:05

the way you handle it. It

15:08

does. And there are different motivations.

15:10

The Secret Service has done a

15:12

lot of research, really landmark research,

15:15

on targeted violence. And that's

15:17

what we look at when we're looking at folks who

15:19

are potentially a threat

15:21

to not only just

15:23

government figures, but even high profile

15:26

individuals, movie stars and things like

15:28

that. There are

15:30

different motivations. People are dealing with

15:32

different life stressors. It doesn't necessarily

15:34

have to be a diagnosed mental illness,

15:37

and oftentimes it's not, but

15:39

more a deterioration of mental

15:41

stability, I guess you could say. Or

15:44

it is grievance fueled that takes them

15:46

to a point of, I have no

15:48

other choice but to act. So

15:51

it's really having that understanding of

15:55

where somebody is in their life, what the life

15:57

stressors are, if there is some

15:59

sort of... mental health issue that is

16:01

going along with that and then figuring out

16:04

how to again protect against that and

16:06

also what measures need to be put

16:09

into place to help mitigate that

16:11

and hopefully get the person the

16:13

help that they need. Hey

16:17

folks, Dan here. Our

16:19

next three episodes after this one are

16:21

part of our summer job series. This

16:23

is our first series, how exciting is

16:25

that? And we have some doozies ready

16:27

for you. First up

16:30

is Ocean Lifeguard. When

16:32

it's really quiet and the dolphins come by,

16:34

you can hear them breathe. You

16:36

can hear that sound of just, you

16:39

can't even see them, but you can hear them. Then

16:42

we'll take a ride with an ice

16:44

cream truck driver. Kids, they're like, Oh,

16:46

can I come drive with you? Can I come

16:48

in the ice cream truck? I get that all

16:50

the time and I was like, believe me, you

16:52

ask my kids, you will hate it. 15

16:55

minutes in. And for the third

16:57

episode in the series, we'll go deep with

16:59

a summer camp director. And

17:01

then we sing sad songs, the sadder, the better. You

17:03

know, the jet plane is the last song and everybody

17:05

cries and it's great. Do you

17:08

cry? No, no, I'm smiling. These

17:11

episodes are fun and

17:13

nostalgic and surprising, just like

17:15

good summer entertainment should be.

17:18

I can't wait to hear what you all think of them. But

17:21

for now, let's get back to

17:23

the Secret Service. What

17:28

did the Secret Service learn from the famous

17:31

failures like, you know, the JFK

17:33

assassination, of course, and Reagan being

17:35

shot in the 80s? What

17:38

was changed in the aftermath of those things? Well,

17:41

from a physical protection standpoint,

17:43

obviously with President Kennedy, it

17:45

was, you know, open vehicles.

17:49

You know, one thing... That

17:51

would never happen today. We'd

17:54

certainly not want to do that. Mm-hmm.

17:58

You know, understanding... the ability of

18:00

someone on a higher, you know, the high

18:02

ground, as we would call it, in monitoring,

18:05

you know, open windows and buildings

18:07

and things like that. That obviously

18:09

came from that event. Other

18:12

measures that were put in place after

18:14

the Reagan shooting, there were

18:16

a lot of lessons learned from that.

18:19

We, at that point, did not have

18:21

a hospital agent. What's a hospital

18:23

agent? Somebody assigned to

18:25

the local hospital in understanding what

18:27

the abilities are of the hospital,

18:29

wherever you are, that's part of

18:31

the work that we do, is

18:33

liaisoning with hospitals and

18:35

the trauma surgeons that are there. Oh,

18:38

wow. So you have to know, like,

18:40

if something happens, like, we're going to

18:42

get the protectee to this hospital with

18:44

this surgeon standing by. Wow. Right.

18:47

So, I mean, that's, again, that's part of the advanced work,

18:49

but also part of the relationship

18:51

building that I think is very

18:53

unique in the

18:56

Secret Service. I think, more

18:58

than any other law enforcement agency of

19:00

the fact that it's not just the

19:02

agents that carry out this protective mission,

19:05

it's all the local law enforcement that's

19:07

involved. It's the hospitals, it's the fire

19:09

department, you know, it's the ambulance drivers,

19:11

it's all of these folks that are

19:14

involved in each and every

19:16

movement that occurs. I

19:18

asked Cindy about some of the most

19:20

historic events that she witnessed, and one

19:22

of them was the 9-11 attacks. She

19:25

was with George H. W. Bush, who had

19:27

been visiting George W. Bush at the White

19:29

House the day before, and then on 9-11.

19:33

We left at about 8.30 that morning

19:35

from the White House, and we were

19:37

in the air en route

19:40

to another location when we

19:42

got word that the first plane

19:44

had hit. Oh, wow. You were in the

19:46

air. Yes. What

19:48

was that like, hearing that news? You

19:50

know, it was when we got the

19:52

news that the first plane had hit

19:54

one of the towers. I

19:57

immediately thought of our... Secret

20:00

Service New York field office was based in one of

20:03

the towers at the World Trade Center. And,

20:05

you know, I obviously thought, you know, that

20:07

it was, I wasn't thinking it was a

20:10

terrorist attack. It was just, we just thought

20:12

a plane crashed into it. And

20:14

I thought of my friends that were there. And

20:18

it wasn't until, obviously, you know, a few

20:21

minutes later that we learned that there was another

20:23

one and that it was a completely different picture

20:25

than what we were thinking it was.

20:28

And what happened after you got word of

20:30

the second attack? Well, as

20:32

you know, all air

20:34

travel was grounded at that point. So we

20:36

had to land. I mean, including

20:39

the former president. Yes. Wow.

20:42

Yeah. So we had to land. And

20:44

we, you know, we had to land basically

20:46

where we were. The pilot had to

20:48

find an airport to land

20:50

at. They were grounded for about

20:53

a day. And then the former president

20:55

was given special authorization to fly. And

20:58

that was just one memory of several

21:00

that Cindy mentioned. She

21:02

flew to Saudi Arabia with George H.W. Bush

21:04

in 1991, right after the Desert Storm operation.

21:09

Then that led her to remember

21:11

that when Iraq had first invaded

21:13

Kuwait, she'd been protecting Margaret Thatcher

21:15

at the time. Thatcher, of

21:17

course, was the prime minister of the UK for

21:19

over a decade. I mean, it's pretty incredible, isn't

21:21

it, to have the kind of career where it's

21:23

like there are so many things going

21:26

through your mind that you can't really choose one.

21:29

Right. My grandmother, when I started the job, said

21:31

you need to write all this stuff down and

21:33

I should have listened to her because I didn't. But

21:36

like I said, I've had a blessed career and

21:38

I've been able to see and

21:40

do things. I've been

21:43

intimately involved in state of

21:45

the union and being able to walk

21:47

behind the president as he's entering the

21:49

chamber to do the speech. And that's

21:52

pretty incredible. The first time

21:54

seeing the Supreme Court justices as

21:56

they're walking in to the state

21:58

of the union, which I thought was really great. pretty cool. I

22:01

don't get too starstruck at all, but I did when

22:03

I saw the Supremes. So,

22:05

Cindy, we always have a lightning round of

22:07

questions on our show. Let me fire

22:10

away here. Okay. What is a

22:12

tool specific to your profession that

22:14

you really like using? Well,

22:17

I was always fond

22:19

of the extendable baton. Mmm.

22:23

Tell me more. It's

22:25

a good tool just to

22:28

have a veil. You know, it's a non-lethal measure,

22:32

and you know, it was nice to

22:34

know that it was there. Did

22:37

you ever have to use it? Yes,

22:40

but not in a way to hit anybody. I

22:42

think it was more of to get

22:44

people to step back, that

22:47

type of thing, but not ever used

22:49

to harm anyone. I usually

22:52

ask guests about a word or phrase that

22:54

only someone from their profession would be likely

22:57

to know. Cindy had actually

22:59

brought up a good one earlier in

23:01

our conversation. Left of boom. Boom is

23:03

the bad thing. Left of boom is

23:05

before it. It's the what

23:08

we call the preventative time.

23:10

That's all the work you do

23:12

so you don't get to boom. So did

23:14

you catch that? Imagine a timeline

23:16

that flows from left to right and

23:18

somewhere in the middle there's a boom,

23:20

that's the bad thing, and

23:22

being left of boom, well,

23:25

that's the time you've got to prevent the bad

23:27

thing from happening. I love that expression.

23:29

And she had another good one too. One thing

23:32

that I was thinking about it, it was it's

23:34

always it was the constant battle between how the

23:36

service said it and how the staff said it.

23:38

When the president or a protectee was gonna stay

23:40

overnight somewhere, we would call it an

23:42

RON, remain overnight. The staff would always want to call

23:44

it Ron, and it would just like annoy all of

23:46

us. It's not Ron, it's RON. I love that. It's

23:48

not a Ron.

23:53

Stop saying that. It's not a Ron. Yeah, so we

23:55

you know it's like oh and you could pick those

23:58

staff guys out a million miles away. Amateurs.

24:02

Amateurs. What's

24:05

a sound specific to your profession that you're

24:07

likely to hear? Hail

24:09

to the Chief. Oh, gosh,

24:13

I hadn't thought about that. I bet

24:15

you have heard that a few times.

24:17

Oh, yeah, many. And so it was

24:19

pleasant repetition and not annoying repetition? No,

24:22

not annoying at all. No, it's special.

24:24

When you hear that, there are special

24:26

moments of watching

24:29

Air Force One land. We

24:32

stand out there often and say, it's like

24:34

no matter how many times that bird

24:36

lands, it's still something pretty cool. It's

24:39

also good to see it take off. Yeah.

24:42

Because the work is done for the day anyway.

24:46

But yeah, I mean, wheels down is a good

24:48

thing to hear and wheels up is a good

24:50

thing to hear. Is it

24:52

an all consuming job? Yes,

24:55

it is. It honestly

24:57

becomes, it does not

24:59

become a job or it doesn't become

25:02

work. It becomes your life. It's

25:05

a 24 seven thing. And

25:08

it is who you become. Do

25:11

you miss it? I

25:13

miss those fun aspects of

25:15

it. I miss

25:17

the people. I think that

25:20

the Secret Service as a

25:22

whole is the people

25:25

are incredible. High

25:27

stakes job, but everybody, we

25:30

laughed a lot as well. So I

25:33

do miss that. There are other aspects that I

25:35

don't. Your life is

25:37

not your own. Cindy

25:42

Marble was a Secret Service agent for nearly

25:44

27 years. She

25:47

retired in 2016. The

25:50

biggest surprise for me from this

25:52

conversation was that the phrase social

25:54

work popped up. Did

25:56

not see that coming. I

25:58

just never considered it. that a lot

26:01

of the people who pose threats might

26:03

actually just need mental health treatment more

26:05

than some kind of law enforcement remedy?

26:08

I couldn't help picturing Cindy at the White

26:10

House talking to some of these random people

26:12

who come up to the gates, figuring

26:15

out who to connect them with. Who

26:18

knew that was part of the Secret Service job? The

26:21

other thing that stood out to me was

26:23

how important sustained focus is to the job.

26:26

I mean, maybe your first month on the

26:28

shift in the White House, you're dazzled, and

26:30

it's easy to stay alert. But

26:32

on the seventh hour and the 184th day, it's

26:36

a very different thing. How do

26:38

you keep your guard up? And

26:40

this is kind of a weird

26:42

association, but there are two more

26:44

shows coming up with exactly the

26:46

same job requirement. There's an ocean

26:48

lifeguard coming up next. He

26:50

talks about how hard it is to stay

26:52

vigilant in the lifeguard stand. And

26:55

then soon after that is an episode with a

26:57

long haul trucker. Imagine having

26:59

to stay dialed in for 11

27:01

hours in a row on the

27:03

road, so mentally taxing. For

27:06

the record, I don't think anyone has

27:08

ever previously linked the careers of Secret

27:10

Service agent, long haul trucker, and ocean

27:13

lifeguard, but that's part of what

27:15

makes this show so fun to work on. Thinking

27:18

through advanced logistics, how do you get

27:20

the president from A to B to

27:22

C back to A safely? Scanning

27:25

crowds for things that just don't

27:27

seem right. Taking every

27:29

threat seriously, enduring the gauntlet

27:31

of long hours worked by

27:33

a president, staying focused, keeping

27:35

alert. Folks, that's what it's

27:37

like to be a Secret

27:39

Service agent. This episode was

27:42

produced by Matt Purdy. I'm

27:44

Dan Heath, and stay tuned for the

27:46

summer job series coming in two

27:48

weeks. Take care.