Secret Service Jobs Are a Real Workout

No one would mistake them for Lance Armstrong, nor their bicycle outings for the Tour de France. Still, Secret Service agents assigned to protect President Bush and his Democratic opponent in this campaign season have frequently found themselves exercising their duties on two wheels.

When Bush or Sen. John F. Kerry decide that working out on a bicycle is in order, a Secret Service agent in funny pants and an earpiece is required to be pedaling nearby. (The Secret Service agent will be the one who looks like he -- or she -- isn’t having much fun.)

Because the Secret Service provides round-the-clock oversight to those it is charged with keeping safe, agents are required to participate in whatever athletic or leisure pursuits their “protectees” choose. Over the years, that has included horseback riding, speedboat excursions and scuba diving.

Agents on Kerry’s detail have told reporters they are taking biking courses to keep up with the 60-year-old candidate. And Bush’s security detail has been riding along with the president for months. The 57-year-old chief executive took up mountain biking after a bad knee kept him from running, a fact revealed to the world only after he took a tumble on his bike in Crawford, Texas, in May.

A spokeswoman for the Secret Service -- now part of the Department of Homeland Security -- in Washington confirmed that agents had been working on their biking skills.

“We do train agents in mountain biking,” said Special Agent Ann Roman. “But we don’t get into specifics about the training that we do, for obvious reasons.”

The Secret Service maintains a computerized list of agents and their athletic skills, said William Pickering, a special agent based in Los Angeles whose duties in the past required him to ski alongside President Ford and boat near George H.W. Bush, when he was vice president and president.

“If we don’t have the skills for it, we will train,” Pickering said.

To that end, agents have attended water safety courses put on by the Coast Guard, law-enforcement-related bicycle courses by the Capitol Police and equestrian courses by the U.S. Park Police.

Pickering recalled that during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, a good number of agents tried to master horseback riding -- not always successfully.

“A lot of guys failed,” he said. “It’s a hard, tough course, and he was riding these big thoroughbreds up at the ranch.” One of the more successful Reagan-era riders, he said, had attended the University of Texas on a rodeo scholarship.

When the first President Bush was in office, Pickering said, agents attended a school to learn how to handle speedboats to keep up with the one Bush liked to pilot off the coast of Kennebunkport, Maine.

Tony Chapa, special agent in charge of the Los Angeles office, spent four years assigned to the permanent detail of then-Vice President Al Gore, who was an avid runner.

“We would run from his residence to the Capitol steps, about five miles,” Chapa said. “What bothered me was the heat, because you have your running shorts and your T-shirt on, but on top of that you’d have to have your weapon, your radio and your handcuffs, plus another T-shirt on top of that.” (The second T-shirt conceals the gun holster and other gear.)

Doesn’t sound like much fun, but as Chapa noted, “You’re not doing it for the exercise.”

To much of the public, the agents are perhaps best known for the sunglasses they wear. Though often lampooned, they are not an affectation. The agents don the glasses, the agency’s website says, “to keep the sun out of their eyes -- so they can increase their ability to see what people in the crowd are doing.” (Unlike bicycles, which are provided by the government, agents are required to purchase their own shades.)

To keep up with the job’s demands, agents are expected to be in near-peak condition, Chapa said.

“We advise people that the [job] training is going to be strenuous,” he said. “If you don’t come in the door in excellent physical condition, you’re going to have a hard time.”

The agents also must pass fitness tests four times a year.

Sometimes agents inadvertently become part of the action they are supposed to be monitoring. Last March, when Kerry took a week to decompress from the campaign trail at his vacation home in the ski resort of Ketchum, Idaho, a minor flap ensued after he fell while snowboarding and blamed his Secret Service agent.

“I don’t fall,” Kerry later said. “[The agent] ran into me.” The campaign later said Kerry was joking.

Congress first asked the Secret Service to protect the president in 1901 after the assassination of William McKinley, who was shot while attending an exposition in Buffalo, N.Y. The scope of protection eventually was widened to include presidents’ families and vice presidents and their families and, during the primary season, major contenders for the White House.