Ronald Kessler Agents Quotations

To become a Secret Service agent, applicants must pass a polygraph exam. But after being hired, agents are never required to undergo regular lie detector testing again.

The media are always on the lookout for possible sightings of D.B. Cooper, the man who parachuted from a plane with $200,000 in ransom money in November 1971. But the truth is, the mystery man wearing dark sunglasses almost certainly died during the jump, according to the FBI agents on the case at the time.

On a regular basis, to appease White House or campaign staffs, Secret Service officials order agents to ignore basic security rules and let people into events without being put through a magnetometer or metal detector.

Despite constant vilifying by the media and congressional threats to take away the tools needed to uncover plots, FBI agents and CIA officers work silently around the clock and risk their own lives to keep us safe.

Agents who have left the Secret Service to join other federal law enforcement agencies report that training in firearms and counterterrorism tactics in those agencies in many cases far exceeds the quality of what the Secret Service offered.

The FBI Academy teaches new agents that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.

If FBI agents can't be trusted to wiretap within the law, why trust them to carry weapons or make arrests?