Secret Service Slip-Ups-Guarding the First Kids Is Never an Easy Job

[RamboLiberal]

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=2674373&page=1

If they can steal a phone, what's to stop them from placing a bomb, asks one former Secret Service agent?

The recent theft of first daughter Barbara Bush's cell phone and purse in Argentina may seem like fodder for the gossip columns, but it is a deadly serious matter to those whose job it is to provide security to the president and his family.

And it brings up some vital questions: What happens to her father's phone number? How many confidential numbers and e-mail addresses need to be changed? What's going on inside the Secret Service? And how could this have happened?

"It's a 24-hour, seven-day activity," says William B. Hackenson, a retired Secret Service agent currently working as an executive at Fortress Global Investigations Corp. "There's a very high risk of being kidnapped or something worse, especially since 9/11. So you always have to be on your guard."

One thing is for certain: It's not easy to be one of the agents guarding President Bush's twin daughters.

[Kiouni]

1. But they're ALIVE!

maybe their purse got snatched but the point is they did there job because the Bush twins are alive.

[pnwmom]

2. They are alive, but no thanks to their Secret Service Agents.

As the OP says, the same person who crawled under the table to grab her purse COULD have crawled under the table to place a bomb. Or to jab a poison dart in her leg. Or whatever.

If the Agents HAD been doing their job, no one would have been crawling under that table.

[cornermouse]

3. The agents have my sympathy.

It would be hard enough to guard the safety of a kid that cooperated. Somehow I suspect the twins don't cooperate. The more I see of them the more I think they've never really had any rules or boundaries set down for them; never been told "no, you can't ".