LIFE Magazine has a piece “Inside the Secret Service“. (h/t Fark)

It’s quite cool.

I thought slide 16 was interesting:

“Legend has it,” Petro writes in Standing Next to History, “there’s a blood oath that Secret Service agents take in which we swear to lay down our own life to save the president’s. There is no such pledge, no such promise, and, maybe even more important, no such requirement. It’s a myth, nothing more than part of the mystique that surrounds the Secret Service.” That said, Petro goes on to detail expectations that are made of agents. “Most people duck when they hear gunshots. . . But Secret Service agents need to do just the opposite. . . When shots are fired, we’re trained to pull our weapon, stand up straight, and return fire. Instead of protecting ourselves, we turn ourselves into a larger target. That’s one reason why all of our weapons training is done standing up. We don’t do any prone shooting.”

No prone shooting.

A couple years ago I read an in-depth article about Secret Service training. It’s fascinating what they go through.