Zangara was electrocuted on March 20, 1933, only 33 days after his attempt on Roosevelt. No evidence of accomplices or conspiracy came to light, but there was some sensational newspaper speculation, wholly undocumented, that Zangara may have been hired by Chicago gangsters to kill Cermak.[A7-45]
The force provided since the Civil War by the Washington Metropolitan Police for the protection of the White House had grown to 54 men by 1922.[A7-46] In that year Congress enacted legislation creating the White House Police Force as a separate organization under the direct control of the President.[A7-47] This force was actually supervised by the President’s military aide until 1930, when Congress placed supervision under the Chief of the Secret Service.[A7-48] Although Congress transferred control and supervision of the force to the Secretary of the Treasury in 1962,[A7-49] the Secretary delegated supervision to the Chief of the Secret Service.[A7-50]
The White House detail of the Secret Service grew in size slowly from the original 2 men assigned in 1902. In 1914 it still numbered only 5, but during World War I it was increased to 10 men. Additional men were added when the President traveled. After the war the size of the detail grew until it reached 16 agents and 2 supervisors by 1939. World War II created new and greater protection problems, especially those arising from the President’s trips abroad to the Grand Strategy Conferences in such places as Casablanca, Quebec, Tehran, Cairo, and Yalta. To meet the increased demands, the White House detail was increased to 37 men early in the war.[A7-51]
The volume of mail received by the White House had always been large, but it reached huge proportions under Franklin D. Roosevelt. Presidents had always received threatening letters but never in such quantities. To deal with this growing problem, the Secret Service established in 1940 the Protective Research Section to analyze and make available to those charged with protecting the President, information from White House mail and other sources concerning people potentially capable of violence to the President. The Protective Research Section undoubtedly permitted the Secret Service to anticipate and forestall many incidents that might have been embarrassing or harmful to the President.[A7-52]
Although there was no advance warning of the attempt on Harry S. Truman’s life on November 1, 1950, the protective measures taken by the Secret Service availed, and the assassins never succeeded in firing directly at the President. The assassins—Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola, Puerto Rican Nationalists living in New York—tried to force their way into Blair House, at the time the President’s residence while the White House was being repaired. Blair House was guarded by White House policemen and Secret Service agents. In the ensuing gun battle, Torresola and one White House policeman were killed, and Collazo and two White House policemen were wounded. Had the assassins succeeded in entering the front door of Blair House, they would probably have been cut down immediately by another Secret Service agent inside who kept the doorway covered with a submachine gun from his vantage point at the foot of the main stairs. In all, some 27 shots were fired in less than 3 minutes.[A7-53]
Collazo was brought to trial in 1951 and sentenced to death, but President Truman commuted the sentence to life imprisonment on July 24, 1952. Although there was a great deal of evidence linking Collazo and Torresola to the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico and its leader, Pedro Albizu Campos, the Government could not establish that the attack on the President was part of a larger Nationalist conspiracy.[A7-54]
The attack on President Truman led to the enactment in 1951 of legislation that permanently authorized the Secret Service to protect the President, his immediate family, the President-elect, and the Vice President, the last upon his request. Protection of the Vice President by the Secret Service had begun in January 1945 when Harry S. Truman occupied the office.[A7-55]
In 1962 Congress further enlarged the list of Government officers to be safeguarded, authorizing protection of the Vice President (or the officer next in order of succession to the Presidency) without requiring his request therefor; of the Vice President-elect; and of a former President, at his request, for a reasonable period after his departure from office. The Secret Service considered this “reasonable period” to be 6 months.[A7-56]
Amendments to the threat statute of 1917, passed in 1955 and 1962, made it a crime to threaten to harm the President-elect, the Vice President, or other officers next in succession to either office. The President’s immediate family was not included in the threat statute.[A7-57]
Congressional concern regarding the uses to which the President might put the Secret Service—first under Theodore Roosevelt and subsequently under Woodrow Wilson—caused Congress to place tight restrictions on the functions of the Service and the uses of its funds.[A7-58] The restrictions probably prevented the Secret Service from developing into a general investigative agency, leaving the field open for some other agency when the need arose. The other agency proved to be the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), established within the Department of Justice in 1908.[A7-59]