Secretary Dillon. Yes. And what I was going to say was about 2 or 3 months before the events in Dallas, the Secret Service had asked the IBM Co. to make a study of this problem for it. That study was not completed until after the events in Dallas, and it did not prove satisfactory because from our point of view it did not go into enough detail in being able to handle criteria so you could tell when you retrieved a name from the file whether it was truly dangerous or not.
We needed a more complex system and after working with Rand Corp., the Research Analysis Corp., and also talking with IBM, we all felt the best way would be to hire some good programers, knowing our problems, and then work out a pilot program and get consultants in.
One of the things we recommend here is appropriation of $100,000 to get consultants from IBM Co., Honeywell or other companies, and get pilot machines to try to work out the details of this system.
Mr. McCloy. For the record, Mr. Secretary, you had no electronic system of this character operating before the assassination?
Secretary Dillon. No. Now, the total of that is 17 agents and 5 specialists for the PRS.
In addition, for a long time, Mr. Rowley has believed that it would be preferable to improve the capacity of the White House detail if we could establish a headquarters pool of 18 men where new individuals who are going into the White House detail would be fully trained first—before, they had to be trained sort of partially on the job—and also through which you could rotate people from the field from time to time, bringing them up to date on Presidential protection.
So we would ask for 18 people, 18 spaces for that.
We have asked for 25 spaces to provide adequate protection for the Vice President in addition to the 10 that are already on board.
Mr. Rankin. Mr. Secretary, excuse me. I think spaces may not be clear to all our readers. Will you explain what that means?
Secretary Dillon. Twenty-five job positions. I think the thing that is very important here is to keep in mind that to keep one man on the job around the clock covering a post, which is the way the Secret Service works—one man that would be always with the President or the Vice President, that would be always watching his house—to get one man requires five job positions. In the first place, the coverage required is for 24 hours a day.