In the second place, there are holidays, there are weekends off. On a full-time basis, the Secret Service works a 40-hour week, 5-day week, as the rest of the Government does, and there are provisions for sickness and leave, and so forth. When the number of hours that a man can work a year full time is figured out, it requires 5 men to fill one spot.
So that is one reason why these protective numbers may seem rather high to the uninitiated.
When you are talking about the Vice President, and 10 people are required to produce two posts, coverage of two posts, it is obviously not adequate because you have to cover his house, whether he is there or not, so that someone can't come in and put a destructive device in it.
This simply can't be done with the present numbers that are assigned.
Then, going beyond this to complete this list, there is a request for 145 agents in the field offices who would handle the substantially increased volume of security investigations. We are now getting about twice as many referrals already as we did before. Instead of something like 25,000, we are up to something over 50,000, and they expect it will go over 60,000 next year.
To really run these down out in the districts, they need, obviously, more men than they have had.
Now, one thing that they also need these fellows for, which I think is important, is keeping track of more dangerous individuals. They have tried to keep track of a few of them. But I think that probably a good many more should be put on that list. It requires more people, so they can periodically check up, and particularly before a visit, that all of these people are looked at to see where they are and what they have been doing recently before the President visits a particular place.
Mr. Rankin. Mr. Secretary, while you are on that subject, could you explain to the Commission how you make use of your agents in the White House duty and those in the field so they will understand that?
Secretary Dillon. Well, yes; the White House detail is composed of about 60 people now. About half of these are what you might call, more or less, permanent employees. They have been there for a long time, 10 years, 12 years, 15 years, on the White House detail.
The other half are shorter time employees who generally serve up to 3 years on the White House detail and then either leave because they prefer other duty in the Secret Service or sometimes leave because the Secret Service feels they can do other duty better.