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The United States Secret Service is a federal agency of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The purpose of the Secret Service is to protect the President, the Vice President, and their immediate families.
They are also assigned with protection of major Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates and nominees, as well as their spouses, and their children.
Benjamin Perch was the head of the Secret Service during the events of Veto Power.
Day 1
The Secret Service provided protection for Senator David Palmer, as he was a prominent Presidential candidate. Agents had to interrupt his speech at the Santa Clarita Power Plant when Jack Bauer reached for the weapon of Agent Alan Hayes to disrupt an assassination attempt by Jonathan Matijevich. Secret Service head Frank Simes had Jack placed in custody, but Jack escaped from Agents Hayes, John, and Mitchell.
Day 2
At the Northwest Regional Operations Complex, Agent Richard Armus, freed the journalist Ron Wieland from custody without permission from President Palmer. Another agent, Ted Simmons, secretly tortured Roger Stanton on Palmer's orders to extract a confession.
Day 4
Agents Greg Merfield and Frank Wells, following orders directly from President Charles Logan, tried to arrest Jack Bauer in the middle of a sensitive CTU operation. Their intereference gave the terrorist mastermind Habib Marwan the chance to escape from The Hub. Later, the corrupt agent Dale Spalding attempted to murder Bauer for Walt Cummings. He believed he was successful.
Day 6
The Secret Service checkpoint agent at the White House bunker failed to find a bomb carried by Bruce Carson. Carson, with help from Reed Pollock, was very nearly successful in killing President Wayne Palmer but failed due to intervention from Hamri Al-Assad.
Redemption
The corrupt Secret Service agent Edward Vossler, charged to protect Roger Taylor, had his primary loyalty to the weapons dealer Jonas Hodges. Vossler sent two men, Quinn and Halcott, to detain, torture, and then murder Chris Whitley for Hodges.
Before Day 7
Brian Gedge, another corrupt Secret Service agent, murdered Roger Taylor and manipulated the scene to make it look like a suicide.
Secret Service agents
- See the category of named agents, and also the list of unnamed agents.
Background information and notes
Although the Secret Service is most known for its protective duties, it is primarily responsible for investigating violations of federal laws relating to counterfeiting and other financial crimes of the United States. This is due in part because prior to the September 11th attacks, the Secret Service was under the jurisdiction of the Department of the Treasury. It started presidential protection duties after the assassination of William McKinley in 1901. After the assassination of Robert Kennedy in 1968, the Service's mandate was altered further to include protection of presidential candidates.
A number of 24 stars have played Secret Service agents, including:
- Xander Berkeley, Glenn Morshower, and Timothy Carhart in Air Force One (1997)
- Jude Ciccolella in Head of State (2003)
- Roger Cross in X2: X-Men United (2003)
- Gavin Glennon in an episode of The West Wing
- Michael O'Neill in several episodes of The West Wing
- Kiefer Sutherland in The Sentinel (2006)
- Harris Yulin in Rush Hour 2 (2001)