Narrator: In the late summer of 2012, a decorated Secret Service agent from the elite Counter Assault Team, using the pseudonym Brad Gable, sat down for a drink with a sergeant major from Delta Force. After a week of joint training, Gable asked for an honest assessment of his unit's capabilities. The response was chilling. "I feel sorry for you guys," the Delta Force operator said. "The Service has really let you down. You’ll never be able to stop a real attack." This wasn't just a critique; it was a confirmation of a terrifying fear held by many agents: that the agency entrusted with the life of the president was operating on borrowed time and luck. This story of institutional decay, a slow-motion crisis hidden behind a facade of sunglasses and stoicism, is the central investigation of Carol Leonnig's Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service. It reveals how an agency with a "zero fail" mission has been pushed to the brink of catastrophe.

Narrator: The modern Secret Service was born from its most catastrophic failure: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Before November 22, 1963, the agency was a relatively small, underfunded, and undertrained organization. In the early 1960s, it operated with a budget of just $5 million and only thirty-four agents assigned to the White House. The book details a culture of complacency leading up to the Dallas trip. The night before the assassination, several agents on Kennedy's detail, including some on the morning shift, were out drinking late at a Fort Worth club called the Cellar. This laxity was a symptom of a larger problem. Kennedy himself often undermined his own security, famously ordering agents off the running boards of his limousine because he wanted to appear more accessible to the people.

The three shots fired in Dealey Plaza exposed every one of these weaknesses. The initial confusion, the delayed reaction of the driver, and the inability to shield the president created a trauma that seared itself into the agency's DNA. In the aftermath, Chief James Rowley, wracked with guilt, began a massive overhaul. The agency's budget and manpower exploded. Training was professionalized, technology was upgraded, and the playbook for presidential protection was rewritten. The tragedy in Dallas created the modern Secret Service, an agency now defined by its singular, all-consuming mission to ensure such a failure never happened again.

Narrator: A recurring theme in Zero Fail is the fundamental tension between security and the political need for a president to be seen as open and accessible. This conflict is often exacerbated by the presidents themselves, who can become the biggest obstacle to their own protection. President Kennedy was a prime example. Beyond his disdain for overt security, his reckless personal life created immense risks. Agents were forced into a code of silence, looking the other way as Kennedy slipped away for late-night trysts or as his aide, David Powers, escorted women into the White House. One agent, Larry Newman, reflected on the moral compromise, stating, "We had to acquiesce to a form of behavior that was dangerous... not to us, but to the country and to the protection of the president."

This dilemma was not unique to Kennedy. President Reagan, eager to connect with the public, once insisted on an impromptu walk to church, giving his detail leader, Bob DeProspero, only twenty minutes' notice. DeProspero’s furious objections were overruled by White House staff focused on public image. The walk proceeded with dangerously inadequate security, a fact made terrifyingly clear when John Hinckley Jr. attempted to assassinate Reagan the very next day. These stories reveal that the Secret Service is often caught in an impossible bind, forced to protect presidents who, for reasons of politics or personal appetite, actively resist the very measures designed to keep them alive.

Narrator: The integrity of the Secret Service has been repeatedly threatened by presidents who viewed the agency not as a neutral protective force, but as a political tool. President Richard Nixon was the most flagrant abuser of this trust. Consumed by paranoia, Nixon and his aides attempted to use the Secret Service for political espionage. In one instance, they tried to install a "loyal" agent, Bob Newbrand, as the head of Senator Ted Kennedy's detail with the explicit goal of catching Kennedy in a compromising situation.

Nixon also used the agency to facilitate the Watergate cover-up. The Secret Service was ordered to install the secret taping system in the Oval Office, the very system that would ultimately lead to Nixon's downfall. Furthermore, the book reveals that Nixon's staff pressured the Service to pay for personal home improvements at his private residences, billing them as security expenses. This politicization eroded the agency's apolitical foundation and created a culture where loyalty to the president could supersede the mission's integrity, a damaging precedent that would haunt the agency for decades.

Narrator: Leonnig argues that the Secret Service's modern-day problems are not the result of a single event but a long, slow decline. After the reforms of the 1960s and 70s, a period of complacency set in, exacerbated by chronic budget cuts, grueling work schedules, and a ballooning mission. The agency was tasked with protecting not just the president, but a growing list of dignitaries, candidates, and their families, all without a proportional increase in resources.

This decay became tragically visible in a series of security breaches. In 2011, a man named Oscar Ortega-Hernandez fired a semiautomatic rifle at the White House. Incredibly, it took the Secret Service four days to realize that the building had actually been hit, a fact only discovered by a housekeeper who noticed broken glass. This incident, along with the Cartagena prostitution scandal in 2012 and multiple fence-jumping incidents, exposed an agency that was overworked, demoralized, and dangerously inept. The expert assessment given to agent Brad Gable was not an outlier; it was a reflection of an internal crisis. The agency was no longer the elite force it once was, but a listing ship, struggling to stay afloat.

Narrator: In the 21st century, the challenges facing the Secret Service have become more complex and overwhelming than ever. The election of Barack Obama, the nation's first Black president, unleashed an unprecedented wave of threats, with the rate of threats against him being 400 percent higher than for any previous president. Agents were confronted with a level of racial animus and vitriol that was shocking and deeply disturbing. One chilling quote from a law enforcement official warned, "He’ll be shot sure as hell."

The Trump years brought a different kind of chaos. President Trump’s frequent, rally-style campaign events and his constant travel between multiple private residences stretched the agency’s budget and personnel to the breaking point. The political polarization he engendered created volatile and violent crowds, making security a nightmare. One agent was injured after being body-slammed by a protester at a Trump rally. The agency was forced to spend millions on protecting the Trump family's extensive business travels, leading to an ethical and financial crisis. This modern era shows an agency besieged by new threats, political turmoil, and logistical impossibilities, pushing its "Zero Fail" mission closer to the edge.

Narrator: The single most important takeaway from Zero Fail is that the Secret Service's struggles are not the fault of individual agents, but the result of a deep, systemic rot. It is a story of a government that has demanded perfection from an agency it has starved of resources, a story of presidents who have undermined their own protectors, and a story of a culture that has resisted change until forced to do so by tragedy. The agency has been betrayed by the very institutions it is sworn to protect.

Carol Leonnig's investigation leaves us with a deeply unsettling question: Is the safety of the American president now a matter of luck? The book serves as a stark warning that the veneer of security is dangerously thin. It challenges us to look past the iconic image of the agent in the dark suit and see the fragile, overburdened, and flawed human institution underneath—an institution that, without radical reform, may be one crisis away from the one failure it can never afford.