Secret Service

in the United States, a bureau maintained by the treasury department for the detection and prevention of crime. The bureau was organized for the detection of counterfeiters, smugglers, illicit distillers, and others attempting to defraud the treasury department. Since the assassination of President Lincoln the president of the United States has generally been attended by members of the secret service, or plain-clothes men, as they are called, to protect him against assault. Secret service men guard the White House night and day. The service was extended under the administration of President Roosevelt in order that detectives might be employed, under the direction of the department of justice, to secure evidence against railroad and other corporations suspected of violating the anti-trust and interstate commerce laws. This extension of the operations of the secret service corps has been criticised. The United States secret service was not specially created by statute, nor are appropriations made for it directly. It is well understood, however, that its annual cost runs into the millions.

Similar bureaus to that of the United States are maintained in all civilized countries. A system of government espionage has long been maintained in France, being especially offensive in the reign of Napoleon III. In Russia persons suspected of entertaining revolutionary ideas are kept under surveillance, and constant vigilance is exercised by detectives as well as by the imperial police to protect the czar and the members of his government against assassination and to ferret out and frustrate the plots of anarchists and nihilists. In Germany the secret service is less active than in Russia, although the American visiting that country is likely to regard the government as unnecessarily inquisitive about his private affairs. Indeed the only European country where the stranger is not likely to be made to feel in many ways that his personal liberty is unduly restricted is the United Kingdom. Even there, however, secret service men are in constant attendance upon the person of the sovereign and members of his cabinet. To a greater or less extent they are employed in shadowing persons suspected of designs against the government or its officials, or of acting as the spies of foreign powers interested in securing, by fair means or foul, specific knowledge of the military defenses of the kingdom.