Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 February 1916 — UNCLE SAME'S SECRET SERVICE NEEDS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

UNCLE SAME'S SECRET SERVICE NEEDS

MEAMEfI!.[Scan 'GOVERNMENT FINDS ITS RELATIONS WITH FOREIGN NATIONS RADL CALLY ALTERED. IT IS LIKELY THE FEDERAL DETECTIVE DEPARTMENT WILL BE REORGANIZED SOON TO AID THE PREPARATION FOR NATIONAL DEFENSE L COPYtIOhT Vty ßi rt»N

?HE United States secret service bureau is due for a big shake-up. This is not because the service- has failed to perform its duties satisfactorily but because the government is much in need of a bigger and broader "gum-shoe” police department than it has. The predicted reorganization is to be a part of the great plan of national preparedness for defense against an enemy nation. The secret police —that is a term to strike terror in Russia, for in that vast empire the secret police have been and are deeply involved in the sorrows of the peasant millions. For many decades there has been in Russia a nihilist movement, a large group of people of all ranks and degrees, including even the nobility, who have been 'plotting to overthrow the present form of absolute government and establish In its place a democracy. Of course the government has used every known means of thwarting the efforts of the revolutionists and punishing them. In keeping tab on the plotters the empirists have developed the most complete secret police system the porld has known —except perhaps the German system, and the Japanese, which are used for entirely different purposes: to get military information. Wherever and whenever and whatever the nihilists have planned and executed, or planned and failed to execute, the secret police have made wholesale arrests and sent strings of broken, sorrowing men and women to the great prison of Peter and Paul at Petrograd or to the hellish salt mines of frozen Siberia. The secret police—that term in the United States of America strikes terterror into very few hearts, if any. Rather, it is a term that takes us back to boyhood days when we read "Old King Brady,” "Nick Carter” and the Beadle Library in the haymow. It isn’t because Uncle Sam’s secret service hasn’t been on the job, but because the secret service has been minding its own business so quietly that decent folks rarely hear of It. Since President Diaz was driven from Mexico, however, our secret service has been pretty much on the jump. There has been a multitude of conspiracies hatching singly and in groups with regard to that unhappy country, and it has been up to Uncle Sam to keep the conspirators from launching any of their projects from this side of the border. Then, in August, 1914, came the big war —and everybody has heard of the ' plots’ and counter-plots and schemes and tricks which foreign agents have been interested in here. The foreigners have not only spied on one another, but they have spied more than ever on the United States. They have wanted to know just what we could do if we should take sides. It is said that Uncle Sam has lost a number Of valuable naval and military

Invention secrets, during the last 15 months or so, and that the plans of many of our important fortifications have been copied or stolen. The president knows this; so do the members of his cabinet, the naval and military leaders, the secret service, and some members of congress. And with this knowledge has come a realization that if the United States is to have a well rounded defensive force on land and sea it must also have a good secret service that can keep tab on the foreign spies in this country and can get information for us in foreign countries.

Never has there been such an emphatic need for a large, highly trained and efficient secret service such as other countries have to cope with exactly such conditions. That the administration has at last awakened •to the need is shown by the announcement that a plan is now on foot to combine all the investigating bureaus of the country under one general head with sufficient subheads of subexecutives to insure efficiency and economy and at the same time enable the country to combat such conditions as now exist. The nucleus around which the new organization will be built, it Is naturally assumed, Is the secret service which for just 60 years has done the greater part of the work of conducting confidential Investigations for the federal government, has unearthed counterfeiters, has guarded the president and all foreign visitors of note, and has carried on the most difficult* delicate and important inquiries for the state department.

Into this new bureau —or perhaps it will be made a distinct department of the government with a cabinet officer at its head—will be gathered, it is proposed, the coast guard service, the fleet of revenue cutters, the customs inspectors, the inspectors of land frauds, the immigration inspectors, the post office inspectors, the special investigators of the department of Justice and the bank examiners. But of all these special investigators the members of the secret service under Chief William J. Flynn are by far the most highly trained and the best equipped by tradition and long years of experience in handling the most dangerous,, the most intellectual and the most astute criminals, and are therefore best fitted to undertake the broader tasks now set before the nation. In other words, the secret service already has been handling in a small way under restrictions imposed by law and by limited funds the tasks that will be undertaken in the future ip a more comprehensive and effective manner. . Comparatively little of the real work of the secret service is known to the public. The effectiveness of the organization has lain partly in that fact. Sjtill fewer perhaps know the channels for getting information which the service and Flynn have developed by long years of careful study and foresight and hard work. It safely guessed that the facts that they have dug up in the last year are known to very few men in the United States. Not even the secret service men themselves have at times realized the magnitude of the investigations in which they were engaged. They simply followed one person, one clue or one angle and then made a written report which went to the chief, who painstakingly fitted the reports

together into one big mosaic picture, revealing some vast undertaking and supplying information of great importance to the administration. It is by many such investigations conducted in this country and perhaps abroad that the administration has gathered information that has enabled the federal officials to foresee international events befofe they really happened and to prepare for contingencies with proper care. Much of the important work which the secret service has done has been performed under the direction of the state department, which has a confidential fund for such investigations, and which calls upon the secret service chief to supply the men for the work. While the public hears little of the details of the work of the secret service, the chief has agents all over the country and all over the world, men of great skill, many of them of higfy education, others of little school education but graduates in the university of human nature and of criminology, men of great courage and necessarily of tremendous resourcefulness. They may be here today and in the far East a month hence. They may be in New York this morning and may start for Europe tomorrow on some mission. An investigation in China may require the presence there of several men. There may be a counterfeiting plot that has a clue leading to Mexico. There may be a conspiracy to start a revolution in Mexico that has trails leading to Barcelona, Spain; to Paris, London and to Mexico City. In every direction that may be necessary men are dispatched to make investigations and to report to the home office. Many a revolutionary plot hatched in foreign countries has been frustrated because a clue was obtained here and the plot" ters traced and exposed. The limitations under which this work has been carried on is shown by the laws under which the service is authorized and the money is appropriated. The appointment of the chief of the secret service, his assistant and a few clerks is authorized by ene law. The sundry civil bill appropriates money for the hiring of agents at so much a day, but at the same time makes it impossible for those men to be assigned to work in any other department, thereby making restrictions that prevent the chief from getting the best 'work from them. » .

For instance, if the chief has a man who has proved himself specially capable in a certain line of work and if just such a man is needed in a certain department of the government the chief cannot detail him for the task because the law specially provides that no man hired by the chief or the secret service for work in the treasury department can be assigned within the year to an investigation outside that department. The law also provides that the chief cannot detail more th&n four men to any special investigation. When the secret service was organized in 1865 the initial appropriation was made for detecting counterfeiters and running down "other felonies.” Aside from the chief and a few clerks the secret service is really kept alive by a yearly appropriation in the sundry civil bill. TheAervice, however, had greater latitude man at present up to the time when President Roosevelt in 1907 got into a controversy with congress because of the fact that he caused investigations to be made con : ceming certain congressmen. In revenge congress adopted the restriction that prohibits the use of the secret service men for any other purpose than the detection of counterfeiting and the protection of the president. That provision has limited their activity and makes it necessary for the chief to hire other men for work required by other departments. The secret service received $145,000 last year and asks for $225,000 for the coming fiscal year.