Behavioral Science and the Secret Service Toward the Prevention of Assassination (1981) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
Papers
Papers
Pages 93-128
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 93... ...
In 1975, the Massachusetts Department of Correction initiated an innovative contract with McLean Hospital under which McLean would be responsible for providing psychiatric and psychological expertise in the evaluation and treatment of male patients at the Massachusetts maximum security psychiatric facility, the Bridgewater State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Since 1975, McLean clinicians have been evaluating and treating the most psychotic and violent men in Massachusetts.
|
From page 94... ...
We describe the outline of a detailed assessment. We discuss the selection of Secret Service agents, the composition of agent corps and squads, the need for male-female interviewing teams, the support of agents, liaison with mental health and behavioral science professionals, and the collection, storage, and analysis of data relevant to the Secret Service's mission.
|
From page 95... ...
B Present mental illness (see above symptoms)
|
From page 96... ...
Present symptoms of mental illness 4. History of suicide attempts 5.
|
From page 97... ...
Visit from subject to White House or approach to president An interview is the means by which clinicians and Secret Service agents obtain data about subjects; we have some specific recommendations about the setting, the interview itself, and the interview team. Setting Agents who visit a subject at his/her place of residence will have an opportunity to see the living situation.
|
From page 98... ...
Personnel Male-female interview teams will provide substantially increased cooperation from the subject and will lead to richer data. We recommend that each subject, male or female, be interviewed by such a team.
|
From page 99... ...
But no amount of didactic training can substitute for supervised, direct contact with mentally ill people. Ways of training agents to assess mentally ill subjects include the following.
|
From page 100... ...
build a network of mental health professionals who might hear of individuals who should come to the attention of the Secret Service We propose that the Secret Service contract with outside agencies for mental health resource groups. Such groups could provide important consultation to the Secret Service in interviewing, diagnosing, assessing dangerousness, developing dispositional alternatives, training, and supervision.
|
From page 101... ...
We propose, therefore, that the Secret Service appoint a national mental health and behavioral science advisory group. This group should meet regularly with senior Secret Service staff to advise the Service on mental health issues and policies that affect its work, particularly policies concerning staff training and education.
|
From page 102... ...
data verification coding. Properly pre-coded, standard investigation record data could be entered on a computer within hours to days of collection, thereby quickly becoming available to Secret Service agents worldwide.
|
From page 103... ...
VIII. Memorandum on Potential Female Assassins An interdisciplinary group of professionals met at McLean Hospital to discuss women as potential presidential assassins.
|
From page 104... ...
expand its training of agents with curricula to include hospital-based training in understanding mental illness and more knowledge of clinical interviewing 2. develop teams of male and female interviewers for better understanding of women who threaten a protected person and for better understanding of male paranoid subjects 3.
|
From page 105... ...
APPENDIX Standardized Investigation Record A Administrative (process)
|
From page 106... ...
schizophrenia D Criminal history data including 1.
|
From page 107... ...
Metaphorically, this would be analogous to a shift from first aid to the treatment of disease, and then to the public health concern with the cause and prevention of illness. It is possible that, as in the medical metaphor, the major threats to the president's security are not associated with those persons who come to the Service's attention, but rather with those who are not "referred" by the current network, and that an active program of identifying potential threats would be more productive than improved screening and evaluation of those threats that are now detected.
|
From page 108... ...
They would also provide the basis for an important future research project -- the development of predictive criteria for identifying potential agents who will perform well or poorly at various tasks -- and, therefore, for selecting future agents and assigning them to specific tasks. Indeed, if at present one agent were discovered to be particularly good or bad at screening potentially dangerous persons, it would be difficult to generalize this information usefully unless there were descriptive measures that would relate him to other agents in some consistent way.
|
From page 109... ...
Simultaneous with these educational experiences would be training exercises involving exposure to real subjects, similar to those who will later be evaluated, practice interviews, and so forth. It is essential that some of these exercises be conducted with real people, not actors simulating subjects or videotapes, although both of these may be useful adjuncts.
|
From page 110... ...
Some of the obstacles might be overcome by compensating volunteer subjects drawn from the population in question, a procedure that is consistent with ethical practice in the health professions. Any comprehensive approach to training must include some type of continuing training, involving agents after they have completed their initial educational experiences.
|
From page 111... ...
Each of these has problems, but each might provide an opportunity for studying various aspects of the prediction involved -- impulse control, the specificity of targets, the time course of risk, psychosocial and stress "triggers," and so forth. For example, knowledge concerning what type of material in the mass media precipitated flurries of social violence might alert one to a subject who reported recent exposure to such material, while measures of impulse control that failed to predict when chronically depressed individuals made suicide attempts might be considered suspect in their ability to predict other types of violence.
|
From page 112... ...
If the Service is seen as a police agency, it will be regarded with skepticism by mental health professionals; if it is viewed as concerned and competent in regard to the needs of those it evaluates, as well as those it protects -- in effect as a kind of social service agency -- the attitudes of mental health professionals might change. It is conceivable that the most critical information regarding potential danger to the president and related individuals is located in the mental health system, and that the most modifiable step in the protective process does not involve improving the selection and training of agents or the efficacy of screening procedures, but rather improving the referral system and the flow of information into the agency itself.
|
From page 113... ...
Professor, Department of Statistics Stanford University Stanford, California 1. A True Fable In the second half of 1980 a manager in a Washington statistical agency noted that there was a small room, always filled with four clerks using telephones.
|
From page 114... ...
Idea: Arrested persons with community ties, such as jobs or homes in the locality, may safely be released before trial without posting bail. All new arrest cases (excluding arrests for very severe crimes)
|
From page 115... ...
If either of them had, instead, compared one period on one treatment to a later period on the other, there would be doubts. In the bail bond experiment, many things could have changed over time -- the kinds of cases, the personnel making the assessment of community ties, some of the judges.
|
From page 116... ...
In the bail bond experiment, it was known that the arrestees recommended for release were no better (or worse) than those not recommended, because it was literally the luck of the draw that decided which particular eligible subjects received the recommendation.
|
From page 117... ...
Consider how to measure the outcomes in ways that cannot be distorted by opinions, beliefs, or wishes of participants. A frequently useful device is to have outcomes judged by qualified persons who do not know which experimental group any case is in (or, even better, do not know that there is an experiment going on)
|
From page 118... ...
In the last 30 years, clinical medicine has made great strides, and it is fair to say that a large share of the success must be attributed to the widespread and persistent use of randomized, controlled clinical trials to securely establish good innovations and to drop poor ones. The complexities in medical applications are probably as great as those in the Secret Service setting.
|
From page 119... ...
Vigilance will be essential to prevent these and other modifications from ruining the first experiment. The point is that the essentials of the method are essential; there lies the challenge, to maintain those essentials*
|
From page 121... ...
We are presumably in agreement that the behaviors of concern to this workshop are serious and potentially lethal attacks against the persons protected by the Service. What follows is a rough conceptual scheme that I would like to propose to the workshop participants as a framework for discussion.
|
From page 122... ...
Secret Service and other protective agencies, their key personnel, and their capabilities) and the extent to which organizational structure and operations of the agency facilitate effective and efficient use of available resources; availability of ongoing research and evaluation to test the validity and effectiveness of assumptions underlying various agency policies, procedures, decision rules, training programs; factors that seem to distinguish the "better" protective agents with respect to specific roles, skills, and functions.
|
From page 123... ...
a considerable advantage over potential assailants in having both advance and highly accurate information about the location and movement of protected persons (at least in regard to events that are not publicized or part of public events such as inaugural parades and other public appearances of targets)
|
From page 124... ...
Because our societal values pose various limitations in regard to controlling access to firearms and the kinds of surveillance measures that can be used, and because of the immense technical difficulties in making reliable and accurate predictions of events that have extremely low base rates, we should give much greater attention to the characteristics of the targets and to those situations in which assassination risks are greatly increased. With regard to the foregoing, we might also distinguish between various types of constraints and limitations in terms of the available options for preventing or reducing risk probabilities of potentially lethal assaults on protected persons.
|
From page 125... ...
For example, funds could be provided to designated persons in order that they might obtain desired or indicated private protective services; however, there would be no requirement that the funds so allocated could be used only for protective services. Given the immense technical problems in trying to improve the predictive accuracy for events with extremely low base rates, Frank Zimring*
|
From page 126... ...
Moreover, once assassination attempts are classified into specific categories, such as mentally disordered assassins and politically-motivated assassins, it is possible that an even wider range of functionally equivalent incidents and cases could be pooled for study and analysis. Third, might not the New York City Police Department have some relevant data in regard to their protective responsibilities for members of the various United Nations delegations and also with respect to foreign officials at the various consulates?
|
From page 127... ...
For example, a comparison of threats, attempts and completed assault in reference to a host of operational, situational, and other dependent variables might help provide some better and clearer idea of the risk probabilities associated with certain types of serious attempts and potentially lethal attacks. It might also be possible to try to pinpoint certain factors, such as lack of prior information, ineffective response by various protectors, or risk elements that have been overlooked, that seem to contribute to less successful protective efforts.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.