to
do with this matter.

The Secret Service is best known for its primary public role: its
agents protect the President of the United States. They also guard the
President's family, the Vice President and his family, former
Presidents, and Presidential candidates. They sometimes guard foreign
dignitaries who are visiting the United States, especially foreign
heads of state, and have been known to accompany American officials on
diplomatic missions overseas.

Special Agents of the Secret Service don't wear uniforms, but the
Secret Service also has two uniformed police agencies. There's the
former White House Police (now known as the Secret Service Uniformed
Division, since they currently guard foreign embassies in Washington,
as well as the White House itself). And there's the uniformed Treasury
Police Force.

The Secret Service has been charged by Congress with a number of
little-known duties. They guard the precious metals in Treasury vaults.
They guard the most valuable historical documents of the United States:
originals of the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence,
Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, an American-owned copy of the Magna
Carta, and so forth. Once they were assigned to guard the Mona Lisa,
on her American tour in the 1960s.

The entire Secret Service is a division of the Treasury Department.
Secret Service Special Agents (there are about 1,900 of them) are
bodyguards for the President et al, but they all work for the Treasury.
And the Treasury (through its divisions of the U.S. Mint and the Bureau
of Engraving and Printing) prints the nation's money.

As Treasury police, the Secret Service guards the nation's currency; it
is the only federal law enforcement agency with direct jurisdiction
over counterfeiting and forgery. It analyzes documents for
authenticity, and its fight against fake cash is still quite lively
(especially since the skilled counterfeiters of Medellin, Columbia have
gotten into the act). Government checks, bonds, and other obligations,
which exist in untold millions and are worth untold billions, are
common targets for forgery, which the Secret Service also battles. It
even handles forgery of postage stamps.

But cash is fading in importance today as money has become electronic.
As necessity beckoned, the Secret Service moved from fighting the
counterfeiting of paper currency and the forging of checks, to the
protection of funds transferred by wire.

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