chniques of boodling were little-known and regarded with a
certain awe by the mid-nineteenth-century public. The ability to
manipulate the system for rip-off seemed diabolically clever. As the
skill and daring of the boodlers increased, the situation became
intolerable. The federal government stepped in, and began offering its
own federal currency, which was printed in fancy green ink, but only on
the back--the original "greenbacks." And at first, the improved
security of the well-designed, well-printed federal greenbacks seemed
to solve the problem; but then the counterfeiters caught on. Within a
few years things were worse than ever: a CENTRALIZED system where ALL
security was bad!

The local police were helpless. The Government tried offering blood
money to potential informants, but this met with little success.
Banks, plagued by boodling, gave up hope of police help and hired
private security men instead. Merchants and bankers queued up by the
thousands to buy privately-printed manuals on currency security, slim
little books like Laban Heath's INFALLIBLE GOVERNMENT COUNTERFEIT
DETECTOR. The back of the book offered Laban Heath's patent microscope
for five bucks.

Then the Secret Service entered the picture. The first agents were a
rough and ready crew. Their chief was one William P. Wood, a former
guerilla in the Mexican War who'd won a reputation busting contractor
fraudsters for the War Department during the Civil War. Wood, who was
also Keeper of the Capital Prison, had a sideline as a counterfeiting
expert, bagging boodlers for the federal bounty money.

Wood was named Chief of the new Secret Service in July 1865. There
were only ten Secret Service agents in all: Wood himself, a handful
who'd worked for him in the War Department, and a few former private
investigators--counterfeiting experts--whom Wood had won over to public
service. (The Secret Service of 1865 was much the size of the Chicago
Computer Fraud Task Force or the Arizona Racketeering Unit of 1990.)
These ten "Operatives" had an additional twenty or so "Assistant
Operatives" and "Informants." Besides salary and per diem, each Secret
Service employee received a whopping twenty-five dollars for each
boodler he captured.

Wood himself publicly estimated that at least HALF of America's
currency was counterfeit, a perhaps pardonable perception. Within a
year the Secret Service had arrested over 200 counterfeiters. They
busted about