So Long, Special Agents

For the past several years, my Georgetown street has been arguably the most protected in D.C. The secretaries of State and Homeland Security live here. Both cabinet positions were assigned round-the-clock Secret Service details to surveil their homes.
At first, it was a bit surreal for immediate neighbors like myself. How much did they know about us, our friends and our lifestyles, we wondered. How friendly should we be? Chat? Bring them coffee? 

The answer to all that turned out to be “No.”

“Hope you don’t mind having the Secret Service in front of your house 24/7,” one of my cabinet-member neighbors said to me the first month. “Might make the neighborhood safer.”

“Great if they’ll stop somebody carrying my TV out the front door,” I answered.

“Oh, we’d probably notice that,” the special agent by him laughed. “We might call the police.”

We got it after a while, of course. They weren’t there to protect us. In fact, getting distracted by us would be exactly what they shouldn’t do. They watched just him and his house. When he’d leave or come home, three big black SUVs and at least six agents would flank the entrance.

I asked the secretary of Labor once if he got four vehicles too. “I’m lucky I get one,” he answered. “Only the HLS and State secretaries get that kind of protection, because they get the most serious threats.”

What? Like bombings? Assassinations? So much for making the neighborhood safer.

Still we got used to them being there. “When I walk to town at dark now, I go the route that puts me in their sight,” a female neighbor told me.

“It’s kind of fun telling friends about them when they come to visit,” a 40-year neighbor said. We both enjoyed watching people walk by the corner and jerk with surprise when they’d notice the black SUV with the running engine in front of the official parking signs — with two buff young men (sometimes a woman) dressed mostly in casual clothes, the bulge of their guns noticeable on their hips or at the small of their backs.

And there were interactions. One time someone kept placing garbage cans in front of my front door. Exasperated, I asked the agent if they just might tell me what she or he looked like. “I’ll see,” the agent said. “Otherwise it’s kind of Groundhog Day around here.”

On Jan. 21, we’ll notice when the agents are gone. We may even get a chance to thank them for their service.