former President, at his request, for a reasonable period after his departure from office. The Secret Service considered this "reasonable period" to be 6 months.56

Amendments to the threat statute of 1917, passed in 1955 and 1962, made it a crime to threaten to harm the President- elect, the Vice Presidents or other officers next in succession to either office. The President's immediate family was not included in the threat statute.57

Congressional concern regarding the uses to which the President might put the Secret Service--first under Theodore Roosevelt and subsequently under Woodrow Wilson--caused Congress to place tight restrictions on the functions of the Service and the uses of its funds. 58 The restrictions probably prevented the Secret Service from developing into a general investigative agency, leaving the field open for some other agency when the need arose. The other agency proved to be the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) s established within the Department of Justice in 1908. 59

The FBI grew rapidly in the 1920's, and especially in the 1930's and after, establishing itself as the largest, best equipped, and best known of all U.S. Government investigative agencies. In the appropriations of the FBI there recurred annually an item for the "protection of the person of the President of the United States," that had first appeared in the appropriation of the Department of Justice in 1910 under the heading "Miscellaneous Objects." 60 But there is no evidence that the Justice Department ever exercised any direct responsibility for the protection of the President. Although it had no prescribed protection functions, according to its Director, J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI did provide protection to Vice President Charles Curtis at his request, when he was serving under Herbert Hoover from 1929 to 1933. Over the years the FBI contribution to Presidential protection was confined chiefly to the referral to. the Secret Service of the names of people who might be potentially dangerous to the President.61

In recent years the Secret Service has remained a small and specialized bureau, restricted to very limited functions prescribed by Congress. In 1949, a task force of the Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government (Hoover Commission), recommended nonfiscal functions be removed from the Treasury Department. 62 The recommendation called for transfer of the White House detail, White House Police Force, and Treasury Guard Force from the Secret Service to the Department. of Justice. The final report of the Commission on the Treasury Department omitted this recommendation, leaving the protective function with the Secret Service.63 At a meeting of the Commission, ex-President Hoover, in a reference to the proposed transfer, expressed the opinion that "the President will object to having a 'private eye' looking after these fellows and would rather continue with the service." 64

In 1963 the Secret Service was one of several investigative agencies in the Treasury Department. Its major functions were to combat counterfeiting and to protect the President, his family, and other