zero fail the rise and fall of the secret service

When 'the Boss' - their informal name for the president - stepped on the platform stage, his detail trained their eyes and ears on the crowd for any odd duck, strange movement, or person with hands stuffed in their pockets.

That inner ring of detail agents kept a unique vigil that relied largely on sensory instinct and coiled muscles.

They shadowed him as he stepped off Air Force One, as he stood waving from his limo the last half mile of the parade, and now finally as he addressed the enormous crowd in the city's center - Niagara Square. Lawson and the seven other members of the president's detail had a job that required every ounce of their concentration: Safeguard Kennedy from start to finish of the trip. Seeing the crowds eight deep on the limo route, Lawson thought: Polish or not, all of upstate New York has turned out today to see their dashing president. Kennedy visited Buffalo on October 14, 1962, the day of the city's beloved Polish heritage parade. Nearly two hundred thousand people spilled across Buffalo's largest downtown square, angling for a glimpse of the most famous man on earth, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Now, a dozen years later, on this fall day in 1962, Lawson had returned to his home turf in a prestigious new role: He was an agent with the Secret Service, assigned to protect the president of the United States. He got his degree, married a fraternity brother's sister, and joined an Army intelligence unit as the Korean War began. Lawson, the son of an elementary school teacher and a local banker, had left for college the summer after high school. The community, about sixty miles south of Buffalo, was best known for its chilly lake air, vineyards and apple farms, and families as hardy as the crops they tended. The thirty-four-year-old had grown up in a no-stoplight town along the banks of Lake Erie that few outside upstate New York had ever heard of: Portland, New York. Win Lawson, the shy, quiet worrier, felt proud. Win Lawson felt his chest puff out a little this particular day in Buffalo, his shoulders hiking his lanky frame just a little taller and straighter.

Zero fail the rise and fall of the secret service