According to a new book, President Barack Obama is the target of more than 30 potential death threats a day and is being protected by an increasingly over-stretched and under-resourced Secret Service.
Since Obama took office, the rate of threats against the president has increased 400 percent from the roughly 3,000 per year under President George W. Bush, according to Ronald Kessler, author of “In the President’s Secret Service.”
Some threats to Obama, whose Secret Service codename is Renegade, have been publicized, including an alleged plot by white supremacists in Tennessee late last year to rob a gun store, shoot 88 black people, decapitate another 14 and then assassinate the first black president in American history.
Most however, are kept under wraps because the Secret Service fears that revealing details of them would only increase the number of copycat attempts. Although most threats are not credible, each one has to be investigated thoroughly.
According to the book, intelligence officials received intel that people associated with the Somalia-based Islamist group al-Shabaab might try to disrupt Obama’s inauguration in January, when the Secret Service coordinated at least 40,000 agents and officers from some 94 police, military and security agencies.