KANSAS CITY, Mo. — When thinking of the U.S. Secret Service, many likely imagine men and women in dark suits and sunglasses.
While protecting the president is part of what they do, it's not all. For example, the Secret Service has a permanent presence in Kansas City.
We sat down with the local special agent in charge to get a behind-the-scenes look at the work they do.
History
When there was an assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan in 1981, the Secret Service was there. Agents quickly ushered him to safety and then rushed him to the hospital.
Moments like these are memorialized in the Secret Service's more than 150-year history.
But agents said it's a common misconception that they only protect the president.
"Actually, we were founded in 1865 to combat counterfeiting. During the Civil War, about 1/3 of all currency was counterfeit, and so the Secret Service was founded to go and basically stamp out the counterfeiting — that was President Lincoln's last official act before he was assassinated," explained Special Agent in Charge Brandon Bridgeforth.
Bridgeforth added presidential protection didn’t start until 1901 after the assassination of William McKinley.
But the work of the Secret Service extends well beyond the White House. Bureaus are established throughout the country, including in KC.
"Our territory is extremely large. Our territory is almost the size of Texas," Bridgeforth said. "We cover the western 2/3 of Missouri, so the western portion of Missouri and the state of Kansas, Iowa and Nebraska."
Present-day duties
While agents are sent to cover presidents and former presidents anywhere in the territory, the KC field office's work is primarily focused on financial crimes.
"So, whether they be cryptocurrency, counterfeiting, credit card fraud, anything that touches the financial sector of the United States, we can investigate those types of crimes," Bridgeforth said.
He said the issue is a larger problem than many imagine.
"We recently had a case in Kansas where we arrested several people that were traveling throughout the country using counterfeit, buying goods, then returning them for real currency," he said.
This office was also involved in cracking a $335 million scheme to defraud federal programs.
"There was a gentleman in the area that was defrauding federal programs," Bridgeforth said. "We did a lot of the asset forfeiture, so some of the things that the gentleman bought we were able to seize, resell and then pay restitution back to the federal government."
In addition to financial crimes, the Secret Service also handles cyber crimes and sex crimes against children, often in partnership with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).
"So, any type of child crime that's called a child sexual assault — or CSAM (Child Sexual Assault Material), formerly child porn — we can investigate those crimes and we can assist other agencies in their investigations," Bridgeforth said.
The problem has spread with the advancements in technology.
"You know, back in the day, it was Polaroids in boxes in people's homes. Now, it's a cell phone," he said. "You know, it can hold thousands and thousands of images, thousands and thousands of videos, [and] they can be shared worldwide in a moment's notice."
Although, just as technology has advanced for criminals, the tools the Secret Service uses have improved, too, allowing them to identify and apprehend suspects like Joshua Case.
Case, of Bonner Springs, was sentenced to 27 years in prison for sexual exploitation of a child and possession of child pornography.
"We were able to look at some of the photos and get some what we call meta-data off of those photos and line that up with where we thought the actual photos were either taken or where some of the videos were produced," Bridgeforth said.
As for how agents obtain such information, Bridgeforth couldn't reveal all their secrets.
Still, he showed us a few of their special tools, including a box with two holes for arms on the side that block incoming signals.
"If we are doing an examination of, say, a telephone, and we don’t want it to be — we don’t want someone to be able to remote in and wipe it — we put it in this box, do what we need to do and prevent someone from remoting into the device," he said.
Inside the digital forensics lab, the Secret Service has additional devices to help recover evidence from cell phones, computers, smartwatches and more.
"What we will do is we will take an image of the hard drive, and these gentlemen back here will take that image of the hard drive and look for evidence,"Bridgeforth said.
Agents also have a machine that helps crack passcodes.
"It’s just cycling through different possibilities. Having an array like this, it can cycle through many possibilities at one time," he said. "So you’re talking thousands and thousands of possibilities every second that it’s going through. It could take a couple hours, it could take a couple years — you just never know."
In the Kansas City office, two agents are dedicated to digital forensics.
While we were there, one of them was pouring through cell phone codes to extract evidence.
"Our phones are built just like computers — they have a different file structure, but all of this is self-storage, you know in code," explained Kelby Dickensheet, network intrusion forensic analyst for the Secret Service.
And whenever a president does come to town, the Secret Service offers all tools and top digital forensic agents to local and state law enforcement whenever they need help — at no added cost to those departments and taxpayers.
"A couple years ago, we had Branson PD that called us and said, 'Hey, we need to get into a couple of locked phones,'" Bridgeforth recalled. "We had Missouri State Highway Patrol fly them to us, and we unlock[ed] them so they could work their case."
Tips for parents, teens
Because the Secret Service sees so many cases of child porn, we asked them what advice they have for parents to better protect kids.
Bridgeforth told us his first piece of advice was to avoid giving phones to children for as long as possible.
For parents who do give them a phone, he advises actively monitoring their usage.
Finally, if an inappropriate image of one's child is shared online, there is now a mechanism to have those removed.
The site, called "Take It Down," helps underage teens, kids and their family members "remove online nude, partially nude, or sexually explicit photos and videos taken before you were 18."
Click HERE to access more information from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
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