New Boss for a Troubled Team

When a Communist-led mob attacked the car of Richard Nixon in Caracas in 1958, smashing its windows and battering its doors and roof with rocks and lengths of pipe, one of the dozen Secret Service agents who risked his life to save the then Vice President was an erect, athletic man named H. Stuart Knight. Last week President Nixon installed Knight, 52, as head of Secret Service, a job that will require courage and initiative of another sort. Knight's job will be to re-establish the reputation of the 1,230-agent organization, which has been badly tarnished by minor roles in some of the Watergate scandals and on occasion by being used to serve the President's political image as well as his security.

An agency of the Treasury Department, the Secret Service was actually founded in 1865 to chase down counterfeiters, an activity it still pursues, but since the assassination of William Mc-Kinley in 1901 the Service has also been responsible for protecting the President. The agents assigned to the White House (average annual salary: $17,000) suffer through long periods of boredom when the President is not on display. But when he goes on a trip, whether to San Clemente or Peking, they work under acute tension, always braced, like sprinters on their starting blocks, for the sound of a shot. On a tour the agents are immediately recognizable: trim young men with short hair and conservative suits who watch the people while the people watch the President. Often they must struggle to hold back the crowds, and sometimes--as in Caracas in 1958 --they are in danger of losing their own lives.

Under these conditions, Secret Service agents have frequently become so much a part of presidential families that they have acted like so many understanding bachelor uncles--carrying out the garbage for Jackie Kennedy while she was vacationing in Ireland, baby-sitting with little David Eisenhower, and collecting shopping packages for a long line of First Ladies and their daughters.

No one ever grudged these small, valet-style acts, but in the past couple of years Secret Service agents have been pressed into performing quite different chores. "They've gotten their responsibilities out of perspective," says one former White House aide who worked closely with the agency. "Sometimes they're overprotective." Some examples of their work:

> Tapping the phone of F. Donald Nixon, the President's trouble-prone brother, who has a record of entering into embarrassing business deals. "They wanted to keep track of what he was doing," one agent admits. "We have to protect the image of the President."

> Opening the White House safe of Howard Hunt after the Watergate burglary.

> Operating--none too efficiently, it turned out--the secret White House taping systems. As the custodians of the tapes, the agents revealed themselves to be sloppy bookkeepers, letting White House aides borrow them casually.

The Secret Service agents have also acted to tidy up the President's political landscape. During the protest demonstrations over Viet Nam, when the White House felt it was under siege, agents were summoned to chase away a solitary demonstrator who had caught --and offended--the eye of the President by appearing in Lafayette Park across the street from the White House.

The Service has also been accused of acting to prevent protests at the President's public appearances. Two years ago, when Billy Graham and the President appeared together in Charlotte, N.C., Secret Service agents helped screen the spectators, barring persons in T shirts and jeans, men with long hair, and other "suspicious" characters. Among those thrown out or denied admittance was a group of children from a Quaker Sunday school class.

The Secret Service also allowed its good name to be used to justify in the name of security some curious alterations to the presidential houses in Key Biscayne and San Clemente.

No Poisoned Ice. Offering a rationale for the $600 icemaker installed in a staff house at the Key Biscayne compound, one agent huffily insisted: "That icemaker was for the President--that way we knew that the President was not using poisoned ice."

So far the agency has refused to answer a letter sent by Senator Joseph Montoya in September asking it to justify the tapping of Donald Nixon's phone--and Montoya is chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that controls the Service's purse strings. Montoya later warned the White House: "The people of this nation must be able to believe that their law enforcement agencies act in a legal and responsible manner. Without that trust, respect for the law will surely disappear, and we risk the return to an age of barbarism."

As he takes over as top agent, replacing James J. Rowley who retired at 65, Stu Knight knows full well the problems of the organization. A 25-year man, he also knows how difficult it is for an agent to refuse to do an extracurricular job in the White House when, as one says, "you are approached on a one-to-one basis--and if the Boss wants it done, you do it."

Although an articulate man, Knight, following tradition, refuses to discuss the Service's affairs in detail, but he does say, significantly, that he hopes "to close the gap between the actual and the ideal" in the way the Service operates. Ideally, of course, the Secret Service guards the President, stays out of politics--and maybe does a little baby-sitting on the side.

One thing is certain: Knight has the solid backing of his fellow agents. Says one veteran agent: "This appointment is different from the past Nixon track record; he's not a former Nixon advance man. He's his own man--and he doesn't owe anybody anything."

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