Secret Service

A Secret Service official said Newport Beach city administrators are asking the wrong people to pay for police protection at presidential campaign events. It's the service that is responsible for the candidates' security, not the campaigns, said Max Milien, an agency spokesman. Any cost concerns should be directed to the agency. Newport Beach City Manager Dave Kiff billed the campaigns of President Obama and presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney for police security at their separate fundraisers this year in the city.

An elderly man who wrote in a letter to the editor about Saddam Hussein's execution that "they hanged the wrong man" got a visit from Secret Service agents concerned he was threatening President Bush. A Secret Service spokesman said it was the agency's duty to investigate Dan Tilli, 81, who the agents decided was not a threat.

Lewis C. Merletti, who led the Treasury Department's investigation of the deadly 1993 raid on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, was sworn in Friday as the 19th director of the Secret Service. Merletti, 49, an agency veteran, replaces Eljay B. Bowron, who resigned to become president of the security monitoring division of Ameritech Corp. He was sworn in by Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin.

More black agents joined a racial discrimination lawsuit against the Secret Service on Thursday, adding new claims that they frequently endure racial slurs. The 19, who include some former agents, join 38 others in a lawsuit first filed in February. They claim their white colleagues and supervisors regularly use a racial epithet to refer to criminal suspects and black leaders of other countries.

Eljay B. Bowron, who as director of the Secret Service directed the closing of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House, will retire next month. Bowron, 46, a 23-year Secret Service veteran and its 18th director, has accepted a position as president of the security monitoring division of Ameritech, his agency announced. Praising the reforms Bowron instituted during his tenure, President Clinton said he accepted the resignation "with regret."

A man who was arrested on suspicion of threatening the life of President Bush was identified Friday as Carl Schmidt, 44, of Glendale, according to the U.S. Secret Service. Schmidt was arrested about 10 p.m. Thursday at his home after making threatening telephone calls to the White House, Secret Service spokesman Allan Cramer said. The White House transferred the call to the Secret Service, and Schmidt restated the threats and gave agents his name and address, Cramer said.

On Monday, a Michael Ramirez cartoon published on the Times' Sunday commentary page drew the attention of the Secret Service ("Cartoon in Times Prompts Inquiry by Secret Service," July 22). Not even President Nixon had so little regard for our quaint and forgotten Constitution. Let this be a mild warning shot. This administration is out of control. Kurt Kroeger San Dimas Hooray for the Secret Service! Put Ramirez on the "interesting persons" list, fast. With his vituperative attacks on anyone horrified by our loss of a democratic government, he is surely to be watched as a danger to our country.

The U.S. Secret Service announced Thursday that it is offering a $100,000 reward for information leading to the indictment of the killers of a special agent who was shot to death in Los Angeles nine years ago. The announcement of the reward in the murder of Secret Service Agent Julie Y. Cross was timed to coincide with a televised re-creation of the killing scheduled to be broadcast on NBC's "Unsolved Mysteries" next Wednesday. Cross--described by officials as the first female federal law enforcement officer killed in the line of duty--was fatally shot during an apparent robbery attempt on June 4, 1980, while she was on surveillance duty on a counterfeiting case near Los Angeles International Airport.

The Secret Service got the ball rolling for souvenir vendors hawking their wares Monday outside the Indiana Convention Center. An agent bought the first "Ollie North for President" campaign button to go on sale several hours before President Reagan addressed the National Assn. of Counties. "The sales are electric," said Len Wechsler, a licensed souvenir vendor.

The Secret Service has a new duty -- protecting a mother duck and her nine eggs. The duck, a brown mallard with white markings, has built a nest in a mulch pile at the entrance to the Treasury Department on Pennsylvania Avenue. The Secret Service's uniformed division, which provides protection for the White House and Treasury building, has set up metal guard rails to protect the nest.