Throughout President Trump’s trip across Europe this month, the U.S. Secret Service kept him and his team secure in several foreign cities and countries. From Brussels to London, and from rural England and Scotland to Helsinki, hundreds of special agents and officers ensured the president could do his job.
One of them, 42-year-old Secret Service special agent Nole Remagen, died on duty. Assigned to national security adviser John Bolton’s protective detail, Remagen suffered a stroke last weekend while standing post. He was cared for by fellow agents and a White House doctor, but Remagen died later in a hospital in the Scottish city of Glasgow.
This 19-year Secret Service veteran deserves remembrance, not simply for his ultimate sacrifice, but also for his service and that of his family. Secret Service duties require long periods away from home. Agents miss children’s birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, and a multitude of national holidays. And that’s only half the story. Because agents and officers are also ready at all times to leave their families forever if needed. If, for example, this country was targeted by a nuclear attack, agents assigned to the president and those in the line of succession would need to evacuate the people they protect to secret and secure bunkers. The difficulty for agents doing this would be exacerbated by knowledge that while saving their boss they’d be leaving families to almost certain death.
Consider the sacrifice and patriotism here. Willingness to lose your own life and the lives of those most dear to you in order to serve your country is a level of honorable duty barely to be contemplated.
Remagen, who was a Marine before he joined the Secret Service, embodied that patriotism. He was a man of courage and dedication held in the highest regard by his comrades.
Yet the Secret Service cannot stop to mourn.
Reform is underway, but the agency still lacks sufficient personnel to fulfill all its duties. That’s partly because there are unnecessary security details, and also because there are many different threats to cover. Today, agents and officers such as Remagen must grapple with gunmen, suicide bombers, knife attackers, chemical weapons attackers, and aircraft-based attackers; and these can be highly organized, whether they represent a state or are working for a non-state group. Agents must be as ready for one idiot with a gun as they are for 30 foreign special forces soldiers armed with anti-tank weapons.
That mission causes immense stress, for it requires relentless attention to detail in chaotic public settings. It would be one thing if the president were to stay cocooned in the White House all day, but the president must be seen in public. For us, those interactions generate interesting news material. But for agents, every outstretched hand or hand in a pocket is a possible threat. By their dedication, Secret Service staff manage these concerns like no other protective agency on Earth. Day in and day out, agents and officers like Remagen keep the executive branch safe.
The Secret Service motto is “Worthy of trust and confidence.” It’s true, hard won, and retained only with vigilance and unremitting effort. It must be lived every day. As with special agent Nole Remagen, sometimes the life of service leads to the ultimate sacrifice. We should remember Remagen for himself and for what he represents.
