TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

The Secret Service is one of those agencies that isn’t in the headlines often, but they prefer it that way: it means they’ve done their job.

Marc Ambinder has an intriguing look into the Secret Service—he was allowed to follow them while they secure foreign dignitaries at the U.N. General Assembly in New York. Ambinder mentions that both presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton were nearly assassinated. I wasn’t aware of Clinton’s:

Knowing well that wedding was often a code word for a terrorist hit, Merletti changed the route, which happened to include a bridge. Clinton was angry at the decision, which would cause further delay, but he did not override it. When agents arrived at the bridge, they indeed found explosives: had Clinton taken the prescribed route, he very likely would have been killed.