As GOP presidential front-runners Donald Trump and Ben Carson appear on the verge of receiving Secret Service protection, former agent Dan Bongino tells
Newsmax TV the agency can tell which threats are real.
"The Secret Service is very good at this," Bongino told "The Hard Line" host Ed Berliner. "The psychiatric and psychological community out there has recognized the Secret Service for a very long time, their agents' ability to distinguish non-credible threats from credible threats."
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A number of people who have attempted or planned to assassinate someone have been interviewed by the Exceptional Case Study Project, and several distinguishing characteristics were found. [Those characteristics] include travel history, traveling and mimicking the behavior of a "protectee" or target shifting.
"A lot of folks saw that 'In the Line of Fire' movie, right with Clint Eastwood? So there's this misconception out there that the John Malkovich type who stalks that one person is the most dangerous. That's in fact not what a lot of the research shows," Bongino said. "A lot of the research shows that as this target is shifting from a Hollywood celebrity to a political protectee in the Secret Service, those people may in fact be even more dangerous."
The campaigns of Trump and Carson have requested Secret Service protection and are expected to get it perhaps as early as this week.
Newsmax broke the story on Saturday, which has since been confirmed by
Fox News and
NBC News.
A source close to the decision-making at the Secret Service told Newsmax that an uptick in death threats and online chatter was behind the decision.
Bongino told Newsmax TV it is impossible to control every element when the person being protected is in public. And presidential candidates have an even smaller amount of protection than the president.
But there are still several things agents can do to protect candidates, such as using local police who are familiar with the community.
"Hands shoot, not eyeballs," he said. "When you see Secret Service agents in a crowd with a protectee, a lot of what appears uncontrolled, some of it is actually kind of a delicate ballet and a lot of them are focusing on hands."
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