Assassination Plot Against Obama

[William Kelly]

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/articl...qaFIGgD98LD0J00

Man sought for threatening president arrested

By PAUL FOY – 5 hours ago

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Authorities have arrested a man who allegedly told bank tellers while cleaning out his savings account in Utah that he was on a mission to kill President Barack Obama.

The Secret Service said Daniel James Murray, 36, was arrested Friday outside a casino in Laughlin, Nev., a gambling town 100 miles from Las Vegas on the Nevada-Arizona line.

He was charged Thursday in Salt Lake City with a federal count of conveying threats while talking to tellers last month at Zions First National Bank in St. George, Utah.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Barbara Bearnson said Murray was in federal custody in Nevada and likely will get a court date there Monday. Neither Bearnson nor the Secret Service would discuss whether Murray was considered to be a serious threat.

Charging documents say Murray, originally from Rexford, N.Y., is the registered owner of eight guns.

He was described by his father and former neighbors in Rexford as troubled but not dangerous, known for strolling down a street wearing a cape while talking to himself.

"He's sick. He's been sick for about 10 years," Michael Murray, his father, told the Times Union of Albany, N.Y.

In charging documents filed Thursday, the Secret Service said Daniel Murray made bizarre statements while opening — and then closing within two weeks — an $85,000 savings account.

First, he demanded to know if Zions First National Bank was solvent, saying, "I'm sure if citizens happen to lose their money, they will rise up and we could see killing and deaths," bank tellers told a Secret Service agent.

On May 27, as a teller counted out bills no larger than $50, Murray delivered a rambling discourse on the probability of economic and social disorder, ending with "We are on a mission to kill the president of the United States," a bank employee told the Secret Service.

The next day, Murray withdrew the remaining $72,000 and closed his account.

In Washington, Secret Service spokesman Malcolm Wiley said Murray offered no resistance when he was arrested at 7 p.m. Friday on a warrant in the parking lot of the Riverside Hotel and Casino in Laughlin, Nev. Wiley wouldn't offer any further details. It wasn't clear if Murray had a lawyer.

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/06/06/ob...ref=mpstoryview

(CNN) -- A man accused of making threatening statements about killing President Obama has been arrested in Nevada, the Secret Service said Saturday.

Daniel James Murray was arrested Friday night in the parking lot of the Riverside Resort Hotel and Casino in Laughlin, Nevada, said Secret Service spokesman Malcolm Wiley.

Murray recently withdrew $85,000 from a bank in St. George, Utah, in two separate visits and told a teller, "We are on a mission to kill the president of the United States," according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court in Utah.

According to the complaint, Murray opened an account at Zions First National Bank on May 19 with an $85,000 check.

"With all this mess going on under President Obama with banks and the economy, I'm sure if citizens happen to lose their money, they will rise up and we could see killing and deaths," he said, according to the complaint.

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Authorities hunt for man charged with threatening Obama

On May 27, he returned to the bank and tried to withdraw $12,000, but lacked proper identification.

"Not to be disrespectful, but if I don't get this money, someone is going to die," Murray said, according to the complaint.

A bank manager was summoned and Murray was allowed to withdraw the money without proper identification.

Murray would not accept a check and demanded bills no larger than $50, the complaint says.

"We are 94 million miles from the sun, and are in-between the sun and moon, and the eagle that flies between them and it's a giant step for mankind. ... I have traveled thousands of miles to be here and know things that are going to happen. ... the banking system will fail and people will die. ... there will be chaos in the world," Murray said, according to the complaint.

He then made his threat against the president, the complaint says.

The next day, Murray returned to the bank, withdrew the rest of his money and closed the account, a bank teller told authorities. E-mail to a friend | Mixx it | Share

[William Kelly]

http://www.newsmax.com/kessler/secret_serv.../10/245936.html

Secret Service Is Putting the President at Risk

Monday, August 10, 2009 10:00 AM

By: Ronald Kessler

The nation has not endured a presidential assassination since John F. Kennedy was killed in Dallas in 1963. That is largely because of the dedication of Secret Service agents. But since the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) took over the Secret Service in 2003, the agency has been cutting corners to the point where the lives of President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and other protectees are endangered.

That is the opinion of a number of current Secret Service agents who have told me for my book, “In the President’s Secret Service: Behind the Scenes with Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents,” that it is a miracle an assassination has not taken place. But you do not have to be a Secret Service agent to recognize that the agency has been taking foolhardy risks.

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After the attempt on Ronald Reagan’s life on March 30, 1981, the U.S. Secret Service learned to use metal-detecting magnetometers to screen those who have access to the president. But in recent years, when pressured by staffs of presidential candidates like Barack Obama or by the White House, agents have shut down magnetometers at major events when stragglers are still arriving and a speech is about to begin.

Only one such incident was publicized. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported that an hour before a rally for then-presidential candidate Obama was to start at Reunion Arena in Dallas on Feb. 20, 2008, the Secret Service stopped magnetometer screening.

As if shutting down magnetometers at an event is about to start is not shocking enough, when Vice President Biden threw the opening pitch at the first Baltimore Orioles game of the season at Camden Yards on April 6, 2009, the Secret Service skipped any magnetometer screening of the more than 40,000 fans. Moreover, even though Biden’s scheduled attendance at the game was announced beforehand, the vice president was not wearing a bullet-proof vest under his navy sport shirt as he stood on the pitcher’s mound.

“A gunman or gunmen from anywhere in the stands could have gotten off multiple rounds before we could have gotten in the line of fire,” says a current agent who is outraged that the Secret Service would be so reckless.

Before the Baltimore event, senior management on Biden’s detail decided “we don’t need magnetometers,” overruling stunned agents on Biden’s detail and the agency’s own Baltimore field office.

Ironically, when I interviewed Nicholas Trotta, who heads the Secret Service’s Office of Protective Operations, for my book — the first book about the Secret Service the agency has cooperated on — he cited the use of magnetometers as a key to protecting presidents.

“Now,” he said, “Everyone goes through the magnetometer.” Indeed, the Secret Service official said, often just seeing a magnetometer in use may deter an assassin. But when I mentioned that the Secret Service shuts down magnetometers under pressure, Trotta contradicted himself and changed his tune.

“When we have a crowd of 70,000 people, we may or may not need to put all those people through magnetometers,” Trotta said. “Because some of those people in certain areas might not have a line-of-sight threat that can harm the protectee.”

What if an assassination occurred because someone was not screened? Trotta looked uncomfortable. Still, he plowed on ahead, saying it may be safe to forgo screening of crowds sitting further away from the president.

Has Trotta never heard of a gunman leaving his seat to zip off a shot or throw a grenade at the president? In fact, it was a decision to stop magnetometer screening that almost led to the assassination of President Bush on May 10, 2005, when a man threw a grenade at him as he spoke at a rally in a public square in Tbilisi, Georgia. Because local security services shut down magnetometer screening, the man was able to take a grenade into the event where Bush was to speak.

Failing to screen everyone who attends an event where the president or vice president is speaking makes as much sense as letting passengers board an airplane without passing them through metal detectors. When told of Trotta’s rationale for stopping magnetometer screening, Secret Service agents cannot believe he said what he did indeed say.

“I was in absolute shock regarding his comment about the mags closing down and potential attackers being too far away to cause any problems,” says an agent on one of the two major protective details. Imagine, the agent says, if three or four suicide assassins came in, with guns blazing. “I cannot believe the head of our protective operations actually said that,” he says. “Yeah, let’s drop those magnetometers. Thank God you have it on record, because he would be one of the first people to be called to testify before a congressional committee if such an incident happened.”

Since the book came out, law enforcement sources admitted to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that the Secret Service did not screen crowds at the Orioles game and defended the decision by saying Biden’s presence had not been announced beforehand. But as I pointed out in a CNN interview with Blitzer, a simple Google search turns up dozens of stories that reported the day before the game that Biden would be throwing the first pitch. Nexis lists more than 50 such stories.

Agents trace the corner-cutting to the Secret Service’s absorption into DHS. Being submerged in what many view as a dysfunctional agency and having to compete for funds with a range of other national security agencies led to a lowering of standards. The fact that the Bush White House itself periodically asked the Secret Service to skip magnetometer screening undoubtedly contributed to an indulgent attitude.

Michael Chertoff, when secretary of DHS, contributed to that laxness in a very personal way. Because of objections by his wife, the Secret Service stopped performing checks on workers cleaning the Chertoffs’ home, even though agents knew that many of the workers were illegal immigrants, according to agents. Ironically, in October 2008, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) within DHS fined James D. Reid $22,880 for allegedly employing illegal immigrants when his Maryland cleaning company worked at Chertoff’s home and at other Washington homes.

When asked for comment, William R. Knocke, a DHS spokesman, said, “These are baseless and sensational allegations that I’m not going to dignify with a response.”

Retired agents who served before the Secret Service began cutting corners say they have never heard of stopping magnetometer screening. When told of the practice, they assert that the Secret Service would never do such a thing.

“The [political] staff sometimes would propose stopping the magnetometers when an event was about to start,” says former agent William Albracht, who retired in 2001 and was an instructor at the Secret Service’s training facility in Laurel, Md. “I don’t know of any agent that has ever done that. That’s just not what we do. It doesn’t matter to us how your person looks in the media or to the crowds. It’s not really our concern. Our concern is that person’s safety.”

“You face pressure from political staffs all the time, but you don’t stop magnetometer screening,” says Norm Jarvis, who taught new agents, was on Bill Clinton’s protective detail, and left the Secret Service in 2005 as a special agent in charge. “Sometimes things happen and the flow rate is a little slow. But nobody in the Secret Service would allow the staff to impair security and jeopardize the life of the president by stopping magnetometer screening.”

“Requests were made by staff to expedite or stop magnetometer screening,” says Danny Spriggs, who headed protection and retired as deputy director of the Secret Service in 2004. “I would never have acquiesced to that.”

Shutting down magnetometers is just one example of how the Secret Service has been cutting corners. In some cases, its weapons are outmoded and leave agents open to being outgunned by well-armed assassins. Contrary to announced policy, agents on major protective details are not allotted time for physical training or firearms requalification. Instead, agents are asked to cover up the lack of training by filling out their own physical training test forms for themselves. Counterassault teams, which are trained as units of five to six members, have been slashed to two agents, rendering them virtually impotent in the face of an attack.

While Secret Service agents are often heroic, the agency uses subterfuge to make them seem more so. When members of Congress and other VIPs visit the Secret Service training facility in Laurel, Md., the agency presents scenarios where agents respond to a threat. While the demonstration is billed as spontaneous, it is secretly rehearsed.

Asked about this, Ed Donovan, a Secret Service spokesman, did not respond.

When one considers how important preventing an assassination is to our democracy, the amount spent on the Secret Service — $1.4 billion a year, nearly two-thirds of it for protection — seems like a misprint. Indeed, while the agency’s budget increased substantially after 9/11, since then its budget has actually decreased when inflation is taken into account.

That does not include supplemental appropriations to cover incremental costs for coverage of campaign events and so-called national security events such as presidential nominating conventions.

This penny-pinching approach comes at a time when well-funded terrorists have replaced the lone deranged gunman as the greatest threat to American elected officials and when threats against the president are up 400 percent as compared with when Bush was president. Yet rather than ask for substantially more funds from Congress, the Secret Service assures members that the agency is fulfilling its job with the modest increases it requests, even as it takes on more duties, and sleep-deprived agents work almost around the clock.

Neither the DHS inspector general nor Congress has penetrated the agency’s invincible veneer to uncover the shortcomings.

Since an assassination jeopardizes democracy itself, few agencies are as important as the Secret Service. Agents who are concerned that the Secret Service is on the brink of a disaster say that only a director appointed from the outside can make the wholesale changes that are needed in the agency’s management and culture.

Without those changes, an assassination of Barack Obama or a future president is a real possibility. If that happens, a new Warren Commission will be appointed to study the tragedy. It will find that the Secret Service was shockingly derelict in its duty to the American people and to its own elite corps of brave and dedicated agents.

Ronald Kessler is chief Wash

[William Kelly]

Man carries assault rifle to Obama protest -- and it's legal

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/08/17/obama.protest.rifle/

Video shows man with an assault rifle slung over his shoulder at Phoenix protest

Arizona law has nothing in the books regulating assault rifles

Secret Service: Man considered no threat to president, who was nearby.

Man carrying rifle: "I think that people need to get out and do it more"

PHOENIX, Arizona (CNN) -- A man toting an assault rifle was among a dozen protesters carrying weapons while demonstrating outside President Barack Obama's speech to veterans on Monday, but no laws were broken. It was the second instance in recent days in which unconcealed weapons have appeared near presidential events

Video from the protest in Phoenix, Arizona, shows the man standing with other protesters, with the rifle slung over his right shoulder.

Phoenix police said authorities monitored about a dozen people carrying weapons while peacefully demonstrating.

"It was a group interested in exercising the right to bear arms," said police spokesman Sgt. Andy Hill.

Arizona law has nothing in the books regulating assault rifles, and only requires permits for carrying concealed weapons. So despite the man's proximity to the president, there were no charges or arrests to be made. Hill said officers explained the law to some people who were upset about the presence of weapons at the protest. Watch the rifle being legally carried at rally »

"I come from another state where 'open carry' is legal, but no one does it, so the police don't really know about it and they harass people, arrest people falsely," the man, who wasn't identified, said in an interview aired by CNN affiliate KNVX. "I think that people need to get out and do it more so that they get kind of conditioned to it."

Gun-toting protesters have demonstrated around the president before. Last week, a man protesting outside Obama's town hall meeting in New Hampshire had a gun strapped to his thigh. That state also doesn't require a license for open carry.

U.S. Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan acknowledged the incidents in New Hampshire and Arizona, but said he was not aware of any other recent events where protesters attended with open weapons. He said there was no indication that anyone had organized the incidents.

Asked whether the individuals carrying weapons jeopardized the safety of the president, Donovan said, "Of course not."

The individuals would never have gotten in close proximity to the president, regardless of any state laws on openly carrying weapons, he said. A venue is considered a federal site when the Secret Service is protecting the president and weapons are not allowed on a federal site, he added.

In both instances, the men carrying weapons were outside the venues where Obama was speaking.

"We pay attention to this obviously ... to someone with a firearm when they open carry even when they are within state law," Donovan said. "We work with our law enforcement counterparts to make sure laws and regulations in their states are enforced."

http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/stories...17/daily20.html

There were men carrying guns outside the Phoenix Convention Center Monday morning during President Barack Obama’s visit, but no arrests were made, according to Phoenix Police.

The Phoenix Police originally said three persons were spotted with guns in downtown Phoenix near Obama's appearance and later upped that count to 12. Police officials, whp were expecting some armed demonstrators, said one man was carrying an assault rifle.

It is not illegal to carry guns openly in Arizona, but police kept close tabs on the men, said spokesman Andy Hill.

Obama spoke at the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention at the center Monday. Protesters in downtown Phoenix focused on the health care reform debate.

Security was heightened but not intense in downtown Phoenix during the president’s visit.

[William Kelly]

CNN: Death Threats Against Obama Up 400%

Arizona Pastor: "Obama Should Die."

http://www.opednews.com/populum/linkframe.php?linkid=96358

Below is the transcript of Sanchez’s report on the meteoric rise in death threats made against President Obama:

RICK SANCHEZ, CNN ANCHOR: I’m going to be telling you about a story that we just learned about. This is amazing, this e-mail I received moments ago. It is an e-mail that came from a pastor who recently in a sermon said that he wants Sasha and Malia to be fatherless and that he wants Michelle Obama to be a widow.

That’s just the beginning of what you are about to hear. I will take you through it.

SANCHEZ: All right. Hello again, everybody. I’m Rick Sanchez with the next generation of news. This is a conversation. It is not a speech. And it is your turn to get involved.

It is my duty as a journalist to make you aware of a deeply disturbing trend taking that is taking place in our country and how it ironically folds into yet another story that I shared with you just last week.

A CNN source with very close to the U.S. Secret Service confirmed to me today that threats on the life of the president of the United States have now risen by as much as 400 percent since his inauguration, 400 percent death threats against Barack Obama — quote — “in this environment” go far beyond anything the Secret Service has seen with any other president.

Now, I need to have you keep in mind today as we add details to this story of what we’re going to share with you here. I want to take you back 11 days ago, when Mr. Obama visited Phoenix, Arizona. Do you remember this man? He’s one of a dozen or so people who carried guns to that presidential event that we have been checking on.

You may remember that we heard him say on camera that he is prepared to resort to forceful resistance against the Obama administration. Now, today, I want to tell you about the church that that man attends. And, in particular, I am going to play for you parts of the sermon that were delivered from the pulpit on the very day before the president arrived in Phoenix, Arizona.

This is important. This, my friends, I believe you will agree, is chilling.

PASTOR STEVEN ANDERSON, FAITHFUL WORD BAPTIST CHURCH: Tonight, I want to preach this sermon. And you have probably never heard a sermon like this before. Actually, you probably have if you have been coming to church here for a while. But you know what? Here is my sermon, why I hate Barack Obama. That’s my sermon tonight, because Barack Obama is coming to town tomorrow morning.

Barack Obama is coming to town. And he is going to be here tomorrow morning. Who knew that he was coming to town? I didn’t know. I just found out recently with his health care and everything like this.

And I’m going to tell you something. I hate Barack Obama. You say, well, you just mean you don’t like what he stands for. No, I hate the person. Oh, you mean you just don’t like his policies. No, I hate him.

SANCHEZ: There is more and it is much worse. First, I want you to know the voice you heard there was that of Pastor Steven Anderson of the Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona. On the day before the president’s visit, Mr. Anderson told his parishioners that he hates Barack Obama and wants him dead. This was Anderson from the pulpit saying the president deserves to die for supporting abortion rights. That is what he means when he uses the word violence. All right. Here is some more.

ANDERSON: What goes around comes around. You love violence. You hate that which is right. You love to harm others. You love to hurt or kill the unborn or the innocent or the righteous. He is saying, God is going to bring that upon your own head, because whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

Now, turn back to Psalm 58 and let me ask you this question. Why should Barack Obama melt like a snail? Why should Barack Obama die like the untimely birth of a woman? Why should his children be fatherless and his wife a widow, as we read in this passage?

Well, I will tell you why. Because, since Barack Obama thinks it is OK to use a salty solution, right, to abort the unborn, because that’s how abortions are done, my friend, using salt — and I would like to see Barack Obama melt like a snail tonight.

SANCHEZ: Joining me from New York, a man who used to work for the U.S. Secret Service. He is Scott Alswang. He personally guarded Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush.

Thank you, sir, for being with us.

SCOTT ALSWANG, FORMER SECRET SERVICE AGENT: Thank you, Rick.

SANCHEZ: We are also going to be joined by Mike Brooks, who is standing right here next to me who has been digging down on this story. Mike, thank you for being here.

MIKE BROOKS, CNN SECURITY ANALYST: Sure.

SANCHEZ: This looks serious. This almost looks like this is coming to the point where we are even beyond maybe where this nation was on November 22 of 1963, when JFK was assassinated, when there was also an environment of hate in this country. When you hear that, what are your thoughts?

ALSWANG: Well, I’m confident that my former organization, the Secret Service, is doing everything they can to keep the president and his family safe. There are a lot of people that like attention in these cases.

SANCHEZ: What about this case? Do you know if the Secret Service has knocked on this pastor’s door? Should they be knocking on this pastor’s door?

ALSWANG: I am confident that they have already knocked on his door, that through counterpart means in local and state and federal authorities, that this has come to be explained to. And for the media to bring it out, I definitely think that it has come to their attention.

SANCHEZ: Mike, were you going to add something to that?

BROOKS: No, no, I have been talking to some folks. And he has been interviewed by the U.S. Secret Service.

But, boy, he walks the fine line. And, Scott, you will agree with me. I was with the Metropolitan Police who worked on the presidential and vice presidential details when I was there for 26 years. And I can tell you, we used to run into people like this all the time, who knew how to walk that fine line without making a direct threat. And that’s what he did…

SANCHEZ: Well, hold on a minute. Here is Statute 18, U.S. Code, Section 871. We looked it up today, about threatening the president of the United States.

It is against the law to do so, as I’m sure you both know and I am just recently becoming expert on.

SANCHEZ: Let me read you the quote: “Whoever knowingly and willfully threatening to take the life of, to kidnap, or to inflict bodily harm upon the president of the United States.” That’s the way we were able to decipher those words.

It sounds like both of you are saying that this man directly is not doing that. Is that right, Mr. Alswang?

ALSWANG: He is walking a fine line. The problem I have with it is that he seems to be inciting his congregation to go and act in a direction toward the president. And that, at least on a local level, would seem to me to be an inciting charge. And if someone in that congregation had mental disabilities or were prone toward violence or had a direction of interest toward the president or his family, there could be grave consequences.

SANCHEZ: Well, that’s interesting. Let me show the viewers something.

Do we have that shot of Chris? Chris is the guy, Chris Broughton. It’s taken us a long time to dig down and find out who this guy is. Chris Broughton is that gentleman who had an AR-14, right, Mike?

BROOKS: AR-15 type weapon.

SANCHEZ: AR-15, sorry. There he is right there.

He is outside where the president was speaking. We have found out that Chris was actually in attendance when that sermon was given on the eve of the president’s arrival. Now, let’s listen to just a little bit more of that sermon, as we consider that chilling thought.

ANDERSON: You are going to tell me that I’m supposed to pray for the socialist devil, murderer, infanticide who wants to see young children and he wants to see babies killed through abortion and partial-birth (INAUDIBLE) everything? You are going to tell me I am supposed to pray for God to give him a good lunch tomorrow while he’s in Phoenix, Arizona?

No. I am not going to pray for his good. I am going to pray that he dies and goes to hell.

SANCHEZ: And, by the way, I should add once again that I have reached out to the pastor today. He has agreed that he will join us, he will talk to me on this show, most likely over either the weekend or Monday, was not able to do so today, because we want to reach out to him.

It’s interesting as you listen to the last words there. Let me read those back to you. “I am going to pray for his good” — “I’m not going to pray for his good. I am going to pray that he dies and goes to hell.”

Again, most of us law-abiding Americans listen to those words and we start to get worried for our president, whether he is a Democrat or a Republican or what he is.

What is Secret Service’s responsibility with people like this? And what are your concerns?

[William Kelly]

Threats Against Obama Spiked Early

('A high level of threats against the president has leveled off, but concern remains because of the nature of the threats and the fact that Mr. Obama’s race was a prime factor.'

'Race,Threats and Threatening Messages,Barack Obama'

December 6, 2009

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/us/06threat.html

By JEFF ZELENY and JIM RUTENBERGPublished: December 5, 2009

WASHINGTON — The young Marine's rogue mission, laid out with maps and photographs, was as straightforward as it was chilling. He called it Operation Patriot.

A Detailed Look at Five Cases

The Marine, Kody Brittingham, a 20-year-old lance corporal, wrote that he had taken an oath to "protect against all enemies, both foreign and domestic." In a signed "letter of intent," tucked away in his barracks at Camp Lejeune, he identified a "domestic enemy" he planned to eliminate last winter: President Obama.

The details of this threat, which were revealed at his arraignment hearing in North Carolina, have not previously been reported. Mr. Brittingham pleaded guilty in August and awaits sentencing on charges of threatening to kill the president and attempted armed robbery.

It is one of the cases in a spike of threats against Mr. Obama before his inauguration and in the early months of his presidency, raising deep concerns inside the Secret Service and at the White House.

The threats have leveled off in recent months, officials said, and Mr. Obama now receives about the same as his two most recent predecessors. But several officials said they took no solace that the volume of reports had receded because it was the nature of the threats that concern them and because the factors behind the increase remain — Mr. Obama's race prime among them.

While the story of the Virginia couple who crashed a state dinner last month has drawn much attention to the security around Mr. Obama, it is threats from far beyond the White House gates that have most turned up the pressure on the Secret Service.

"It only takes one case to ripen to really change the entire dynamic of the country," said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, whose department oversees the Secret Service. "This has to be a zero failure performance."

The agency has expanded its Internet Threat Desk, where online threats are monitored and investigated. Ms. Napolitano goes to the White House each month to review threats against Mr. Obama with Rahm Emanuel, the president's chief of staff. At a time when the administration and Congress are looking for ways to trim federal spending, the Secret Service is often asked what more it needs.

A review of dozens of court records and police reports by The New York Times uncovered an array of cases, most of which did not gain public attention even as they rang alarm bells at some of the highest levels of the government. Some involved suspects with a history of violence or mental illness and easy access to guns and explosives, while others involved men whose menacing talk was ultimately deemed to be just that by the authorities.

An airport security guard in New Jersey, who had 43 guns and allegedly hollow-point bullets at home, was charged with making threats against a president after co-workers told the authorities that he had talked about cutting a hole in a fence to shoot Mr. Obama on the day before the president was to land at Newark International Airport.

The man, John Brek, spent 29 days in jail, which was counted as time served on a lesser charge after the local authorities deemed that he was not a threat. "He's a talker," said an Essex County prosecutor on the case, Keith Harvest. (In an interview, Mr. Brek said he had only pointed to the hole in the fence as a potential security breach.)

An Arizona pastor drew the attention of agents after he delivered a sermon that included pleas for Mr. Obama's death at the very time he and his family visited the state.

While cases involving heated political rhetoric are seldom prosecuted, they are often investigated by the authorities, including the case of a Republican candidate for governor in Idaho who made a hunting-season joke about "Obama tags." "We'd buy some of those," he said.

The Secret Service also checked in with a Pennsylvania newspaper that ran a classified advertisement placed by a customer, which declared: "May Obama follow in the steps of Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy," and with a Florida radio talk show host who bantered with an anti-Obama listener, who allegedly discussed his frustration with Mr. Obama by saying he was practicing his shooting skills.

"We don't have the luxury of saying, 'That's just a political statement,' " said Edwin Donovan, a spokesman for the Secret Service. "We don't know someone's intent until we go out and ask them about it."

The couple that gained access to the state dinner, which led to three agents being placed on administrative leave, is the only known example of a misstep by the Secret Service in its handling of Mr. Obama's security. But the White House acknowledged in its own investigation that its staff members also could have done more to prevent the breach.

Many of the reported threats against Mr. Obama bear a resemblance to those against President George W. Bush, who in his last year in office faced alleged threats from at least two men — one in Maine, the other in Louisiana — who the authorities said were found to have possessed weapons, records show.

Yet officials acknowledge in interviews that every president faces new twists and that the nature of the reports can even vary between political parties — though, as the first black president, Mr. Obama draws many threats uniquely his own. He began receiving Secret Service protection in May 2007, well before he emerged as the likely Democratic nominee, because of threats against him. At the time, he urged voters to "stop worrying" about his safety, fearful that it could hurt his political chances.

A Detailed Look at Five Cases

In the later stages of the campaign, the authorities uncovered at least two alleged race-inspired plots to assassinate Mr. Obama — one during the Democratic convention in Denver that was ultimately deemed not a "credible threat," another involving skinheads from Arkansas and Tennessee.

They have tracked several potential threats since then, including from a man in La Mesa, Calif., who allegedly posted two racially charged missives against Mr. Obama on a Yahoo message board with the words "he will have a 50 cal in the head soon."

While the big increase in threats against Mr. Obama took place in the first four months of his presidency, officials say the depressed economy has contributed to an increase in antigovernment sentiment, which particularly alarmed federal officials over the summer.

"They are absolutely totally aware that the spike did occur, and they are watching for any trends that would indicate it's going to spike again," said W. Ralph Basham, a former director of the service who keeps in contact with Mark Sullivan, the current director.

Making the job that much more difficult, Mr. Basham said, is that many would-be assassins do not telegraph their intentions loudly enough to tip off the Secret Service.

Indeed, records in the case of Mr. Brittingham — which prosecutors, the Secret Service and defense lawyers would not discuss in detail — indicate that agents would not have found out about his plot had he not been arrested in connection with an attempted armed robbery in December.

In the court appearance last August, when Mr. Brittingham pleaded guilty, federal prosecutors said the Secret Service learned about the assassination plot after his arrest, when Marine officials searched a barracks at Camp Lejeune and discovered detailed maps of the <A title="More articles about the Capitol Building." href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/c/capitol_building_washington_dc/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier">Capitol building and photographs of Mr. Obama along with his vital statistics.

One of the prosecutors, Eric Evenson, told the judge that a witness reported that Mr. Brittingham had said, "We are the Marines fighting Osama, we should do the same for Obama."

The documents found at the barracks indicated that Mr. Brittingham was focusing on an attempt in Washington. But, had he not been arrested, he would have conceivably had another opportunity, when Mr. Obama visited Camp Lejeune in February.

Asked if extra precautions were taken for that visit given the Brittingham case, Mr. Donovan, the Secret Service spokesman, said, "There are no extra precautions to take, since we put forth the maximum effort all the time."

Edited December 6, 2009 by William Kelly