Barack Obama: Faces thirty death threats a day

Barack Obama: Faces thirty death threats a day

U.S. President Barack Obama is the target of over thirty potential death threats every day and is being protected by an increasingly over-stretched and under-resourced Secret Service. A newly released  book has brought out this sensational information.

Since BaarckObama took office, the rate of threats against the president has increased four hundred per cent from the 3,000 a year or so under President George W. Bush. The Ronald Kessler, author of In the President's Secret Service, had said so.

According to a famous news papwer, some of the threats issued against Barack Obama, whose Secret Service codename is Renegade, have been publicized.

They include an alleged plot by white supremacists in Tennessee late last year to rob a gun store, shoot 88 black people, decapitate another 14 and then assassinate the first black president in American history.

However maximum of the threats have been kept under wraps since the Secret Service fears that revealing details of them would only increase the number of copycat attempts.

Although most threats are not credible, each one has to be investigated meticulously.

It has also been written that the intelligence officials received information that people associated with the Somalia-based Islamist group al-Shabaab might try to disrupt Obama's inauguration in the month of January, when the Secret Service co-ordinated at least forty thousand agents and officers from some 94 police, military and security agencies.

After Obama was elected president, his two children Malia, 11, codenamed Radiance, and Sasha, eight, codenamed Rosebud, began receiving Secret Service protection.

Obama's wife Michelle is codenamed Renaissance. The Secret Service also started to protect Vice-President Joe Biden's children, grandchildren, and mother.

Instead of bringing in more agents , instantly identifiable because of their bulky suits, worn over bullet-proof jackets, and earpieces,  the Secret Service directed agents to work longer hours to cover the extra load and to miss firearms training, physical fitness sessions and tests.

Kessler said, "We have half the number of agents we need, but requests for more agents have fallen on deaf ears at headquarters”.