Sentinels of the Service - Oral History Project

SENTINELS OF THE SERVICE was created for the purpose of gathering and preserving oral history interviews of former members of the United States Secret Service. These interviews will include employees from virtually every discipline in the organization, to include but not limited to, Special Agents, Administrative Aides, Special Officers, and members of various technical specialties.

This undertaking is similar to that being conducted by retirees of other federal law enforcement agencies. The purpose is to provide a resource for future historians and researchers as they strive to put our lives and times into historical perspective. A secondary accomplishment is the furnishing of a copy of individual interviews to the families of the individual interviewees for their personal family histories.

In order to provide academic rigor and intellectual discipline to the interviews the principals established by the Oral History Association are followed. Negotiations are under way to make the National Law Enforcement Officers Museum in Washington, DC, the repository for the transcripts of the interviews, but this may not preclude having particular specific transcripts provided to individual Presidential Libraries as well.

SENTINELS OF THE SERVICE, Inc., is a Maryland corporation and has been recognized by the IRS as a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation which means that donations to the organization are tax deductible.

Donations are used only to offset travel, per diem and transcriptions of interviews. There are no paid personnel employed by the organization. All of the personal time involved in this undertaking is donated by volunteers.

Donations, payable to Sentinels of the Service, Inc., should be directed to:

James E. Le Gette, Executive Director
Sentinels of the Service, Inc.
470 Lisson Ct.
Severna Park, MD 21146

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The earlier post regarding archiving of the oral interviews indicated that a repository for the completed interviews had not positively been established.

It can now be reported that The U. S. Secret Service’s Assistant Director of the Office of Human Resources and Training has acknowledged the program and offered to house the Sentinels’ collection of interviews at the library of the James J. Rowley Training Center.

These interviews will be made available for review and research to Special Agents of the U. S. Secret Service attending training at the Rowley Training Center as part of any one of the Service’s basic, supervisory or executive leadership training programs, including the Johns Hopkins University graduate program. The Sentinels’ material is made available for historical review and the U. S. Secret Service is in no way responsible for the information recorded.

As previously stated, the program is recognized by IRS as a charitable non-profit organization and donations are tax deductible.


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