Dropped Guards

Richard Nixon will no doubt sleep more easily knowing that his new dog, Brownie, barks vociferously at the first sign of a stranger. After some 17 years of round-the-clock Secret Service protection, the former President has decided to drop his guards. According to a Nixon spokesman, the gesture was made to help trim the federal deficit. As soon as he hires a private agency to take care of his security needs, America's taxpayers will be relieved of paying an estimated $3 million a year for the three shifts of agents that guard him seven days a week.

Congress began providing protection for former Presidents in 1962 and by 1968 had extended it to their wives, widows and children under 16. The Secret Service, true to its name, is tight-lipped about the nature of the protection, but allows that agents are assigned 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to guard Nixon (protection for his wife Pat was dropped last year at his request), Gerald and Betty Ford, Lady Bird Johnson and Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter (Amy is 17). The Secret Service grudgingly admits that the cost for protecting former Presidents and their families last year was $10.7 million.

Other Western nations, such as Britain, France and West Germany, provide significant protection to their past leaders only if there is reason to believe they are in danger. In fact, the protection they give their sitting leaders seems threadbare compared with the elaborate style in which the U.S. looks after its former ones.

Senator Lawton Chiles of Florida, a dedicated foe of what he terms "the imperial former presidency," introduced legislation last year that would phase out protection for former Presidents five years after they leave office. He would also like to limit what the Government chips in for presidential libraries and for ex-Chief Executives' offices and staffs. Says Chiles: "I think President Nixon's announcement is the best news we've had. His example is a good one for other past Presidents to follow, but we need to make it law." A spokesman for Ford said the ex-President anticipates that he will follow Nixon's lead, but notes, "We won't be driven by Nixon's timing." Carter had no comment on Nixon's decision.