Isn’t this part of the war on terror too?

Let’s do a God-forbid scenario here.

What if last week’s hostage standoff at Hillary Clinton’s campaign office in New Hampshire took place, instead, at the office of a candidate who didn’t happen to have life-long Secret Service protection. Let’s say it happened at candidate Joe Blow’s campaign office … and Joe Blow was there.

And let’s say for the sake of this argument that it wasn’t just a mentally disturbed man who’d strapped harmless hardware store flares to his body but, rather, a bone fide terrorist swathed in plastique trying to make a horrific point about our election system.

Under the rules of the game right now Mr. Blow wouldn’t have had any government supplied security to protect him as he ran for the nation’s highest office. As it stands right now only Hillary Clinton, as a former first lady, and her closest Democratic Party rival, Barack Obama, are under the protective umbrella of the Secret Service. No Republicans are presently covered.

Under the law in place when the Clinton’s lived in the White House Mrs. Clinton will receive such protection for the rest of her life. President Clinton will too. But before he left office he signed a law that all future presidents will get Secret Service protection for only 10 years after they have served.

There is a special Congressional Committee, which works directly with the Secret Service, which could be called upon to extend the ex-President’s coverage if the situation warranted. And it was that Congressional Committee that decided many, many months ago that Barack Obama needed a special shield as he crossed the nation in search of votes.

I wondered why.

I have a great friend and source in a retired Secret Service Agent named Scott Alswang who is now the Vice President of Executive Protection/Government Liaison for the S.O.S. Security group in Manhattan. He tells me that intelligence sources embedded inside organized hate groups here in America prompted the Obama protection. Think about that. Not only do presidential candidates have to worry about outside threats to their safety (and their offices too!) they sometimes have to worry about threats from inside our own country.

Former Special Agent Alswang believes the incident at Senator Clinton’s office in New Hampshire “highlights the need for target hardening at all of the campaign offices around the country. And I believe as a result of this (hostage taking) all of the campaign storefronts/offices will do some form of target hardening.” For example, he told me, campaign volunteers are not vetted. They are simply welcomed, put to work and given access to the visiting candidate no questions asked. There are no background checks and for the most part no security doors for volunteers to pass through, no safeguards as to who comes and who goes. What if one of them had a loyalty not to the candidate but, rather, to a foreign entity – say an anti American terror group? What if one of them was part of an Al Qaeda sleeper cell?

Back to the pack of traveling candidates. Since the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy in 1968 the United States Secret Service has been providing 24/7 protection to top tier candidates or those meeting the criteria for a U.S.S.S. detail. The Service looks at the intelligence gathered, the likelihood of an “Attack On the Principle” (A.O.P.) and once the candidate becomes the party’s nominee the scope of protection widens to include the spouse and the children of the candidate. The Secret Service also will then send in swarms of agents and technical support specialists to do a security survey on the residence, the main campaign headquarters and the work place of the potential President. The same is done for the Vice President and his family.

But none of that is happening yet. We have more than a dozen presidential candidates out there vying for the job of running the world’s only remaining superpower. Only one, Hillary Clinton, has complete protection. Barack Obama has some. Are the rest sitting ducks?