Many things in the Secret Service tend to stay secret. Former agent Tim Wood didn't disclose a telephone in his shoe or talk under a cone of silence, but he did spill a few beans in his newest book, "Criminals and Presidents: The Adventures of a Secret Service Agent."
Then on Friday, he spilled some more beans to students of Westminster College and others who came out to meet him.
"I can talk for hours," Wood said, launching into a series of true crime stories.
Wood, a University of Missouri alumnus, worked 22 years for the U.S. Secret Service and sometimes was assigned to the Presidential Protection Division of the White House. He protected both presidents Bush and the Clintons, too.
"Everybody always wants to know about the president of the United States," Wood said. "When you're standing next to the president of the United States at the White House every day, you think it's just normal."
Wood spoke of his daughter, an infant when Bill Clinton became president.
"She doesn't remember running through the West Wing as a 3-year-old, but she does remember George W.," he said.
A former U.S. Marine, Wood also served in the agency's Las Vegas office. The Secret Service is an agency of the Treasury Department, and thus, many of the crimes involved counterfeiters and bank/credit card fraud.
He did some undercover work.
"As an undercover agent, you've gotta be an actor. You gotta walk the walk," he said.
Wood remembered a harrowing day with a forgery ring, its members high on heroin.
"I had a recorder in my left boot with a wire running up my leg and clipped to my belt," he said. "My UHF (transmitter) was taped to my chest. I thought, 'If he pats me down, this guy's gonna kill me.'"
In the kitchen area of the gang's apartment was a woman sitting at a table, shooting up. The man, who was supposed to make Wood a fake driver's license, answered the door in a tank top. He was so skinny, Wood said, you could see his ribs through his shirt.
"The place was filthy," Wood recalled. "The couch smelled like urine. The woman was shooting heroin between her toes."
The man took Wood into a back bedroom.
"I thought he was going to pat me down," he said. "He was smoking a hand-rolled cigarette and standing real close to me."
In his nervousness, Wood thought the man could sense the wires just by standing that close, and he recoiled backward.
"I told him I was trying to quit smoking," Wood said, laughing. "The guy said, 'Me, too.'"
Some more people came to the squalid apartment and started setting out heroin on the living room's coffee table. Wood said the process of making the driver's license took a long time, but he knew his fellow agents were just outside, in a van, listening to the whole thing go down.
"I just wanted him to hurry up so we could arrest him," Wood said, laughing.
Wood was invited to Westminster College by the Social Studies program and the Order of the Sword and Shield Academic Honors Society, according to Dr. Tobias Gibson, associate professor of political science.
Wood retired from the Secret Service in 2006. His book is available on Amazon.com.