Can the First Lady Take the Secret Service Wherever She Wants?

First lady Michelle Obama has generated some controversy for taking a four-day trip to Spain with her daughter Sasha and several friends. While the White House says Obama paid for her own plane trip and hotel room, the security costs, which included accommodation for dozens of Secret Service agents and an Air Force jet to carry the entire entourage, likely ran into the hundreds of thousands. Given the enormous expense of what was, in effect, a weekend getaway, could the Secret Service have said no to the first lady’s trip?

No. The U.S. Secret Service is required by law to provide protection for the president, the vice president, and their immediate families, wherever they are. (Former presidents, major presidential candidates, and visiting heads of state are also entitled to protection.) The Secret Service can advise the president or first lady against a trip for security reasons, but ultimately the Secret Service will go wherever the people they protect go.

A weekend on the beach in Andalusia probably didn’t cause too many headaches, but first ladies have made solo visits to some dicier locations in the past. There was Hillary Clinton’s trip to Bosnia in 1996 (though reports of sniper fire were somewhat exaggerated). Laura Bush made several visits to Afghanistan. Michelle Obama, along with Vice President Joe Biden’s wife Jill, paid a visit to Haiti in the aftermath of this year’s devastating earthquake.

The Secret Service likes to have as much time as possible to plan for international trips, sometimes doing months of advance work for presidential travel, but in some cases security arrangements have to be made much more quickly, which is why the organization maintains an extensive protective research arm to study and evaluate threats around the world.

But while the first lady — whose code name is reportedly "Renaissance" — is entitled to drag the Secret Service off to Spain, she’s not actually required to. By law, only the current president is obligated to have Secret Service protection at all times. Everyone else has the right to waive it. In recent history, no first lady is known to have done so.

Thanks to Andrew O’Connell, special agent with the U.S. Secret Service from 1990 to 1997, and now CEO of Guidepost Solutions.