Ok folks, I thought this might be fun.

Most people know President Trump’s Secret Service code name is “Mogul.”

Very fitting, right?

But do you know Melania’s?

How about JD Vance?

Or Ronald Reagan, John F. Kennedy, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and all the rest?

I’m betting you probably don’t know most of these.

So I decided to document the publicly known Secret Service code names for every President starting with Harry Truman, along with each Vice President and First Lady.

And some of them are absolutely perfect.

“Rawhide” for Ronald Reagan?

“Lancer” for John F. Kennedy?

“Mogul” for President Trump?

Those are tough to beat.

A quick bit of history before we get to the list…

The United States Secret Service was founded on July 5, 1865, but its original mission was fighting counterfeit currency after the Civil War. Presidential protection came later, following the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901.

The modern presidential code-name tradition is generally traced to Harry Truman.

That means Presidents George Washington through Franklin D. Roosevelt do not have reliably documented presidential Secret Service code names in this system.

And despite what we call them, these names are not really “secret” anymore.

They were especially useful when government radio traffic was easier to intercept. Today they remain useful because they are short, distinctive and difficult to misunderstand over a radio.

Here is the full list of publicly documented names, arranged so each presidential family and administration stays together:

When “Bobcat” was assigned to JD Vance in 2024, the news traveled quickly:

JD Vance gets Secret Service nickname ‘Bobcat’https://t.co/1XtvoMrIjo

— Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) July 28, 2024

Another contemporary post explained the personal connection behind the name:

The Secret Service has given JD Vance the codename “Bobcat.”

“Bobcat” has personal significance. It’s associated with both Ohio University and Breathitt County High School in Jackson, Kentucky – locations tied to Vance’s family and his bestselling memoir, "Hillbilly Elegy".…

— 🇺🇸ProudArmyBrat (@leslibless) July 28, 2024

A few of these have especially strong confirmation in the historical record.

The Washington Post reported during the 1992 campaign that President George Herbert Walker Bush was “Timber Wolf,” Bill Clinton was “Eagle,” and the words were used by protective agents speaking into their radios around the candidates. The report explained that the White House communications operation selected the names while the Secret Service wanted words that could be pronounced quickly, heard clearly and understood without confusion.

It also documented Bush’s earlier 1980 campaign name, “Sheepskin,” before he became “Timber Wolf” during the 1988 campaign, showing that one protectee could receive different identifiers during different periods. The names might sound colorful or personally meaningful, but the practical requirement was much simpler: an agent needed to say one unmistakable word during a noisy, crowded or fast-moving security operation.

That explains why the names tend to be short, vivid and hard to confuse with each other.

The Reagan records provide a striking real-world example. During the 1981 assassination attempt, agents used “Rawhide” for President Reagan and “Stagecoach” for his limousine while urgently redirecting the motorcade to George Washington University Hospital.

These names were more than fun nicknames sitting unused on a government list.

Agents actually relied on them when every second mattered.

TIME documented the modern names when President Trump received protection during the 2016 campaign, after Trump had joked during a televised debate that he would choose the deliberately ironic name “Humble.” He did not get Humble; he received “Mogul,” a name reflecting the business empire and public identity he had built long before entering presidential politics.

The same report identified Barack Obama as “Renegade” and the younger President Bush as “Trailblazer,” two names already widely associated with their respective presidential security details. Bush had previously been called “Tumbler” while protected as his presidential father’s son, an important distinction because Tumbler was a family-era identifier while Trailblazer was the name connected to his own presidency.

Joe Biden kept “Celtic,” the name connected to his Irish heritage that he had already used as Vice President.

He even publicly confirmed it during the Boston Celtics’ 2024 White House visit.

The archived White House post from that Celtics visit captured the moment:

In 1963, President Kennedy welcomed the Celtics as the first NBA champions to visit the White House.

I've had the honor to continue that tradition, celebrating the power of sports and the values these champions share:

Hard work.
Respect.
And the character to keep the faith. pic.twitter.com/IcuxOwtwZT

— President Biden Archived (@POTUS46Archive) December 1, 2024

So yes, these names are public.

And sometimes the person carrying one will tell you himself.

Now, did you catch the truly strange detail in the very first row?

Harry Truman had no Vice President for nearly four years.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Franklin D. Roosevelt began his fourth term on January 20, 1945, with Truman as his Vice President.

Then FDR died on April 12, only 82 days later.

Truman immediately became President, which left the Vice Presidency empty.

And under the Constitution as it existed at that time, there was no procedure allowing Truman to nominate a replacement.

None.

The office simply stayed vacant until the next presidential election.

Congress’s Constitution Annotated shows just how normal these long vacancies once were: before the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, the Vice Presidency became vacant 16 times for a combined total of more than 37 years. Eight vacancies happened because a President died and the Vice President moved into the White House, while the others followed the death or resignation of a sitting Vice President.

The constitutional problem went far beyond an empty office: there was no procedure empowering a President or Congress to put a replacement into it before the next election. The country therefore continued without a Vice President, sometimes for years, even though the office carried Senate responsibilities and represented the first line of presidential succession.

But the result was always the same: there was no constitutional machinery to install a replacement.

The country simply continued without a Vice President until voters chose a new ticket.

That meant no Vice President to preside over the Senate, cast tie-breaking votes or stand immediately behind the President in the succession line.

It sounds almost unthinkable today.

For much of American history, however, that was the system.

But Truman’s situation created another huge question:

What would happen if Truman died too?

Under the succession law then in effect, the Secretary of State came next after a vacant Vice Presidency.

Truman did not like that arrangement.

His argument was simple: a President should not effectively get to choose his own possible successor merely by appointing a Secretary of State.

He wanted an elected official next in line.

So Truman asked Congress to change the law.

The U.S. Senate’s history of the Presidential Succession Act explains that Truman wanted congressional leaders restored near the front of the line because the existing system placed an appointed Cabinet secretary immediately behind the empty Vice Presidency. Truman argued that the Speaker was elected to Congress by voters and then chosen to lead the House by the nation’s elected representatives, giving that office a democratic legitimacy a Cabinet appointment lacked.

Congress ultimately agreed and established an order beginning with the Vice President, followed by the Speaker, the Senate’s President pro tempore and eligible Cabinet secretaries in the order their departments were created. Truman signed the measure on July 18, 1947, changing who would take over if the President died or became unable to serve while the Vice Presidency remained vacant.

Truman signed the Presidential Succession Act of 1947 on July 18 of that year.

The new law placed the Speaker of the House immediately behind the Vice President, followed by the Senate’s President pro tempore and then the eligible Cabinet secretaries in the order their departments were created.

That basic structure remains in effect today.

But in Truman’s case, the change produced one especially awkward political reality.

That meant Republican House Speaker Joseph Martin became one heartbeat away from the Presidency while Democrat Harry Truman remained in office without a Vice President.

Think about that for a moment.

Truman finally won a full term in the famous 1948 election, with Kentucky Senator Alben Barkley as his running mate.

Barkley was sworn in as Vice President on January 20, 1949, ending a vacancy that had lasted approximately three years and nine months.

The country did not establish a way to fill a midterm Vice Presidential vacancy until the Twenty-Fifth Amendment was ratified in 1967.

That new process was eventually used to install Gerald Ford as Vice President after Spiro Agnew resigned in 1973, and then Nelson Rockefeller after Ford became President in 1974.

Pretty incredible history, isn’t it?

Now I want to know which code name you think is the best.

For me, it’s hard to beat Rawhide, Lancer and Mogul.

This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.