First president to be given a Secret Service code name

Former US President Harry S Truman, who served from 1945 until 1953, was the first president to be given a Secret Service code name - “General”. Improvements in telecommunications technology, and the newly present danger that potentially threatening forces might be listening in, required that all presidents, senior staff and their families be issued with code names from this point onwards in an effort to confuse anyone who might be listening in illicitly. To this end, John F Kennedy went by the code name “Lancer”, Dwight D Eisenhower was known as "Providence", and the former actor Ronald Reagan was known as “Rawhide”. Vice-president Al Gore once claimed to be so boring that his Secret Service code name was “Al Gore”.