two hundred boodlers a year for four years straight.

Wood attributed his success to travelling fast and light, hitting the
bad-guys hard, and avoiding bureaucratic baggage. "Because my raids
were made without military escort and I did not ask the assistance of
state officers, I surprised the professional counterfeiter."

Wood's social message to the once-impudent boodlers bore an eerie ring
of Sundevil: "It was also my purpose to convince such characters that
it would no longer be healthy for them to ply their vocation without
being handled roughly, a fact they soon discovered."

William P. Wood, the Secret Service's guerilla pioneer, did not end
well. He succumbed to the lure of aiming for the really big score.
The notorious Brockway Gang of New York City, headed by William E.
Brockway, the "King of the Counterfeiters," had forged a number of
government bonds. They'd passed these brilliant fakes on the
prestigious Wall Street investment firm of Jay Cooke and Company. The
Cooke firm were frantic and offered a huge reward for the forgers'
plates.

Laboring diligently, Wood confiscated the plates (though not Mr.
Brockway) and claimed the reward. But the Cooke company treacherously
reneged. Wood got involved in a down-and-dirty lawsuit with the Cooke
capitalists. Wood's boss, Secretary of the Treasury McCulloch, felt
that Wood's demands for money and glory were unseemly, and even when
the reward money finally came through, McCulloch refused to pay Wood
anything. Wood found himself mired in a seemingly endless round of
federal suits and Congressional lobbying.

Wood never got his money. And he lost his job to boot. He resigned in
1869.

Wood's agents suffered, too. On May 12, 1869, the second Chief of the
Secret Service took over, and almost immediately fired most of Wood's
pioneer Secret Service agents: Operatives, Assistants and Informants
alike. The practice of receiving $25 per crook was abolished. And the
Secret Service began the long, uncertain process of thorough
professionalization.

Wood ended badly. He must have felt stabbed in the back. In fact his
entire organization was mangled.

On the other hand, William P. Wood WAS the first head of the Secret
Service. William Wood was the pioneer. People still honor his name.
Who remembers the name of the SECOND head of the Secret Service?

As for William Brockway (also known as "Colonel Spencer"), he was
finally arrested by the Secret Service