An Evening With Carol Leonnig

Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library and Museum
Online

Join us for an evening with Washington Post investigative reporter and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Carol Leonnig, speaking on her fascinating new release Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service. Evan Smith, CEO and co-founder of The Texas Tribune, will moderate the discussion.

The program will premiere at 7:00 pm CDT on Thursday, May 27. A link to view will be emailed to registrants earlier that day. We will not be taking comments or questions live— please submit your questions in advance, as part of the registration process, to help streamline the program. We welcome your comments on our Facebook and YouTube channels.

About the speaker:

Carol Leonnig is a national investigative reporter at The Washington Post, where she has worked since 2000 and has reported on the Secret Service for most of the last decade. A three-time Pulitzer Prize winner and co-author of the #1 New York Times bestseller A Very Stable Genius, Leonnig is also an on-air contributor to NBC News and MSNBC.

About the Book:

Zero Fail is the first definitive account of the rise and fall of the Secret Service, including extensive new reporting, from the Kennedy assassination to the alarming scandals, secrets, and mismanagement during the Obama and Trump years.

The Secret Service was born in 1865, in the wake of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, but its story begins in earnest in 1963, with the death of John F. Kennedy. Shocked into reform by their failure to protect the president on that fateful day, this once-sleepy agency was rapidly transformed into a proud, elite unit that would redeem themselves in 1981 by valiantly thwarting an assassination attempt against Ronald Reagan. But this reputation for courage and efficiency would not last forever. By Barack Obama's presidency, the Secret Service was becoming notorious for not averting break-ins at the White House, an armed gunman firing at the building while agents stood by, a massive prostitution scandal in Cartagena, and many other dangerous lapses.

To expose these shortcomings, Leonnig interviewed countless current and former agents and whistleblowers who risked their careers to speak to her about an agency that's broken and in desperate need of a reform.

Signed, bookplated copies of Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service are available for pre-order from The Store at LBJ. The book will be released on May 18, 2021.

By purchasing your book through The Store at LBJ, you support a local cultural institution. All proceeds from sales support our programming, exhibits, and educational initiatives at the LBJ Presidential Library.