Obama insists he's in good hands, yet many still fear for his safety

DALLAS -- There is a hushed worry among many supporters of Sen. Barack Obama, echoed in conversations from state to state, rally to rally: Will he be safe?

In Colorado, two sisters say they pray daily for his safety. In New Mexico, a daughter says she persuaded her mother to still vote for the Illinois Democrat, even though the mother feared that winning would put him in danger. And at a rally here, a woman expressed worries his message of hope and change -- and his race -- made him more vulnerable to violence.

"I've got the best protection in the world," said Obama, reprising a line he tells supporters who raise the issue with him. "So stop worrying."

Yet worry they do, with the spring of 1968 seared into their memories, when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Sen. Robert Kennedy were assassinated in a span of two months.

Obama has been surrounded by Secret Service agents since May 3, the earliest a candidate has ever been provided protection. (He reluctantly gave in to the insistent urging of Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., and others in Congress.) As his rallies have swelled, so has his security, nearly rivaling that given to a sitting president.

Among friends and advisers, danger is something Obama rarely mentions.

"It's not something that I'm spending time thinking about day to day," said Obama, who has been given the Secret Service nickname Renegade, a way for agents to quickly identify him. "I think anybody who decides to run for president recognizes that there are some risks involved, just like there are risks in anything."

Not long ago, his advisers worried that some black voters might not support his candidacy out of a fierce desire to protect him. It was a particular concern in South Carolina, but Obama said he believed the worry was also rooted in "a fear of failure."

Now that he has won a string of primaries and caucuses and built a coalition of black and white voters, failure would seem to be less of an issue. The fears, however, remain.

Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, raised concerns in a letter in January to Secret Service officials. Thompson said he wrote the letter without discussing it with Obama, whom he has endorsed.

"His candidacy is so unique to this country and so important that the last thing you would want is for him not to have the opportunity to fulfill the role of a potential presidential nominee," Thompson said. "It's out of an abundance of caution that I wrote the letter, rather than keep our fingers crossed and pray."

Before Obama decided to run, he discussed his safety with his family. His campaign employed a team of private security guards before he was placed under Secret Service protection. Since then, he has grown fond of the agents who surround him, inviting them to watch the Super Bowl at his home in Chicago and playing basketball with them on the days he awaits election results.

The agency defended its procedures after a newspaper report last week said weapons checks were suspended to speed the lines of people waiting to get into an Obama rally in Dallas.

Obama was reticent in speaking about his security or the period in U.S. history that is often raised -- without prompting -- by voters who are interviewed at his campaign events.

"Obviously, it was an incredible national trauma," Obama said. "But neither Bobby Kennedy nor Martin Luther King had Secret Service protection."

Indeed, the assassination of Kennedy in 1968, when Obama was 6, prompted Congress to pass a law authorizing protection of major presidential and vice-presidential candidates.

In this campaign, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York has had Secret Service protection from the beginning, because she is a former first lady. None of the other candidates accepted it during their primary campaigns, and Sen. John McCain does not have Secret Security protection at this time.

Gerald Posner, author of books on the assassinations of John Kennedy and King, said he did not believe Obama was under a significantly higher risk than President Bush or Hillary Clinton. The fears are more openly discussed, he said, because he is the first black candidate to come this close to winning a major party's presidential nomination.

"Barack scares those of us who think of the possibility of an assassination in a different way," he said. "He represents so much hope and change. That is exactly what was taken away from us in the 1960s."

Material from Seattle Times archives is included in this report.