John Wilkie

John Elbert Wilkie (1860 – December 13, 1934) was an American journalist and law enforcement officer who served as the 8th Chief of the United States Secret Service from 1898 to 1911.

Journalist career

At age 19, Wilkie joined the staff of the Chicago Times as a reporter. His father, Frank B. Wilkie, was an editorial writer at the newspaper; the two traveled to Europe and served. Upon returning to the United States, Wilkie joined the staff of the Chicago Tribune, where he initially served as financial editor and later city editor. While at the Tribune, Wilkie hired satirist Finley Peter Dunne.

On August 8, 1890, while working for the Tribune, Wilkie wrote a pseudonymous article that first described the Indian Rope Trick. Featured on the front page of the paper's second section, it was soon picked up by newspapers throughout the United States and United Kingdom, and it was translated into nearly every European language. Soon a number of people claimed to remember having seen the trick as far back as the 1850s. Four months later, the Tribune printed a retraction noting the story had been "written for the purpose of presenting a theory in an entertaining form." However, the notice of the hoax garnered little attention, and the myth of the Indian Rope Trick persisted for years. When The People's Friend, a British weekly magazine, contacted the Tribune in order to contact individuals mentioned in the story, Wilkie wrote a personal note: "I am led to believe that the little story attracted more attention than I dreamed it could, and that many accepted it as perfectly true. I am sorry that anyone should have been deluded."

Later career

Wilkie also served as assistant to the president of the Chicago Surface Lines and vice president of the Chicago Railway company.

In fiction

Wilkie is featured prominently in the 2014 novel The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy, where he is portrayed as a loyal but combative subordinate to President William Howard Taft. (There is also a major twist in the story about his real identity.) Many elements of the U.S. Secret Service from the era, such as their weapons and commission books, are featured, as are several U.S. Secret Service agents. An online-only chapter of the book also depicts Wilkie at work in his office at the Treasury Building, which is described in detail.

He is also a character in S.M. Stirling's Tales of the Black Chamber trilogy, an alternate history of World War II in which he remains chief of the Secret Service under a third Theodore Roosevelt administration.