WASHINGTON: Days after President George W. Bush was nearly struck in the head by flying footwear at a Baghdad news conference, US Secret Service officials faced questions about how an Iraqi television reporter was able to hurl not one but two shoes at the president without the agents responsible for protecting him being able to move into the line of fire.

Secret Service officials said they were reviewing the episode, including the procedures used by agents guarding Bush during his unannounced visit to Baghdad . But officials said they believe the agents reacted appropriately in a situation where all those present in the room had undergone intensive security screening.

Nonetheless, some former agents and security experts who reviewed tapes of the assault predicted that it would lead to minor changes to improve procedures for safeguarding the president.

“They will probably make a decision to have more close-in agents, right around the president,” said Ronald T. Williams, a former Secret Service agent. “They will make some adjustments, so if a shoe is thrown again, they can intercept it or at least give the president cover.”

Secret Service officials said their agents began moving as soon as the first shoe was thrown. Ed Donovan, a spokesman for the Secret Service, said the videos show that “the response was appropriate,” he said. “You can see agents reacting after the first shoe was thrown.”

Everyone at the news conference, Donovan said, had passed through several layers of security and had been searched multiple times. But he added that the agency would examine its performance.

“We are our own harshest critics,” he said. “This will be reviewed to see if there is anything we can do differently. We always strive to make ourselves better as an agency.”

Patrick J. Lennon, another former agent, said that when he saw the video, the agents seemed to react more slowly then he would have expected.

“I thought they would have responded after the first shoe,” Lennon said. The Secret Service agents were not able to get in front of Bush immediately because they were positioned at the side of the room, not beside him, as they would if he was working a rope line, Lennon said.

”Thank God, Bush apparently played a little dodge ball when he was younger,” said Lennon, who heads a security consulting company in Rockville , Md. “His reflexes are quick. I was proud of him.”

After the second shoe was thrown, the agents tackled the assailant, shoving him to the ground.

Unless a hurled object has the potential to kill a president, agents will move to restrain the man, rather than using deadly force, said Joseph J. Funk, a former agent whose Severna Park, Md., company, US Safety and Security, helped provide protection to President-elect Barack Obama early in the campaign.

”Given the fact you are in a crowded room, the collateral damage would have been extensive,” Funk said.

The Baghdad incident also illustrates other Secret Service training protocols. Tapes show how agents move toward the president and to other parts of the room, as several tackled the Iraqi reporter, aided by other journalists and Iraqi security personnel. Williams, who runs Talon Executive Services in Fountain Valley , Calif , said agents are trained that a first attacker could stage a diversion by hurling something – like a shoe – creating a clear, lethal shot for a second attacker.

”It is like playing zone defence,” Williams said. “Not all agents are going to rush that guy. Because they are trained to watch for diversion.”—Dawn/LA Times-Washington Post News Service