Sloan was directing security for President Clinton during the first family's vacation on Martha's Vineyard in 1997. I was on assignment for the Cape Cod Times. The press pool was waiting for the president, the first lady and Vernon Jordan to come up the ninth fairway at Mink Meadow's golf course.

About a dozen reporters were hanging around the clubhouse, chomping on pizza paid for by the Washington press corps.

Bored and curious, I sparked up a conversation with Sloan. Nice guy. After he told me how many agents were employed in the entire agency (I can't remember now if he said 2,300 or 3,200), Sloan said his agency's primary purpose is to protect the nation's financial institutions.

"We're like the financial police," he said. "And I'll tell you one of the ironies of history. The Secret Service was commissioned by Abraham Lincoln. Up until then, the president had no official bodyguards. Lincoln signed the executive order that established the Secret Service and then went to the Ford Theater. You know the rest of the story."

Now, when Sloan said "financial institutions," he was talking about the Department of Treasury, the Federal Reserve and the like; not giant private corporations. (The important job of defending multi-national corporations and their investors goes to U.S. foreign policy and military planners).

But I'll share with you something else you might not have come across yet, although I don't know if it qualifies as "one of the ironies of history."

The other day, my girlfriend Tracee and I were watching the boob-tube when a Wal-Mart commercial aired. Did you know that the giant retailer is now selling groceries? Yeah, as in Safeway and Stop & Stop groceries. Sweetie, while I'm getting lunch meat, why don't you run over and grab a fishing pole and a pair of slacks for your little brother.

Wal-Mart creator Sam Walton died in 1992. The retail king passed on $48 billion to his peeps, making his inheritors owners of the second largest family fortune in the world, right behind Bill Gates at $51 billion. Goodnight John-boy and dream the American dream.

Or is it a nightmare? In Bill Quinn's book "How Wal-Mart Is Destroying America," it describes how Wal-Mart profiteers clocked doo-doo dumb dollars at the expense of small-town America. The strategy is to invade the area with a large "box" store on the outskirts of small towns to lure customers away from competing downtown businesses.

At first, Wal-Mart does a Pied Piper on customers by advertising heavily in the local press with an aggressive campaign to undercut prices of local retailers. According to David Korten, international business consultant and author of "The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism," for each Wal-Mart that opens, 100 local stores, on average, go out of business - most of them family businesses that have been in the community for years.

Forbes magazine lays out the Wal-Mart formula: open "discount stores in small towns and rural areas, each big enough to freeze out competition. The ruthless, predatory Sam stalks competitors - in any size, shape, or form - and finds sport in blasting them from the sky like so many quail."

Of course, Wal-Mart PR-flaks talk about jobs, jobs, jobs, which is double-speak for profits, profits, profits. According to Quinn's research, because Wal-Mart forces so many smaller retailers to close up shop, Wal-Mart eliminates 1.5 jobs in a community for every job it creates there, Quinn said.

For many employees, the pay falls short of a living wage and, although they keep the exact numbers on the hush, it's an open secret that a good number of Wal-Mart wage slaves - depicted as super-happy in the commercials - are part-timers with no benefits, according to Korten's research. Once the comp is driven out of business and local residents have to pretty much rely on the super store for necessities, Wal-Mart withdraws local advertising and raises its prices, according to Quinn."The more typical global corporation combines these features with a wide gap between owners and managers joined only by their respective financial interests. Indeed, because they hold their shares in managed investment accounts, most individual owners have no idea what companies they 'own,' let alone what they are doing in any given community. The only feedback on performance is financial, so that is the only thing that can be considered," Korten writes.

I shared this info with my girlfriend. She found the Secret Service stuff interesting. But when I told her about Wal-Mart's secret she said: "Oh no, I love Wal-Mart."

Wal-Mart you're breaking my heart.

Sean Gonsalves is a Cape Cod Times staff writer and syndicated columinist. He can be reached via email: sgonsalves@capecodonline.com

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