In the President's Secret Service (27 page)

Produced by the White House Communications Agency, the list of code names excludes words that are offensive or may be easily mistaken for other words. However, those under protection may object to a code name and propose another. Thus, Lynne Cheney, a prolific author, asked for and was given the Secret Service code name Author. Dick Cheney, an avid fisherman, got the code name Angler.

George W. Bush objected to Tumbler, the code name he was initially assigned. Perhaps it reminded him of his drinking days. Instead, he chose Trailblazer. Bush’s chief of staff Josh Bolten chose Fat Boy referring to the model of his silver and black Harley-Davidson. The code name was one word, “Fatboy.” His predecessor Andy Card had
been Patriot, a code name the Secret Service chose when Card said he did not like his assigned name, Potomac.

“My Secret Service detail loved the code name—even the female agents, who end up getting called Fatgirls,” Bolten tells me.

When Clinton was president, the press claimed that his brother Roger Clinton was code named Headache, presumably because he replaced Billy Carter as the black sheep of the first family. But because he was not protected by the Secret Service, Roger Clinton had no code name.

Besides those entitled by law to Secret Service protection, the president may extend protection to others by executive order. By executive order, Bush ordered coverage for Cheney’s two daughters and his six grandchildren.

Besides the vice president’s residence, the Cheneys have homes in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. After the Cheneys bought the house on the Eastern Shore, they would go there almost every weekend on a marine helicopter. The Secret Service outfitted each home with alarm systems and surveillance cameras. Looking ahead to when he would leave the vice presidency, Cheney also bought a home in McLean, Virginia.

In Cheney’s case, when Bush extended protection to his children and grandchildren, the Secret Service did not add additional agents. Instead, the agency made do by extending hours and paying overtime to agents on his detail, borrowing agents from field offices, and allowing virtually no time for the required refresher training, physical fitness, and firearms practice.

“Instead of saying, ‘Well, we’ll be glad to take care of his grandkids, but let’s just do the right thing and get some more people over here so we can cover all these added assignments,’ Secret Service management said to the president, ‘No problem, sir. We’ll take care of it,’
without giving us any more people,” says an agent who was on the vice president’s detail.

“You end up working twelve-hour days sitting in a cul-de-sac,” says another agent on the detail. “That’s why you don’t get the training, because you’re having to fill in these assignments. You’re fighting battles on a multitude of fronts, because you’ve got the protectees you’re trying to make happy, and you turn around and see people we work for who don’t care about us at all. It leaves you with feelings of hopelessness, and that’s why people want to leave.”

Before the Cheneys’ daughter Mary—code-named Alpine—had a child, the Secret Service provided full protection to only her older sister, Elizabeth, since she had kids. Mary received partial protection: Agents drove her to and from work. But Mary seemed to feel competitive.

“She got all up in arms because we sat outside her sister’s house all night long. She said, ‘Well, I think I should have that, too,’” an agent says.

Mary also complained about the Secret Service vehicle assigned to her.

“She saw that her sister had a brand-new Suburban,” an agent who was on her detail says. “Mary had an older vehicle. She was like, why can’t I have one? Next thing you know, within a day or two, she has a brand-new Suburban from the Secret Service sitting out there in front of her house.”

When her Suburban sustained some damage, the Secret Service chauffeured her in the older vehicle until the new one could be repaired.

“When she saw her old vehicle was brought back to use as her limo, she threw a fit,” an agent says. “She called bosses demanding her Suburban be brought back immediately, not realizing that it takes time to make repairs on a damaged vehicle.”

Mary objected to agents standing post overnight at the back of her home. She said they disturbed her dogs.

“I don’t even know what the back side of her house looks like because she won’t let us walk around the back because of the dogs,” an agent who was on her detail says. “Her dogs start barking. It gets them all upset if we go back there. So [we had] some cameras angled back there. But your hands are tied. It’s a thankless job anyway but then you’ve got protectees who mandate how you’re going to do your job.”

When Mary demanded that the Secret Service shuttle her friends out to restaurants, her detail leader objected. She had the agent removed from her detail.

Asked for comment, Mary Cheney said, “These stories are simply not true, and I have nothing but the utmost respect for the men and women of the Secret Service. I am deeply appreciative of everything they have done to keep my family safe over the last eight years.”

Often, protectees think of Secret Service agents as personal servants, there to act as gofers. When he was running for president, Edmund Muskie demanded that the Secret Service carry his golf bags.

“He took vacations in Kennebunkport,” a veteran agent says. “He would play eighteen holes of golf every day. He would cheat and kick the ball into the hole with his foot and pick it up and put it in. An agent would not carry his golf bags [after Muskie asked him to]. It reduces our effectiveness.”

But with a gracious woman like Lynne Cheney, agents happily offered to help with her bags. “To her credit, she shops a lot, and she’ll come out with all kinds of bags, and she’s never once that I know of ever asked us to help,” says an agent on her detail. “Probably because she doesn’t ask us, we go ahead and volunteer.”

Like the Bushes, Dick and Lynne Cheney were always on time and
were well-liked by the Secret Service. The Cheneys invited agents and their families to the Christmas party they gave every year and took photos with them.

“I remember that I was probably the one hundred sixtieth click that afternoon, but when my kids walked up, Mrs. Cheney acted like we were the first picture of the day,” an agent who was on the vice president’s detail says. “She squatted down and reached out and hugged my little girl, and it really meant a lot to me.”

As with the Cheneys, agents thought highly of most members of Bush’s staff and Cabinet.

“Karl Rove loved the counterassault team,” says an agent. “He would always come by and talk to us. He took photos with us. Any time he saw us in the CAT truck, he would come over and say hello. Always smiling, always joking, a real nice man.”

“Karl Rove has a phenomenal reputation within the service, taking care of the guys,” another agent says. “Andy Card, same thing.”

In general, agents found the Bush administration to be much more friendly and appreciative of what agents do than most other administrations. In the Bush administration, there were two exceptions: Treasury Secretary John Snow and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. Agents considered Ridge the cheapest protectee they had ever known. On weekends, he would return to his home in Erie, Pennsylvania. So he would not have to pay for his own plane ticket, he would insist that agents drive him—a trip of more than six hours, one way.

“The guy would make them motorcade to Erie, Pennsylvania, almost every other weekend, or every weekend, because he didn’t want to pay for a plane ticket,” an agent who was on his detail says. “If the guy found a free meal, he was there. His reputation in the service was he was the biggest cheapskate ever.”

Instead of buying a newspaper at hotels, Ridge would ask agents for their copy of the paper.

“If somebody said, ‘Hey Mr. Secretary, appreciate it. Meal’s on us,’ Ridge would go back there the next night to the same restaurant and see how long he could milk a free meal from this place,” an agent says.

Agents liked John Snow because he loved to chat and joke with them.

“John Snow was kind of a pretty cool protectee, in that he knew every guy on the detail,” an agent says. “He’d sit in the back of his limo, and he’d talk with you. It was like a group of guys hanging out.”

But Snow, a former chairman and chief executive officer of CSX Corporation, had what agents on his detail believed was a mistress in Richmond where he and his wife lived. While Snow rented and later bought an apartment in Washington, he would travel back to his hometown almost every weekend, incurring huge expenses for taxpayers because the Secret Service had to drive him the two hours to Richmond and stay in hotels.

The Secret Service gave the woman the unofficial code name Area 51, after the supersecret air force testing ground that gives rise to conspiracy theories.

Now chairman of Cerberus Capital Management, which owns 80.1 percent of Chrysler Corp., Snow commented through his Richmond lawyer Richard Cullen, a former Virginia state attorney general and personal friend of the Snows for more than twenty-five years:

“John Snow did not have an affair…. The agents who refuse to identify themselves in making this accusation are simply and sadly very wrong.”

Agents who were on Snow’s detail say otherwise. Snow “was messing around quite a bit, and it was pretty disturbing to the guys on the detail, because we knew we were away from home for the express
purpose of him to meet up with his mistress,” says a former agent who was on his detail.

When the woman’s husband was out at church on Sunday mornings, “The secretary [Snow] would say, ‘Oh, I’ve got to drop a book at their house,’” an agent recalls. Or Snow would say he had just found an article in the Richmond paper he would like to give them.

“That was grating on us, because we had to spend every weekend in Richmond, and during the week he was traveling pushing Social Security reform, so we were on the road all week,” a current agent says. “We were never home. And it pissed us off no end to realize that the only reason we were in Richmond was for the secretary to mess around.”

One morning, another agent was walking by the front window of Snow’s house in Richmond and saw Snow and the alleged mistress kissing. She would also fly to Washington to see Snow at his rented apartment near what agents refer to as the Hinckley Hilton, the Washington Hilton.

“She knew all of us by name,” the former agent says. “She’d just come out of the woodwork out of nowhere and say, ‘Hey guys!’ We’d go on hikes, and they’d be there. She was always around.”

“He really thought he had us fooled on that one,” another agent says. “She would show up at like a hotel in New York, and he would act like, ‘Oh, look who it is!’”

Early on, after Snow was appointed treasury secretary in February 2003, he would travel to Richmond with his Secret Service detail on Saturdays and return on Sundays.

“It didn’t take long for him to realize that he could leave fairly early on Friday, come back late Sunday,” an agent who was on his detail says. “And then it didn’t take long much past that to realize that he could get there early Friday, leave Monday morning, and make it to work on time. So it became Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday.”

Snow resigned in June 2006. By then, “He would leave on Thursdays, come back on Monday,” an agent remembers. “So that makes five days in Richmond. And he was going every weekend.”

“I think he legitimately liked Richmond,” says an agent. “He had a nice place on the river with a nice big pool. But you’ve got six or seven guys on the detail, he’s spending four or five days a week in Richmond. You do the numbers, and you’re running out of bodies pretty quick to cover that.”

Snow’s wife rarely came to Washington and seemed to despise the agents.

When Snow was in town, she expected agents to bring in the mail and the newspaper. The mail was not screened, and agents are not supposed to perform personal errands. While some agents did so as favors, most did not.

One Sunday, Snow’s wife came out in her bathrobe and asked an agent, “Why don’t you deliver the paper?”

“It’s not my job to deliver your paper; you can get your own paper,” the agent responded.

“That didn’t go over too well,” the former agent says. “I was there to keep the secretary unharmed—as well as her, if possible—but I most certainly was not her paper boy.”

“Nothing amazes me anymore, but apparently she [Snow’s wife] didn’t suspect anything,” an agent says. “It was going on the entire time he was under our protection, and it was obviously going on prior to that. It was just more convenient with us around.”

The agents say there was one close call. One Sunday when Snow was with his alleged mistress, her husband came home from church early.

“One of our agents saw what was happening,” says an agent. “To his credit, he got out of his vehicle and started making as much noise as he could.” Loudly, the agent called out the husband’s name and said
to him, “Hey, great to see you.” The agent slammed the doors of his Suburban. As the husband was walking into his house, Snow came out, his hair messed up.

What infuriated the agents was the way Snow seemed to think he was pulling the wool over their eyes. On one occasion, Snow said he wanted to go for a walk.

“He gets into the car, and we take off, and he says, ‘Go down this road down here,’ which was a dead end with a museum at the end. Well, we get down there, and she’s [the alleged mistress] down there with the hood of her car up.”

Snow said, “Oh, looky here! What’s happened here?”

Saying her car had broken down, the woman asked for jumper cables to help charge the battery. Sensing a ruse, one of the agents suggested they try starting the car first. Snow insisted that would not work. After the jumper cables were attached, the car started without any hesitation.

“We better follow her home, just to make sure the car doesn’t cut off again,” Snow said.

“So we get her home, and he’s there for about an hour, hour and a half,” an agent says.

“He thought we weren’t smart enough to realize what was going on,” another agent says. “That’s what really drove a lot of guys crazy.”