In the President's Secret Service (28 page)

In denying that Snow had an affair with Area 51, Snow’s lawyer Cullen put the author in touch with Tom Greenaway the leader of Snow’s detail for the first half of his term. Greenaway said that the woman in question was not Snow’s mistress.

“I was with him fifteen hours a day, sometimes twenty-five days a month,” Greenaway said.

As it turns out, Greenaway became a golfing buddy of Snow’s while he was protecting him. That is considered a no-no in the Secret Service because a personal friendship could lead an agent to do favors beyond his duties or to back down on security issues. In addition,
agents who become friends with top protectees may start trying to push their weight around with their bosses.

In response to a question, Greenaway acknowledged that the Secret Service tried to give him what he called a “punitive” transfer after he had a disagreement with management. He confirmed that Snow intervened with the Secret Service director to delay any transfer off Snow’s detail for several months until after the 2004 election. Greenaway said he then retired.

Cullen said neither Snow nor his family “improperly used the services of the U.S. Secret Service detail assigned to him. The Secret Service is required to protect the secretary of the treasury” Cullen said. “Protection is mandatory. It is not discretionary. Nor is it assigned on the basis of a threat assessment for a particular event or trip.”

Cullen said that Snow considers Secret Service agents “professional, brave, and extremely hard-working.” While Snow is “surprised and saddened that a former Secret Service agent would be a source of any information—particularly anonymous, erroneous information—going into a book, he believes that the honor and historic tradition of the Secret Service will remain intact, and he recalls with great fondness and affection the brave members of his detail,” the lawyer said.

In view of that, the lawyer said, Snow is “surprised that you would imply in your book that he had asked or demanded that his detail ever deviate from their proper role.”

Snow’s lawyer is correct in saying that the treasury secretary, along with others in the line of succession to the presidency, is required to have Secret Service protection when the secretary of homeland security authorizes it. But he is wrong in saying that the book suggests that Snow asked that his detail deviate from their proper role.

If a government official under protection decides to travel from Washington every weekend to see his mistress or his wife or to take in a movie, the Secret Service is required to provide protection. The question is whether the protectee should be taking such trips knowing that taxpayers are footing the bill.

T
HE SECRET SERVICE began protecting Barack Obama on May
3
, 2007, eighteen months before votes for president were to be cast. It was the earliest point at which the Secret Service had ever protected a presidential candidate. In contrast, in the 2004 election, John Kerry and John Edwards began receiving protection in February of that year, eight months before the general election. Michelle Obama began receiving protection on February 2, 2008. It would turn out to be the longest and most demanding presidential campaign in history.

Strapped for agents and facing rising attrition rates, the Secret Service began planning for the campaign in January 2005. In February of that year, the service asked most of its 3,404 agents for their preferences on types of candidate protection assignments. For example, agents can ask to join a general protection shift, operations and logistics, or transportation details. Agents were given special training at the Rowley center so that members of each detail to be assigned to a future candidate would get used to working together. Agents who would drive candidates were given refresher courses. The campaign also would require the support of twelve hundred Uniformed Division officers.

By law, the Secret Service provides protection of major presidential and vice presidential candidates and their spouses. The secretary of homeland security determines who the major candidates are after consulting with an advisory committee consisting of the speaker and minority leader of the House, the majority and minority leaders of the Senate, and one additional member selected by the other members of the committee.

The secretary of homeland security also decides when protection begins. Protection of spouses starts a hundred twenty days before the general election, unless authorized before that by DHS or by executive order. To protect a presidential candidate, the Secret Service spends an extra thirty-eight thousand dollars a day beyond agents’ existing salaries. That includes airline tickets for agents and for advance personnel, rental cars, meals, and overtime.

At one point, based on the public record, the Secret Service counted fifteen potential presidential candidates. As it turned out, three presidential candidates received protection. As a former first lady, Hillary Clinton already had Secret Service protection.

While Obama never received a specific threat before his protection started, agents on the Secret Service’s Internet Threat Desk picked up a number of vaguely threatening and nasty comments, mostly directed at the fact that he is African American. Many of the comments appeared on white supremacist websites and said Obama would be assassinated if he took office. Even before Obama decided to run, Michelle Obama expressed concerns to her husband that a black candidate for president could be in jeopardy because of his race.

In the end, says Steven Hughes, deputy special agent in charge of the dignitary protection division, “We really picked him up because he asked for the protection, and then it goes through a whole process of whether we will protect him or not, and it’s really not driven by the Secret Service. It’s something that he asked for, and the secretary of
homeland security and the president ultimately said he is a viable candidate, and it’s a go for protection.”

As Hughes speaks, he checks a text message on his BlackBerry It’s a report from the Protective Intelligence and Assessment Division of a threat against a candidate.

“I’m getting them all day long, updates on whether someone on the Internet says something or someone that’s drunk says something,” Hughes says. “Whether it’s very minor or very major, they’re going to send it to me, so I can’t say I didn’t know that was happening.”

Asked if he ever gets any sleep, Hughes says, “With the U.N. coming up next week, where we have an incredible amount of protectees, yeah, we don’t have time to sleep now.”

By August 2008, the Secret Service had arrested Raymond H. Geisel in Miami after he made a threat against candidate Obama in a training class for bail bondsmen. Two members of the class heard Geisel say, “If he gets elected, I’ll assassinate him myself.” When arrested, Geisel had a loaded nine-millimeter handgun, knives, dozens of rounds of ammunition, body armor, a machete, and military-style fatigues in his hotel room. He was charged with threatening a presidential candidate.

In Denver, a group of men with guns and bulletproof vests made racist remarks about Obama and talked of gunning him down as he gave his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in August. They were high on drugs and not capable of carrying out a plot.

Four days before the convention, one of them was pulled over for drunk driving in the Denver suburb of Aurora after a patrol officer spotted the man’s rented Dodge Ram truck swerving erratically. Inside, the officer found two high-powered rifles, a silencer, a bulletproof vest, camouflage clothing, and three fake identification cards. The truck contained enough drug-making equipment to be considered a mobile meth lab. While the Secret Service kept tabs on the case, the men were prosecuted locally on gun and weapons charges.

Chatter among white supremacists on the Internet increased throughout the campaign. As Obama was giving his acceptance speech on November 4, 2008, Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke was rallying white supremacists in a call to action, saying Obama’s election represented a “night of tragedy and sadness.” In an audio message broadcast on a radical website, Duke said, “Barack Obama has a long history of antagonizing white people.” He added, “We as European Americans have to rally for our survival.”

Just before the election, two skinheads in Tennessee were charged with plotting to behead blacks across the country and assassinate Obama while wearing white top hats and tuxedos. In both cases, the Secret Service determined the men were not capable of carrying out their plots.

The day after the election, one of the most popular white supremacist websites got more than two thousand new members. One posting on the site said, “I want the SOB laid out in a box to see how messiahs come to rest. God has abandoned us, this country is doomed.”

Five days before Obama’s inauguration, Secret Service agents arrested Steven J. Christopher in Brookhaven, Mississippi, for allegedly saying on the Internet that he intended to kill Obama. His entries on a website devoted to government conspiracies and unexplained phenomena included racial and anti-Semitic remarks. In one entry, Christopher wrote, “Yes, I have decided I will assassinate Barack Obama. It’s really nothing personal about the man.” He added that he had no way to travel to Washington.

“I don’t own a gun, so maybe someone can give me one,” he said, according to the Justice Department.

Media reports claimed that someone yelled “Kill him,” referring to Obama, at two Republican rallies. But Secret Service agents on the scene and videotapes played afterward revealed no such comments. At a rally for Governor Sarah Palin at Clearwater, Florida, a man yelled
“tell him” or “tell them” rather than “kill him,” the Secret Service concluded.

Despite the ranting by racists, throughout the campaign the Secret Service saw no spike in credible threats.

John McCain did not initially request protection and claimed he did not need it. After a congressional hearing on April 7, 2008, revealed that he was not under protection, McCain was urged by both his staff and members of Congress to accept Secret Service protection. He then agreed to it, and his protection began on April 27.

The Secret Service worked with the campaigns so it would know ahead of time who the vice presidential nominees would be and when their names would be announced. It then chose a time on the day of the announcement when protection would begin.

Thus, by the time Sarah Palin—code-named Denali—and Joe Biden—code-named Celtic—were nominated for vice president at their respective conventions, they and their spouses were already under protection. Palin’s husband, Todd, was code-named Driller, and Biden’s wife, Jill, was code-named Capri. Protection for the Bidens began on August 23, 2008 and for the Palins on August 29, 2008.

Before protection began, Secret Service director Mark Sullivan and his team met with each candidate. Like nearly all the Secret Service’s twenty-two directors, Sullivan came up through the ranks. A native of Arlington, Massachusetts, Sullivan graduated from Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire. He began his Secret Service career in 1983 as an agent assigned to the Detroit field office.

In 1996, Sullivan became an assistant supervisory agent in charge within the Office of Protective Operations. He later became deputy special agent in charge of the Counterfeit Division. In 2002, he became deputy special agent in charge of the vice presidential protection division. After briefly serving as deputy director, Sullivan was sworn in as director on May 31, 2006.

While the backgrounds of Sullivan and the deputy director are on the Secret Service website, unlike the FBI, the agency does not announce the names of other Secret Service officials when they are appointed.

When Sullivan talks about growing up in “Aah-lington” (Massachusetts) and playing “haah-ky” he speaks with the typical pahk-the-cah-in-Hahvad-yahd accent. His ice hockey team beats the FBI’s team every year. It’s gotten so Director Bob Mueller jokingly accuses Sullivan of hiring for hockey talent.

Sullivan has a corner office on the eighth floor of Secret Service headquarters on H Street at Ninth Street in Washington. The objects in his office underscore his jock status: a framed photo of hockey great Bobby Orr on the ice, an aerial view of Fenway Park, a cluster of Red Sox caps and signed baseballs and signed footballs.

The traces of a Boston Irish accent fade quickly when Sullivan starts to talk about the job. There are twenty-two hundred working investigations, he says. As he speaks, his brow rises and furrows over his large wide-set brown eyes, and it stays furrowed in a persistent intensity. He leans forward in his chair, his meaty hands slapping his knees for emphasis. He throws himself into things physically. He sits with his legs crossed, his calves massive from all the years of skating.

Besides starting earlier than any other presidential campaign, candidates were taking more overseas trips, Sullivan notes. As a candidate, Obama took a six-day trip to Jordan, Israel, Germany, France, and Great Britain. Before that he went to Afghanistan and Iraq. McCain traveled to Canada, Colombia, and Mexico.