Margaret Truman (15 page)

VI

These days, there are an estimated two hundred agents assigned to the White House, although they are not all on duty at the same time. Other Secret Service agents protect such potential targets as the vice president, presidential and vice presidential candidates and nominees, former presidents and their spouses, and visiting heads of state. In addition, the Secret Service continues to investigate counterfeiting and other types of financial fraud.

The Secret Service agents assigned to the White House detail wear civilian clothes and operate from a command post under the Oval Office. Agents are stationed near the secondfloor living area and at one of the doors leading to the Oval Office. At least one agent accompanies the president whenever he leaves the family quarters.

The Secret Service also has a Uniformed Division. Its officers are posted at strategic areas around the White House. One unit, wearing black combat gear and silver helmets, cruises the President's Park on multigear mountain bikes. Another, the Secret Service Counter-sniper Team, is stationed on the White House roof whenever protectees are entering or leaving the building or are anywhere on the grounds.

VII

Not a little of the Secret Service's commitment to presidential safety emanates from tall, strong-jawed Edmund Starling. He started his job at the White House in 1914. In the course of his career, he worked for, or with, Presidents Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, and Roosevelt. In those days the government paid for practically nothing except the Secret Service man's gun. Starling and his fellow agents had to buy their own evening clothes so they could participate in White House receptions.

Probably because he looked so physically impressive, Starling was often mistaken for the president. One day, Starling and Calvin Coolidge were out for a walk near the White House not long after Warren Harding died and Coolidge had become yet another accidental president.

As they passed a gang of laborers digging a ditch, the Irish foreman spotted them and said to a Secret Service man a few feet ahead of them: “What a fine-looking fellow the new president is. So tall and straight! Who's the little fellow with him?”

The agent quietly informed the foreman that the little fellow was the president. “Glory be to God!” the Irishman said. “Now ain't it a grand country when a wee man like that can get to be the grandest of them all?”

Like many presidents, Calvin Coolidge at first declined to take the Secret Service seriously, and was always trying to sneak out of the White House without them. Starling converted this habit into a game, which he invariably won. He asked the staff to let him know when the president was planning to leave the mansion and what exit he would take.

One day Coolidge was sure he had won. He had descended to the White House basement and slipped out a side door at the east entrance. As he passed the sentry box, Starling stepped out and said: “Good morning, Mr. President.” Cal did not speak to him for the entire walk.

VIII

One of the largest units of the Secret Service's Washington office is its Technical Security Division, which provides security devices for the White House. The division has installed such low-tech protection as the fat concrete stanchions, called bollards, that line the sidewalks around the mansion, as well as such high-tech apparatus as the electronic locator boxes that indicate where their protectees are every minute of the day and night.

Among the other devices the division can take credit for are the hydraulic gates at the vehicular entrances, the video and alarm systems along the perimeter and the radioactivity detectors in the areas adjacent to the Oval Office to indicate the presence of any nuclear devices.

The Technical Security Division also handles packages and letters addressed to the White House that might contain lethal substances. Packages can be X-rayed at a Secret Service examining room several blocks away from the White House where they are also tested for timing devices. If the thing ticks, it is immediately soaked in oil to gum up the machinery— a good reason not to send any president a watch or clock as a gift.

If the Secret Service has reason to suspect a package is deadly, it is placed in a special egg-shaped bomb carrier mounted on a truck that can withstand the blast of fifty sticks of dynamite. The package is then driven to a deserted area where a specially trained agent opens it with grappling hooks operated from outside the truck.

IX

Federal law provides Secret Service protection for presidential families, a mandate that has involved the agents in some unlikely assignments for brawny males trained to do battle with killers.

One of these family assignments still makes me chuckle every time I think of it. Two agents were ordered to protect Barbara Ann Eisenhower, President Eisenhower's twelve-year-old granddaughter, while she attended an all-girls camp in West Virginia. The agents lived in a tent next to Barbara Ann's and were soon participating in cookouts, campfires, and Indian dances. The twelve-year-olds were entranced to have these two proto-heroes in their midst. At the end of the summer they made them members of their sacred campers' club— the only males ever so honored.

The agents assigned to guard Lyndon Johnson's older daughter, Lynda Bird, encountered even more complications. She belonged to Zeta Tau Alpha at the University of Texas in Austin. The sorority house was in a large white colonial mansion near the campus. After some no doubt delicate negotiations, the Secret Service persuaded the Zeta Taus to allow two Secret Service agents into their all-female ménage. The guys operated out of a small first-floor room equipped with a closed-circuit TV system that enabled them to see everyone who entered the house. The room also contained a two-way radio and enough guns to hold off a small army.

Nowadays, the Secret Service has women in its ranks. With female agents, the job of guarding presidential daughters and granddaughters is a lot less sticky. But it doesn't have nearly as much potential for amusement.

X

In their efforts to keep the residents of the White House safe, the Secret Service is determined to leave nothing to chance. The thought of a president being attacked on home turf appalls them, which undoubtedly explains a story told to me by a recent visitor to the West Wing. While using the men's room, he noticed that the neatly folded paper hand towels were imprinted with “The President's House” and blithely pocketed a couple of them as souvenirs.

When he emerged, a Secret Service agent fell in step beside him and asked him to return the towels. There would be no charge, the agent added with a smile. It seems that the men's room is monitored by a two-way mirror to make sure no one decides to load a pistol or set the fuse of a bomb in there.

Some people may think this is carrying security a bit too far. But in and around the White House, eternal vigilance is the price of safety. At seven A.M. on December 6, 2001, the Secret Service arrested a twenty-six-year-old man “acting suspiciously” near the southwest gate. He was armed with a foot-long knife and when he led them to his pickup truck, they found an assault rifle, another rifle with a scope that snipers use to kill people at a distance, and a loaded handgun. The man, who had no fixed address, was jailed on weapons charges.

Such incidents, which barely get a paragraph in the newspapers, only underscore that being president of the United States is dangerous work. I am sure every member of a presidential family pauses now and then to thank God that the Secret Service is on the job. I do it regularly.

Questions for
Discussion

Can a president ever be completely safe?

How might the history of the country have been different if the Secret Service had been guarding Abraham Lincoln?

How has modern technology helped the Secret Service do its job?

II

President Thomas Jefferson ordered the White House doors kept open every day, so visitors could inspect the State Rooms on the first floor. They were more interested in Jefferson's basement kitchen, which had a fireplace equipped with an iron range—very rare at the time. Jefferson also added what we would call tourist attractions. Lewis and Clark shipped skins of hitherto unknown beasts and birds from the west. Zebulon Pike and General James Wilkinson, commander of the U.S. Army, also sent their share of dinosaur bones and Indian artifacts from Texas and other unmapped portions of the southwest.

Pike's biggest contribution to the displays were two grizzly bear cubs. Jefferson put them in a ten-foot-square cage in the middle of the circular driveway on the north side of the White House. People came from miles around to get a look at these creatures. Eventually he had to ship them to Baltimore where presidential portrait painter Charles Willson Peale maintained a natural history museum, a forerunner of the modern zoo.

Some of Jefferson's tourists were even more exotic than the cubs. They arrived wearing feathered headdresses, deerskin moccasins, cloth leggings, and streaks of paint on their faces. The president had told Lewis and Clark to extend invitations to visit the “Great Chief” of the white men in Washington to any and all tribes they met along their route west. Jefferson probably did not realize that Indians were prodigious travelers, who loved an excuse for a journey. Soon chiefs from several western tribes were camping on the White House lawn, along with their squaws and their uncles and their cousins and their aunts.

III

The first president to curtail access to the White House was James Monroe. The few people who succeeded in getting in did not have much of a tour. The State Rooms were off limits and although the East Room may have impressed visitors by its size, it had little else going for it. There was no furniture and the chandeliers were drab metal.

Monroe's successor, John Quincy Adams, tried to overcome his lack of appeal to the voters by keeping the White House wide open all day, every day. Anyone could come in and wander around. If he wanted to shake the president's hand, all he had to do was join the line of callers waiting on the stairs.

On one occasion, Adams was the beneficiary of his open house policy. The president was conferring in his oval study with Secretary of State Henry Clay when one Eleazar Parraly strolled into the room. Parraly was mainly interested in shaking the president's hand, but in the course of introducing himself, he mentioned that he was a dentist. The president instantly dismissed the secretary of state and invited Parraly to remove a tooth that was aching ominously. There was no resident dentist in the national capital. Parraly not only did the job, he refused to take money for it.

IV

When President Andrew Jackson had the good fortune to receive a $50,000 appropriation from Congress to refurbish the White House, he spent a large chunk of it on finishing the magnificent cavern called the East Room. On the floor went a Brussels carpet, new draperies framed the windows, and three cut-glass chandeliers were suspended from the ceiling. New furniture was purchased and twenty spittoons were placed at strategic points around the room.

The rest of the house was not accessible to uninvited visitors. The White House grounds, however, were open from eight A.M. to sundown to anyone in the mood for a stroll. Enjoying the President's Park became popular and first families often grew more than a little discomfited when they glanced out the window and found twenty or thirty people staring up at them.

V

The Civil War made the White House even more fascinating to the American people. A good many of the tourists of those years were transported to Washington at government expense. They were wearing army blue, and the White House was only a way stop on their journey to fight and possibly die in Virginia. Lincoln gave orders to admit soldiers freely to the first floor, where they gaped at the East Room and occasionally stretched out on one of the sofas for a nap.

The rest of the first-floor rooms were closed to visitors. Concern for Lincoln's safety was one reason for not encouraging wanderers. Another reason was the visitors' tendency to carve souvenirs out of the rugs, draperies, and upholstery.

After Lincoln's assassination, the White House collapsed into near chaos. Mary Lincoln spent the next few weeks weeping and brooding in her upstairs bedroom, forcing the new president, Andrew Johnson, to set up his office in the Treasury Building next door. This left the President's House with no one in charge. It remained open to visitors and the public came pouring in. For most of each day, they swarmed through the State Rooms, collecting mementoes of the martyred president and wreaking havoc in the process.

Vases, lamps, and small statues vanished and still the pillagers were not satisfied. They proceeded to cut chunks out of the draperies and carpets. After they discovered the chest where the silver and china were stored, these items, too, disappeared at a dismaying rate.

VI

That orgy of misbehavior made everyone connected to the White House a lot more wary of tourists. It was generally recognized that some sort of supervision was needed. The Civil War had made Americans history-minded. The number of Washington sightseers kept growing each year. The President's House was a place where they could glimpse the early days of the republic.

The mansion was redecorated after Andrew Johnson moved in and all evidence of vandalism was erased. Sightseers were again welcome to visit the East Room, but there were detectives on hand to make sure nothing was removed.

If the doorkeepers were not busy, one of them would double as a tour guide and spice up the visit with tidbits of White House history. Sightseers heard about Abigail Adams's wash hanging in the East Room, Andrew Jackson's chaotic inaugural reception, and the rebuilding of the White House after the British burned it down during the War of 1812.

The White House had achieved reverential status but that did not eliminate the souvenir hunters. On the contrary, it may even have stimulated them. The East Room was open to the public three days a week, and despite the presence of plainclothes detectives, there were always a few things missing when visiting hours ended. Even the select group of tourists who had special passes to visit the state parlors regularly indulged in petty thievery. According to Rutherford B. Hayes's son, Birch, “After every public reception a man had to go the rounds with a basket of crystal pendants to replace those taken from the chandeliers. They cut pieces off the bottoms of curtains and carried off everything in sight.”

VII

When Theodore Roosevelt launched his vast White House redecoration and building program, public interest was intense. Pictures of the East Room, resplendent with ivory and gilt, filled the magazines and thousands came to see it with their own eyes. That was about all they saw. Roosevelt was not enthusiastic about tourists. His successor, William Howard Taft, was very much the opposite. During his administration, visitors were actually admitted to the Oval Office, and when the president was out of town they could bounce in Big Bill's chair.

Woodrow Wilson shared Theodore Roosevelt's attitude toward tourists but his daughters Margaret, Jessie, and Nellie found them a good source of laughs. Every once in a while they would join the crowd waiting to get into the White House and walk through the downstairs rooms, making catty remarks about themselves. “I wonder where that stuck-up creature Margaret Wilson is hiding today,” Jessie would say.

“Yes,” Nellie would reply. “I'd like to see her, just to give her hair a good yank. I hear she wears a wig.”

The tourists around them would be horrified. Any minute they expected the White House police to arrest the entire crowd.

VIII

The flow of tourists ceased when Woodrow Wilson declared war in 1917, and did not resume until Warren Harding became president in 1921. Harding, having nothing better to do all day—his administration was run mainly by his cabinet and staff—began coming downstairs around lunchtime to greet the tourists. People liked it and soon crowds gathered to exchange a few words with the supposedly great man.

Calvin Coolidge felt no need to greet the tourists or anyone else, if he could help it. He shortened the visiting hours and let the ushers deal with the crowds. Herbert Hoover might have done the same thing if the stock market had not collapsed early in his presidency. With the country sinking into the Great Depression, Hoover decided visiting the White House might boost public morale. He ordered the mansion opened to visitors from ten A.M. to four P.M. every day except Sunday.

The president's sense that the people's house could serve as a beacon of hope during the dark days of the Depression was on target. People were eager to visit the mansion and the number of tourists doubled to 900,000 a year.

The flood of visitors continued when Franklin D. Roosevelt became president, and the White House grounds remained popular with tourists and Washingtonians out for a stroll. This free and easy access to the President's Park ended with the declaration of war against Japan on December 8, 1941, and it has never resumed. The White House, and the country, had lost its innocence.

IX

A lovely leftover from those bygone days is the annual lighting of the White House Christmas tree. In December 2001, after much internal debate, the Secret Service reversed its decision to bar everyone without a ticket to the ceremony because of their fear of a terrorist attack. It was heartening to know that the Secret Service had decided President George W. Bush could undertake this ceremony, which goes back to 1923. That year, Calvin Coolidge had gotten a letter from a Washington, D.C., public school janitor, suggesting it would be a nice idea to start the holiday season by lighting a tree on the South Lawn. Coolidge imported a balsam fir from his native Vermont and presidents have been performing this pleasant chore ever since. The ceremony was moved to the Ellipse in 1954.

At five P.M. on December 6, 2001, President Bush pushed a switch and ignited red, white, and blue lights on a forty-foot Colorado blue spruce. Soprano Audra McDonald and country singer Travis Tritt performed, starting a month-long pageant in which Washington-area dance groups and choirs appeared nightly. The symbolic blend of patriotism and the ancient feast of Christmas was hailed by everyone as a stirring reminder of what our soldiers were defending in the war against terrorism.

Another festive event that adds a unique dimension to the people's house is the annual Easter Monday egg rolling festival, which features folksingers, jugglers, and clowns in traditional regalia and in bunny costumes. The first lady is the official hostess of the event. The president blows a whistle and the kids, armed with spoons, start trying to persuade their hard-boiled eggs to roll across the sloping grass. In the end, the first lady declares everyone a winner and the children each get a wooden egg to take home as a souvenir. Not surprisingly, the Easter egg roll has become the largest public event of the White House year.