Within Arm's Length: A Secret Service Agent's Definitive Inside Account of Protecting the President (10 page)

I saw the house every day and was aware it had once belonged to President Kennedy but knew little more about it. I had assumed it was simply an empty or nearly empty house that was at one time the summer home of the thirty-fifth president of the United States.

On the thirtieth and final day of our assignment, Senator Kennedy hosted a party for the Secret Service agents who for the past month had been willing to trade their lives for his if necessary. The senator appeared at the festivities dressed in a blue denim shirt with a black warm-up jacket and displayed a shock of disheveled, graying hair that had not seen a stylist in several weeks. This was a drastic departure from his usual appearance over the past month—his daily attire was a perfectly tailored Brooks Brothers suit.

While cordial, the senator was always somewhat reserved around his Secret Service detail, but with the assignment now over, he became the perfect host as he encouraged each of us to have more lobster and beer. Most of us needed no encouragement, even though we were dead tired and everyone was looking forward to getting home.

Late in the afternoon, as the festivities began to taper off and almost everyone had departed for the airport and home, Kennedy moved among the few agents who remained and asked if anyone would like to tour his brother’s house, meaning the home of the late President John F. Kennedy. As I was helping myself to another beer, I heard the senator ask, in the unmistakable dialect that seemed unique to the Kennedy family alone, “How about you, Dan?” I looked up from the beer keg, nodded, and replied, “Yes, sir, thank you, I would enjoy seeing the president’s home.”

After obtaining keys to the home from the estate’s caretaker, who greatly resembled Spencer Tracy in
The Old Man and the Sea
, the senator escorted three of us on the short walk to the back entrance of President Kennedy’s house. The senator casually explained that the house was largely in the same condition as when JFK had sometimes lived there. I thought he was referring to the furniture and drapes. While this was partially the case, I soon realized that the senator was referring to a great deal more.

I expected him to provide a brief escort through the home, but instead he handed me the key and said, “Here, Dan, please lock it up when you are done.” And then he left. Although only fifty-two years old, the senator moved back toward the main house with the posture and gait of a much older man. It was clear that the passing of the years since the assassinations of his brothers, President Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy, had done little to relieve his pain. He was still grieving. During my time with him, he also seemed a man tormented by the other tragedies that had occurred in his life. Secret Service agents are often with their protectees in settings far from the media and crowds. They observe politicians in a light not seen by anyone outside their families. Sometimes the view is tragic.

It took only moments after entering the house for me to realize that it had not received the news of President Kennedy’s death. Frozen in time, it seemed to be waiting for its windows to again vibrate, announcing the arrival of a helicopter delivering the president and his family for another weekend or holiday at Hyannis Port with friends and a multitude of relatives. It had now been waiting in silence for twenty-one years.

At first glance, the president’s home seemed much like any other and was furnished as expected, with furniture and décor that ranged from antique through early 1960s, complemented by an abundant supply of
Life
magazines and newspapers. The subtle clue that this home was perhaps not like others began with the discovery that these reading materials were all printed in 1963 or earlier.

The other two agents and I began to explore the old house, laced with a hint of dampness from the late New England autumn. Soon, however, my colleagues each declared he had to leave for the airport or miss his flight. As we bade farewell, I realized I should probably have gone with them, but I was not yet ready to end this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Now alone, I moved through the house and slowly began to discover a museum’s worth of President Kennedy’s personal belongings. As I allowed this more-than-unique experience to sink in, a revelation occurred: I was walking through a time capsule, an inner sanctum that probably few outside the Kennedy family had seen since 1963.

Some of the priceless items that now surrounded me included framed photographs of President Kennedy and his family, both on the walls and resting on various tables and shelves. Other items I stood before included business suits in President Kennedy’s closet, which upon closer examination revealed his name sewn inside by someone possessing great skill in such matters. Arranged neatly on wooden hangers, each seemed to be waiting for President Kennedy to return and wear it once again.

As I continued to explore, apprehension began to set in, making me feel I had inadvertently surpassed the boundaries Senator Kennedy had intended when offering access to the home. The stillness and quiet became deafening and I knew it was time to leave.

Alone in President Kennedy’s bedroom, which darkened by the minute in the fading afternoon light, I felt for the house key in my pocket and prepared to conclude my self-guided tour. As I was about to depart the bedroom and the house that time had forgotten, two items on the bureau suddenly caught my attention. Curious, I moved closer for a more detailed examination—and found a pair of gold cuff links. The cuff links seemed to be waiting, like the house itself, for their owner to return. But who was their owner? Standing in the cold bedroom of the late president, surrounded by the fading light of Election Day 1984, I read the initials engraved on the face of each accessory and realized to whom they had once belonged. The owner of these mysterious lone cuff links had been President John F. Kennedy.

Although any number of possibilities existed as to how and why these artifacts were lying on President Kennedy’s dresser in 1984, it did not seem an unreasonable assumption, given the undisturbed state of other items in the house, that these heirlooms had perhaps been resting on the dresser since 1963. That possibility alone was a bit unnerving, as was the presence of the cuff links themselves.

As I started to pick one up for closer examination, my hand abruptly halted, as if grasped by an unseen force. These cuff links were perhaps last touched by President Kennedy himself; I did not feel I should be the next to touch them. In addition to entrusting the Secret Service with his life, Senator Kennedy had also trusted each of us to merely tour the home, not touch items probably considered sacred to him. The handling of these treasures would have been totally unprofessional. I was not a tourist left to run amok in the president’s home but a Secret Service agent trained from the first day of my career to respect the personal lives and property of those I protected. As with all other objects I encountered in the home of President Kennedy, these two items were left undisturbed where they lay.

As I stared at the objects, a draft of cold air moving through the quiet stillness of the house reminded me yet again that it was time to go. Leaving the cuff links in their resting place while thinking of how much trust the senator must have had in us, I exited the house using the same door through which I had entered, locking it on the way out per the senator’s instructions. After a brief search for the senator to return the key, I discovered him walking along the beach in front of the compound.

When I handed him the key, he said, “Thank you, Dan, I appreciate your work and that of the Secret Service very much.”

“Thank you, Senator, for allowing us the honor of viewing the president’s home,” I replied.

We talked for a few minutes. He politely asked me where I was from and how long I had been a Secret Service agent. Feeling more comfortable with the senator and with the assignment now over, I almost asked about the cuff links. Not certain, however, if he would appreciate the range of liberty I had taken with the tour, I elected not to raise the subject. After a pause in the conversation, I sensed that he wanted to be alone. We shook hands, and I left him standing on the beach staring out at the ocean, seemingly looking for something or someone. It had been a long thirty days for him also. I then walked to the command post, formerly the home of Bobby Kennedy, gathered my gear, and called a cab, which would take me to the airport, where I would board an airplane for the trip home.

AN UNEXPECTED CHANGE OF DIRECTION

It was now 1986. After three years as an agent in Charlotte, with my desire to transfer to the Counter Assault Team well known, the SAIC brought me into his office one day and delivered some excellent news. “Dan,” he said, “it looks like you are going to be in the first CAT class in 1987.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said and left his office, my feet barely touching the ground. CAT was growing and needed agents—preferably military veterans, and at the time there were very few of us. It was time to now put investigations behind me and move on to the most important mission of the Secret Service, which is to protect the president of the United States. Unknown to me at the time, however, there were forces at work that would alter these plans.

One morning in the late spring of 1986, I had just arrived at work and was sitting at my desk planning the day’s activities, which included report writing, lunch, and running a few miles, followed by an hour in the weight room. CAT school was a very physical course and I wanted to ensure that I was ready for the challenge. Something seemed different today, however. Everyone seemed distant—as if they knew something I did not. Something was up, and I sensed it had to do with me.

As I sat at my desk looking over a check forgery case, the SAIC came in and said he wanted to see me in his office. I knew this was either very good or very bad, as SAICs do not normally seek out GS-9s and invite them into their office.

Upon entering his office, I sat down in the same chair I had sat in three years earlier on my first day as a Secret Service agent. The SAIC sat behind his desk, appearing almost to take cover there, and wasted no time in stating his purpose. He said, “Dan, you are being transferred, but it is unfortunately not to CAT.” He looked down at his desk with his hands folded, seemingly unable or unwilling to look me in the eye.

I asked, “Okay, where to, then?”

Without looking up, he said, “The New York field office.”

Being transferred to New York was the ultimate nightmare come true for any agent, young or old, and it took a few seconds for the words to sink in. I was well aware, from previous trips to New York on temporary assignments, that it was a large, dirty, noisy, and above all highly expensive place to live. This did not play into my career plans, and I had absolutely no interest in being transferred there.

My first visit to New York had been in 1984, when I had been assigned to Indian head of state Rajiv Gandhi. His mother, the former prime minister of India, had recently been assassinated and he had subsequently been targeted. In 1992 he would meet the same fate. I was on the midnight shift and we were required to wear our ballistic vests, which was very uncommon. We worked with Indian security but did not dare turn our backs on them and trusted none of them. We were working and staying in the Waldorf Astoria, a hotel that would play a part in my life many times over the next twenty-five years. After getting off one morning I ventured out into the streets of New York for the first time. I was there for no more than five minutes before beating a retreat back to the hotel. I had never witnessed such chaos, with people moving in great insectlike swarms to God knows where. The assignment ended in a couple of days and I headed back to Charlotte with the intent to never visit again.

After regaining my internal composure in the SAIC’s office, I asked, “What has changed so dramatically that I am being pulled from CAT and sent to New York?”

Without really answering the question, he stated that Secret Service headquarters had selected me for the assignment, and that while it was not what I wanted, it would be good for my career. As he finished delivering his news, he looked up at me, seeming to expect a response of some sort, and asked if I had any questions. I asked if being assigned to a large office had helped his career. He stated that he had never actually served in a large office but that career paths were different today and again asked if I had any questions.

I answered no and asked if that would be all. He said it was for now, and as I stood to leave, I said, “It might be a good idea to get someone else on deck; I am not at all certain I will take the transfer.” I saw the confusion and near panic on his face. I suppose he expected me to respond to the news in any number of ways, but not to threaten resignation.

An agent had balked at orders recently. Mike, my best friend in the Service and old FLETC roommate, had been given the same treatment a few weeks earlier. His fate was to be Los Angeles, but, to the horror of the SAIC, Mike, rather than take the transfer, resigned. For another agent to resign from Charlotte over a transfer would not be good for the SAIC. As with all SAICs, his headquarters image was all-important to him. For two young agents to walk off the job would suggest weak leadership. It would be assumed that the SAIC had in some way failed to properly motivate and indoctrinate the youth in his office to happily accept transfers to large offices.

I walked into the hallway, which was lined with coworkers looking at me as if I had been on death row and was walking toward the gas chamber. I almost expected someone to say, “Dead man walking.” All the faces of my peer group were filled with survivor’s guilt and fear. Each was sorry I was going to New York, but all were glad it was not them, and all were now terrified it would be them next time around. For more than one colleague, it would be.

For better or for worse, I was a career agent, and, while I never had any intention of resigning, I put off signing my paperwork as long as possible, since it would officially launch me to the New York office. I suppose the deliberate avoidance of signing my orders was a quiet rebellion on my part, although a bit immature and certainly futile. Each day, my first-level supervisor would call me into his office, where my transfer papers sat on the desk awaiting my signature. Each day, I told him I had not yet decided whether I was going or not and then left his office without signing.