Within Arm's Length: A Secret Service Agent's Definitive Inside Account of Protecting the President (15 page)

The early teams that rode in the muscle cars did not really have to be tactical geniuses or even good at tactics. Their real mission was to deploy in case of an attack, to draw fire away from the protectees onto themselves, while the shift evacuated POTUS. Their true purpose was to be sacrificed, if necessary, in order to give POTUS time and the opportunity to escape from the kill zone. From the beginning of the program, the assignment attracted those with a sense of adventure and with a seemingly total disregard for danger, and there has never been a shortage of volunteers.

By the 1980s, terrorist attacks around the world were on the rise, and our brethren at the FBI saw the future far better than we. In 1982, the FBI established HRT, the Hostage Rescue Team. HRT was something of a SWAT team but with a much broader mission. In addition to the centralized HRT, based out of the FBI academy in Quantico, there were similar but less specialized teams in the major field offices. They had the budget, the personnel, and the all-important backing from FBI HQ. From the beginning, it was a first-rate operation.

The Secret Service was about one tenth the size of the FBI and seemingly always at odds with the Bureau over one thing or another, but there were those in the director’s office who wanted to be seen as a smaller version of the FBI. While this vision was totally unrealistic, the Service had one thing the Bureau did not yet wanted desperately: presidential protection. And while its budget was comparatively small to that of the FBI, the Service always got the funds it needed by citing security concerns for POTUS. That was good, because it was going to need a lot of cash for a new program coming down the alley known as CAT.

Not wanting to be outdone by the FBI in this new field of counterterrorism, the Service responded by creating a new branch within the Special Services Division (SSD) called Special Programs Branch (SPB), also to be known as the Counter Assault Team (CAT). While SSD’s main responsibility was taking care of the protective fleet of vehicles and had nothing to do with guns and killing terrorists, this newly created branch had to be put somewhere in the table of organization. CAT, an unconventional force, would answer to the SAIC of SSD, a completely conventional division that had no idea how to utilize its new, potentially highly lethal, group of men.

With the establishment of the Special Programs Branch, CAT had become a permanent protective assignment lasting two years, on average. The agents who comprised it would come from all over the country and would be based out of Washington, DC, with the muscle car concept now scrapped. After the two-year assignment, a CAT agent would usually move to the presidential or vice presidential detail, depending on the needs of the service. Later, CAT would attain divisional status, with its own SAIC, for a few years. Then it moved to PPD and, still later, back to its own division.

By the mid-1980s, training had improved immensely, as had the weapons carried. Now everyone in CAT would have an M16 assault rifle and the new Sig Sauer P226, a 9 mm pistol. Instead of six rounds (like the revolver), it held sixteen rounds. In an organization that still issued revolvers to its agents, carrying a Sig was a status symbol envied by all. Only CAT carried them, adding to the mystique of the program.

Although CAT now officially existed, the proper utilization of this new resource was an enigma to some supervisors. As a result, CAT in the early years was sometimes either improperly used or not used at all. For example, it did not accompany the president on all movements, and its presence was at the discretion of the presidential detail supervisor running the movement. It was not uncommon for PPD operations to call CAT notifying them of a POTUS movement but without requesting CAT assistance. CAT was being deliberately left out when its presence didn’t suit the White House bosses or when its proper use was beyond the tactical knowledge of the conventional supervisor.

Especially frustrating was the fact that CAT was sometimes not used because of its threatening appearance. Some supervisors did not feel a Suburban full of muscular men armed with assault rifles was aesthetically pleasing and preferred CAT not be included in the motorcade. Since we normally operated with our windows down, upon arrival at a site, CAT agents usually had one arm hanging out the window. This sight so displeased some at high-level PPD management that we were ordered to procure lower short-sleeved shirts that would not accentuate the well-developed male bicep/deltoid musculature.

These exclusions and this attitude began to create friction between PPD and CAT. There were several additional causes for this friction. Much of it came down to the fact that many at PPD distrusted CAT, did not feel its massive firepower was needed, and were ignorant of its capabilities. Things had been fine for almost a century of protection without CAT, and many felt it was not needed now. Another reason PPD did not like CAT in the early days was the freedom we enjoyed. We were totally on our own, for the most part, and were having entirely too much fun for some on the detail. We were an unconventional, independent lot, and almost everything we did spoke to that side of us. There was also some old-fashioned jealousy involved. On the road and away from Washington, CAT began to take over from PPD the reputation of being the Secret Service social elite.

MY CAT TOUR BEGINS

I checked into CAT from New York in August 1989 and officially began protecting the president of the United States, George Herbert Walker Bush.

On my first day, Randy Wood, the boss, called me into his office, where he welcomed me to CAT, congratulated me on my performance in CAT school, and then said essentially that I was a new guy and that he did not want to even hear my voice for one full year. I was just happy to finally be in CAT and had no problem playing a silent role.

Randy was a combat-decorated army officer and paratrooper who had served in Vietnam and had been an interrogator of Vietcong and North Vietnamese captures. He could be hard and demanding in many ways, but he also gave us a great deal of freedom to do the job as we saw fit. He loved his CAT boys and would go to the wall for us with upper management whenever any heat came our way, but he would chew us out if we were wrong about something. He was a firm believer in handling discipline internally, not putting our CAT business out for the world to see, and any of us would rather have taken a major beating than to draw his ire. He was a hard-to-know and complex man, but once he accepted you, he would never let you down. Above all, he was a great leader, and his men always came first, even at the expense of his own career, if necessary. During my Secret Service career he was the best leader and manager I knew.

I began my CAT career as all new arrivals do, spending the first year in the rear of the CAT truck watching the world while facing backward and learning how things worked in the program. My tactical duty was to provide a base of fire for the team in the event of an attack. My team leader was Phil Hyde, and unofficially my largest duty included always having Phil’s personal bag available for him and stacking the gear bags of the remainder of the team in a neat and accessible manner. On days when I was not scheduled to work with my team, I was at our training facility at Beltsville, honing my weapons skills and working out to maintain CAT-level fitness.

By my second year in CAT, I had moved up to team driver and then was selected as assistant team leader. In 1992, Randy appointed me as the team leader in command of team one, the team I had started with as a new guy three years earlier. It now consisted of a new group of agents, the original agents having moved on to other assignments, either within CAT or elsewhere in the Secret Service.

Team leaders were usually chosen from the pool of assistant team leaders. I had been an assistant team leader for a year. There was no real leadership training per se. Teams went to guys who were considered technically and tactically proficient as well as those who had displayed some leadership. My philosophy of leadership was what I had learned as a marine officer and Randy had learned as an army officer: A leader is responsible for everything his people do or fail to do. When your men do well it is to their credit. When your men fail it is your failure. On more than one occasion I stood, not sat, in Randy’s office, explaining failures of mine that would seem trivial to most. But to men such as Randy, no detail was considered too small.

Having been moved from Special Services Division to Special Programs Division, CAT was being assigned new leaders. Randy was now promoted to special agent in charge.

We had enjoyed our new designation as a division for about two years when rumors began to circulate that CAT was going to be placed under PPD. All in CAT had hoped it would not happen. We enjoyed our autonomy as a small elite unit and were not willing to give it up. Then, without warning, in the spring of 1992, the entire division was summoned to a large conference room in the New Executive Office Building, where the CAT office was located. The person ordering us to attend this meeting was the director of the United States Secret Service himself.

This individual, while highly respected, was the last of the authoritarian directors from the old school. He was not use to, and did not appreciate, being questioned by subordinates. He had vast government experience at the upper managerial level that included dealing with almost any situation a manager could encounter; all except situations concerning unconventional entities such as CAT.

All CAT agents appeared in the conference room of the New Executive Office Building, at Seventeenth and H streets, as ordered—dressed in suits and looking pretty. As we all sat awaiting our fate, the director entered, along with the deputy, and moved around the room, shaking hands with each CAT agent. We were respectful but resentful; we knew the purpose of the meeting: to abolish CAT as a division and place it under PPD.

The director began his remarks by stating, “CAT, as you all know it is over.” He continued by stating that CAT was now a section of PPD. It had lost, its divisional status. The news was not well received. The director had assumed that most of us would approve of being placed under PPD, and he had never expected anyone to challenge him over the issue or voice any displeasure. He was somewhat agitated—I guess that would be the best way to describe it—when more than one agent spoke up. Each one made it clear that he did not want to go to PPD but would instead rather go to other assignments. The director forcefully responded that he could make that happen. Of that fact none had any doubt.

With our divisional status now gone, agent Alan Whicher was assigned as our new boss. After settling into his new role, he did a very good job leading the program. He had replaced a man who was loved by the troops and had been a near-impossible act to follow.

Alan was heavily praised for his good work at CAT and as a reward was given the ASAIC slot in Oklahoma City. He was doing his usual efficient job there when, on the morning of April 19, 1995, a disgruntled army veteran named Timothy McVeigh parked a truck filled with explosives in front of the federal building where the Secret Service office was located. When the truck detonated, Alan was killed, along with five other Secret Service employees.

KOREA

The Korean War began in June 1950, when forces from Communist North Korea invaded the south in an attempt to unify the Korean peninsula under the Communist regime, and it ended with a cease-fire, not an actual surrender or peace agreement, in June 1953. Technically, a state of war still exists to this day between North and South Korea. As anyone who watches the news knows, North Korea is extremely unpredictable and capable of both aggressive rhetoric and unprovoked deadly aggression. It is best not to unnecessarily provoke them.

President Bill Clinton visited South Korea in 1993, and in spite of this potential volatility, the president, or perhaps someone on his staff, decided that he should do a photo op on the Bridge of No Return.

This bridge runs perpendicularly through the 38th parallel of latitude separating the two countries of North and South Korea, and all American POWs that North Korea chose to release walked across the bridge to freedom in 1953. Since the cease-fire agreement in June 1953, the North Koreans have controlled the northern end of the bridge and the South Koreans the southern end. On the Communist northern side of the bridge, there is an observation post occupying high ground, which overlooks the south and provides a perfect view of any activities on the bridge. The area just south of the bridge is a UN observation post and was the site of past unprovoked violence by the always unpredictable forces of North Korea. This was the exact location where, one day in 1976, ax-wielding North Korean soldiers murdered two US Army officers, Captain Art Bonifas and First Lieutenant Mark Barrett. This deliberate killing of two US Army officers by North Korea, while a blatant act of war that should have resulted in an immediate military response by the Ford administration, produced only the usual verbal outrage, with no action to follow. Seventeen years later, this area where the murders occurred would be the arrival point for President Clinton’s motorcade.

As part of the cease-fire, no rifles were allowed in this area, and the closest significant American forces were one mile away. Even with this agreement, CAT was directed by PPD to go to the bridge and get into position. Armed with pistols, only we could monitor POTUS, the bridge, and the North Korean observation post. I took the word “monitor” and applied my own definition to it.

North Korea was briefed ahead of time that POTUS would be making the stop on the bridge. This was a diplomatic as well as an intelligent maneuver. The Communists would have gone ballistic over the sight of President Clinton and company on the bridge had they not known of it before the fact.

The night before the president’s visit to the bridge, the commanding officer of Camp Bonifas (named for the deceased officer), a colonel, held a dinner for all Secret Service personnel on the trip. Over drinks in a secluded corner of the officers’ club, the colonel, a veteran of both Vietnam and Desert Storm, described our situation in black-and-white terms, characteristic of military men. He stated to the team, “If attacked and you survive the assault, and chances are you will not, you will be acting as a speed bump for the North Korean regulars. We have a squad of shock troops waiting just outside the DMZ who will ride to battle, but they are ten minutes away. In any case, it will be the longest ten minutes of your life…” All on the team appreciated his honesty as we accepted this warrior’s offer of another round of drinks and his toast to our success and to the survival of the team and the president.