Within Arm's Length: A Secret Service Agent's Definitive Inside Account of Protecting the President (18 page)

After the VP departed for Washington, DC, the rest of the team moved from the DMZ back to Seoul in the CAT truck. Phil Hyde and I were going to move back down to Seoul via an army UH-1 helicopter, or Huey. He and I had been sitting in the Camp Bonifas officers’ club trading stories with some outstanding Airborne Ranger army officers when our Huey flight crew arrived.

Our crew of pilot, co-pilot, and crew chief entered the bar, and introductions were made. Our pilot was one of the few, or perhaps the only, Warrant Officer 5 (WO5) in the US Army. He was the most senior aviator in all of the army, with over thirty years of flying experience.

After some small talk with the crew, the WO5 headed for the door, and my team leader and I got up to move to the Huey, leaving our beers on the bar. The grand old man of army aviation shook his head and, smiling with his pale blue eyes, crinkled around the edges from thousands of hours of flying into the direct rays of the sun, told us to bring our beers with us. We had to comply because, after all, he was the aircraft commander.

It was a clear, warm afternoon, perfect for flying. The doors to the Huey were open, with the calming wap-wap noise of the rotors echoing through the helicopter and the wind swirling through the crew compartment. I sat directly behind the old Warrant Officer, whose neck looked like leather that had been left in the sun for about five years and was splattered with scars from wounds received more than twenty years earlier. He had probably dodged and caught as much lead in Vietnam as any man alive. I had asked him back at the club how many times he had been shot down. He smiled and said, “Too many to even count.” The old WO5 was a true American hero and a damned nice fellow, too.

CAT FLOURISHES

Time moved on, and so did the never-ending flow of CAT agents to the presidential working shift, as more and more of the older agents moved out of the White House and on to other assignments. It was becoming common for almost entire shifts surrounding the president to be made up of former CAT agents, and they were all excellent. CAT agents began to run PPD. Three of the most recent SAICs were former CAT agents.

When I returned to PPD/CAT in 2003 to become the ATSAIC, I scarcely recognized the operation. There were now twice as many teams as had been there when I left in 1993, and the caliber of the agents was beyond outstanding. These agents were bigger, smarter, and far better equipped than those in the CAT I had been a part of in the late 1980s and early 1990s. CAT had come light-years since its initial inception and had become one of the most highly respected branches of the Secret Service. The truly extraordinary agents who make up CAT are a force to be reckoned with and a source of pride for all Americans. When the day comes for CAT to deploy in a live-fire situation to save the life of the president—and that day will come—I have complete faith that they will succeed.

CHAPTER 9

The Agent Who Loved Me … Eventually

During my four years assigned to the CAT team, I experienced many exciting and interesting episodes that would provide memories for a lifetime. The most important, however, was not any adventure involving the protection of the president. It was my marriage to another agent, which occurred in November 1990.

My decision to get married came as a shock to many, as I was a thirty-five-year-old confirmed bachelor, or so everyone—and I—believed. With my busy career and a great social life, characteristic of a single Secret Service agent, marriage did not seem to be in the cards. I had totally dismissed the thought.

Over the years I had sat in vehicles, command posts, and squad rooms listening for hours to the complaints of married agents about their wives’ reckless spending, jealousies, and petty complaints, as well as the challenges of trying to be a father while being away from home a great deal of the time. It seemed that many Secret Service wives did not understand or were unwilling to accept the fact that the mission came first and family came second. Nor did they seem to understand that, when a man had been working out of state or country for twenty-one continuous days or longer, upon arriving back home he did not want to hear the complaints of the standard suburban housewife. Before being tasked with yard work and going to the PTA meeting, he merely wanted, in varying order, conjugal relief, a good meal, a cold beer, and some sleep.

Most of my fellow agents had married prior to joining the Secret Service, and their wives had no idea what was coming in the way of demands of the profession—separations, long hours at work, and so on. Husbands were torn between the mission and maintaining domestic tranquillity. To be a married Secret Service agent seemed like a tremendous amount of work and trouble. The job made being a good father and husband seemingly impossible. In each case where a decision had to be made regarding career or family, either the family or the Service got the short end. I knew I loved the Secret Service but merely enjoyed the company of attractive women. I was a confirmed bachelor, and nothing could possibly change that. I was, however, about to come face to face with the reality of “never say never.”

On a cold Sunday evening in November 1988 I had just returned to my apartment in New Jersey after spending Thanksgiving leave at my parents’ home in Georgia. As I walked in, dead tired from the fourteen-hour drive, I opened a beer and noticed the blinking light on my answering machine. It was a message from a senior agent in the New York field office, who stated that on the following day I was to begin motorcade advance preparations for the visit of Mikhail Gorbachev, general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and his wife, Raisa, who were visiting New York. The message also instructed me to meet and bring to the office a female Secret Service agent sent from the San Francisco office to assist in interpreting Russian for the advance team. My instructions further stated that she would be standing in front of the Vista Hotel adjacent to the World Trade Center at 8:30 the following morning.

Monday morning came, and after willing myself out of bed and surviving the ninety-minute gauntlet of death from New Jersey to Manhattan, I pulled up in front of the Vista Hotel, where I parked the Secret Service 1981 Pontiac LeMans and waited. I soon found myself looking at one of the most attractive women I had ever seen. She was standing on the steps of the hotel and appeared to be waiting for someone. I dismissed the thought that she could be my contact. While admiring her and listening to
Imus in the Morning
on the radio, I continued to wait for my assignment to show up.

The object of my attention was tall and statuesque, over five feet ten inches, with jet-black hair, high cheekbones, and dark Italian eyes, combined with a posture, figure, and demeanor that unmistakably said she was a woman of refinement. Probably European, I thought to myself, perhaps in New York on a modeling assignment. I sat in my car staring at her—leering, in fact—but realizing that whoever this lovely creature was, she was totally out of my league and could only be admired from a distance, as one would admire a beautiful painting or a statue.

As I continued to stare, she stared back. “Busted,” I thought. She then began moving down the steps of the Vista toward my car and me. Apprehension turned to near panic as she opened the door to the car, got in, and said, “Hi, my name is Donnelle” while flashing a perfect, blinding smile and offering me a feminine yet athletic hand to shake. With some difficulty I stammered out my own name.

Up close, she was even more beautiful. Over the next several days, her beauty, along with the scent of her perfume, drove me nearly to distraction from the business at hand of moving Russians safely around New York. I could see that this assignment was going to take all of the professional discipline I possessed.

As luck would have it, she was assigned to me as my interpreter for the duration of the visit, which lasted several days. Her Russian language skills were very good, and the beauty of the Russian language as spoken by her was almost at times too much for me to endure. It was obvious that my KGB counterparts were equally impressed.

During those few short days she and I worked closely together, and while I tried hard to impress her with whatever charm I could muster, she seemed totally immune and uninterested. Even so, we became friends, and when it came time for her to return to San Francisco, I sadly thought I had probably seen the last of her.

Over the course of the next year, Donnelle and I stayed in touch by telephone but never saw one another. The turning point in our relationship occurred when I was transferred from New York to Washington, DC, and the Counter Assault Team.

My first several CAT trips were to the San Francisco area, where she was still assigned. It seemed that everywhere I turned she was there, and in spite of our conflicting assignments we managed to see one another occasionally. Each time I saw her I felt more and more that this was someone I wanted to have a relationship with, although I fought the emotion, as the entire situation seemed too improbable to seriously pursue—impossible, in fact.

With each encounter, however, my affection for her began to grow, but if she shared that affection, it was not noticeable. Due to circumstances, timing, geography, and her seemingly built-in emotional deflector shields, we seemed to be on a path of friendship only. I had noticed one thing for certain, however: This woman had the kindest eyes I had ever seen, and my determination to resist pursuing a serious relationship with her was diminishing each time I looked into them.

During the late spring of 1990, Donnelle was sent from San Francisco to Washington for the purpose once again of using her Russian language skills during a visit from Mikhail Gorbachev, by then president of the Soviet Union. As usual, I took up as much of her time after-hours as possible.

One of the benefits of socializing with other agents is that we all have the same security clearances and can talk shop. The inability to discuss certain things with non-agents ends many relationships before they begin. Donnelle and I talked for hours on end, never seeming to run out of things to say.

After arriving one evening at our usual meeting place, the Old Ebbitt Grill just down the street from the White House, I asked how her day interpreting for the Russians had gone. She said that the Russians had been, as always, entertaining to work with, and she related an incident that had happened that day.

She had been interpreting when she was approached on the south grounds of the White House by the five-man Russian equivalent of a Secret Service Counter Assault Team. Although Donnelle spoke very good Russian, the team leader said, in heavily accented English: “All day we have been called CAT. We do not know why we are called CAT. Can you please tell us why we are called CAT? Is this bad?” After writing on a piece of paper in Russian an explanation that CAT was an American acronym for Counter Assault Team, the Russian seemed pleased and said, “Thank you, we now know why we are called CAT.” As he showed the piece of paper to his team, chests began to expand as each Russian CAT member smiled and nodded, obviously proud of the new designation.

As she told this amusing story, the thought went through my head that one of the most important things in a relationship, and one that had always been missing, to any large extent, in my previous relationships, was having things in common with the other person. We had much in common and each could talk openly about the job. If only she were not assigned three thousand miles away.

One evening after dinner at the Old Ebbitt Grill, lubricated with twelve-year-old Scotch and inspired by several minutes of staring into those eyes, I unexpectedly blurted out, almost to my own horror, “Hypothetically, if I were to ask you to marry me, what would you say?”

“Hypothetically, perhaps,” she said. She then volunteered that she would be in Dallas the following month assigned to protect George W. Bush, son of President George H. W. Bush.

“I didn’t know we were protecting him,” I said. “Doesn’t he own the Texas Rangers baseball team?”

“Right,” she offered, “and stop changing the subject.” She continued that if I were serious, nonhypothetically, I could come to Dallas and ask her to marry me in June. Always one to think things through, she obviously wanted me to do the same.

In the sober light of day, I discovered that I apparently was serious and that my feelings had not changed. On a hot June evening in 1990, I found myself in Dallas, Texas, holding an engagement ring while asking this Italian American beauty if she would indeed marry me. To my astonishment, she accepted. To my further astonishment, I was now engaged to be married, and very happy about the entire situation.

Two Secret Service agents marrying one another is not as easy a proposition as it sounds. She was stationed on the West Coast and I in Washington, DC. Donnelle accepting my proposal was only half the battle. In order for this to work, the Secret Service was going to have to cooperate.

At the time, there were relatively few couples employed by the Service. There was in those days a Service policy that tandems could not serve in the same office or division, which made marriage between agents difficult. Most of these tandems were located in large cities, where one partner worked in the main field office and the other in a smaller resident office. An example would be the Los Angeles field office and the Riverside resident office. Another option that others in our position had elected but which was unacceptable to us was for one spouse to resign. Donnelle and I were both career agents, so we would have to find another way. Administratively Donnelle was assigned to a field office that fell under the Office of Investigations, and I was assigned to CAT, which fell under Protective Operations. It was, in a sense, like working for two separate agencies.

One afternoon I sat in my boss’s office at CAT and tried to explain the situation to him. He scratched his head, asked if I was insane, and then sent me to see the assistant director of Protective Operations, who, after patiently listening to my plight, agreed to ask the assistant director of Investigations to arrange for Donnelle to be transferred from San Francisco to the Washington field office, where she would conduct criminal investigations and do temporary protective assignments. There was one catch. We had to be married, not merely engaged, before he arranged for this transfer. It seems that in the past an agent had used the marriage card in order to be transferred to his girlfriend’s city of residence and then never married her. This amounted to a very expensive waste of a transfer, so the Service wanted to see a marriage license before spending a hundred thousand dollars on Donnelle’s move.