Within Arm's Length: A Secret Service Agent's Definitive Inside Account of Protecting the President (19 page)

As our wedding date neared, it appeared as if one or both of us might not make it to the ceremony for any number of reasons. Three days before we were to be married Donnelle was in Colombia and I was in Haiti.

It all somehow came together, although I have no idea how. On November 10, 1990, we were married in Gainesville, Georgia, with both a Catholic priest and a Baptist minister in attendance. November 10 is the Marine Corps birthday. Being married on that particular day ensured that I would never forget my anniversary. Semper Fi.

After our honeymoon to Hilton Head, South Carolina, we moved into my small condominium in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Because one of us was usually gone most of the time, our marriage seemed like a never-ending honeymoon or the greatest date in the world. It is a date that has lasted for over two decades and produced the finest son anyone could wish for.

CHAPTER 10

Human Shields and Operant Conditioning

One of the questions people ask most frequently of Secret Service agents is whether they are actually willing to take a bullet for the president. Most agents will simply change the subject or deflect the question with humor. For the record, the answer is yes, but few agents will publicly admit it, and none enjoys discussing it. In my own case, as an agent applicant I was made aware very early in the selection process that this possibility existed and that if I was not willing to lay down my life for the president I should apply for a job elsewhere. The subject never came up again in twenty-one years of service. It was simply understood.

Although it has the potential to become so, being a Secret Service agent on PPD is not a suicide mission and no agent is expected to unnecessarily give up his or her life for the president. One of the most popular myths about Secret Service agents is that they swear an oath to die for the president. A complete urban legend as no such oath exists, this is exactly what all commit to the moment they become a Secret Service agent.

For me personally, no one ever elected to the office of the presidency was worth dying for, yet the office of the presidency was. Presidents are only people who live and breathe like anyone else, but the office of the presidency must be protected at all costs. Consequently, the person occupying that office by default becomes worth dying for regardless of party affiliation or the personal feelings an agent may have. For anyone considering the Secret Service as a career, this must be part of his or her belief set. If it is not, the Secret Service is not the career he or she should pursue.

Psychologists will affirm that it takes a special type of person to willingly sacrifice his life for that of a president—or anyone else, for that matter. To this end, the Secret Service tirelessly seeks highly dedicated, motivated, intelligent, and patriotic young people, then trains them until certain responses become automatic, removing thought, heroics, or cowardice from the equation. While interviewees may be adamant and swear that they would die for the president if necessary, there is no way to prove the claim. But the training that is received by all agents assures it.

Secret Service agents are trained to cover and evacuate a protectee during an attack, not necessarily to dive in front of a bullet like Clint Eastwood’s character in the movie
In the Line of Fire
. In an attack on POTUS the idea is to get him out of the kill zone and for everyone to survive if at all possible. If even one agent is taken out of action during an attempt on the president’s life, the odds of POTUS surviving decrease exponentially. It is therefore more beneficial to POTUS for as many of his agents to survive as possible.

In order to ensure that its agents will respond correctly in situations that are life-threatening to the president, the Secret Service subjects its agents to repetitious training until certain responses become automatic.

Assassinations and attempted assassinations are usually over in less than three or four seconds. In such events, no one has time to think about what to do. Rather, one reacts according to training. The training that all agents initially receive and then continue to receive throughout their careers is a form of operant conditioning, whereby a person reacts automatically based on exposure to certain stimuli and events.

Agents, for example, are trained in how to disarm assailants who are armed with knives and handguns. The exercise is done so many times in training that if an agent faces a real gun or knife, he or she should automatically attempt to disarm the person without thinking. This super-repetitive training removes any thought process associated with the reaction, and responses become totally automatic, whether the situation is real or training. This response must be instantaneous if such situations are to end successfully.

While it takes years of training to produce such flawless response, Secret Service agents are anything but Pavlov’s dogs responding to a bell. And, contrary to assertions by some very shallow, uninformed people, Secret Service agents are not brainwashed. Agents receive the best executive protective training in the world, and the success of this training has been proven on many occasions.

It was this training that saved the life of Ronald Reagan on March 30, 1981. On that day, John Hinckley, who had embedded himself inside the press pen with the media outside the Washington Hilton, fired six rounds from a .22-caliber revolver at President Reagan. Of the six shots fired, four found a human target.

One slug hit Washington, DC, policeman Thomas Delahanty, one hit the presidential press secretary, James Brady, and one hit the president after ricocheting off the limo. The other struck Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy. Of the four persons shot during this attack, it was McCarthy who was hit because he responded in a controlled fashion, while others were largely accidental victims, in the wrong place at the wrong time, as it were. McCarthy, who was standing in his assigned position next to the limo door, moved at the sound of the first round into a cover position blocking POTUS from the attack and, due to his training, became a 200-pound human bullet trap.

The entire episode was over in less than three seconds. Even so, the sound of the sixth and last round had not finished echoing off the buildings surrounding the Washington Hilton when SAIC Jerry Parr had pushed President Reagan into the backseat of the limo. These responses were the quintessential examples of operant conditioning produced by years of training, and while Pavlov’s dogs might have been interested in the tires of the limo, they would have had trouble opening and closing the doors.

Another example of the effectiveness of Secret Service training occurred on September 4, 1975, when agent Larry Buendorf, while assigned to PPD, disarmed Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme as she pointed a loaded Colt .45 semiautomatic pistol at President Gerald Ford in Sacramento, California.

While escorting President Ford on a walk to the capital, Buendorf saw a hand come up holding a gun. Per training, he sounded off, “Gun!” Ripping the loaded Colt out of Fromme’s hand in the prescribed manner, he pulled it to his chest while the remainder of the detail evacuated President Ford to a safe location. He had practiced this hundreds of times with a dummy weapon held by an instructor. This time it was a live weapon in the hand of a person intent on killing the president. Mr. Buendorf’s response to the potentially lethal situation was perfect.

Presidents are, of course, not the only persons protected by the Secret Service. As we have seen, beginning in 1968, after the assassination of Robert Kennedy, the Secret Service began protecting major presidential candidates. Protecting a presidential candidate can be more dangerous than protecting the president, as the Secret Service discovered on May 15, 1972. At a shopping center in Laurel, Maryland, a man named Arthur Bremer shot presidential candidate and former Alabama governor George Wallace five times. Also wounded in the attempted assassination of Wallace was Secret Service agent Nick Zarvos, who was hit in the throat by a .38 Special bullet.

Due to the continuous training received throughout their careers, agents do not differentiate during an attack between the president and anyone of lesser office. The process is designed to work regardless of who the protectee is.

CHAPTER 11

The Boldness of the Presidency

A SECRET SERVICE CHALLENGE

At times both sitting and former presidents voluntarily engage in optional activities that could result in death or serious injury. Frequently, the Secret Service watches these exhibitions knowing full well it has no control over the outcome. Since it is the mission of the Secret Service to protect these men from all harm, certain activities can be of grave concern to the Service. The Secret Service will usually voice quiet concern over such activities, yet in most cases the will of the president overcomes that of the Secret Service.

In these delicate situations, the Secret Service does its best to protect a man who does not always wish to be protected. There are times when presidents are very happy to have the Secret Service by their side. At other times, the president pushes back and strives for a small degree of independence from the necessary yet burdensome presence of his full-time protectors.

Many of our presidents, including John F. Kennedy and George H. W. Bush, have documented histories of physical courage exhibited during military service. It is unfortunate that such men’s deeds of heroism seem to have a finite shelf life with voters. As such, a president and his advisors many times will take risks to remind voters that the man they have elected or who wishes to be elected by them is strong and brave enough to hold the office he holds or seeks.

Not to be left out, former presidents who were forced to control their impulse for adventure while in office often present great security challenges by engaging in acts they could have never gotten away with while in office.

Politics aside, there are other reasons these men engage in sometimes unnecessarily dangerous behavior. Eight of the last ten presidents were military officers. Five served in combat. As commander in chief of the armed forces, the president of the United States presides over the boldest group of men and women in the world, our men and women in uniform. Because they are constantly around such high-speed individuals, some presidents occasionally seem to feel a need to be seen, in the eyes of these warriors, as “real men”—not just politicians in Brooks Brothers suits wearing expensive watches but rather equals in nerve and boldness.

And, part of this behavior is simply in a president’s DNA. Men who become president of the United States tend to be super-competitive risk takers. While this trait of personality may mellow with the years, it seldom goes dormant and is never extinguished.

Neither Democrats nor Republicans seemed immune. This is true of those who possess a history of tangible physical courage, such as Presidents George H. W. Bush and John F. Kennedy, and of those with a background strictly in academia and politics.

PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY

One example of the type of man who becomes president is John F. Kennedy, who, as a naval officer during World War II, commanded a PT boat. A mere eighty feet in length, these boats built for speed and maneuverability were constructed primarily of wood. Propelled by two enormous General Motors engines that dined on highly flammable 100 octane aviation fuel, they made a huge explosion when hit by enemy gunners from the Japanese destroyers they were sent up against.

After losing his first boat, PT-109, and recovering from the experience, he rejected going home to Hyannis Port to the safety and celebrity of a returning war hero on survivor’s leave. Instead, he requested and was granted command of another PT boat and continued to do battle with Japanese forces.

JFK’s exploits were driven by his desire to serve America and by his love of adventure. Prior to the war, Kennedy had no political aspirations. His political career was formulated and moved into action by his father, Joseph Kennedy Sr., who was grooming JFK’s older brother, Joe Jr., for politics. When Joe was killed as a naval aviator, JFK moved up to take his place in the future Kennedy political machine. After becoming president, JFK was known to take inordinate risks from time to time, most notably immersing himself in large crowds of people where anyone could have killed him.

Some believed JFK had a death wish or that he could see his future. Part of this belief is based upon President Kennedy’s favorite poem, “I Have a Rendezvous with Death,” by Alan Seeger.

I HAVE A RENDEZVOUS WITH DEATH

I have a rendezvous with Death

At some disputed barricade,

When Spring comes back with rustling shade

And apple-blossoms fill the air—

I have a rendezvous with Death

When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

It may be he shall take my hand

And lead me into his dark land,

And close my eyes and quench my breath—

It may be I shall pass him still.

I have a rendezvous with Death

On some scarred slope of battered hill,

When Spring comes round again this year

And the first meadow-flowers appear.

God knows ’twere better to be deep

Pillowed in silk and scented down,

Where Love throbs out in blissful sleep,

Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,

Where hushed awakenings are dear …

But I’ve a rendezvous with Death

At midnight in some flaming town,

When Spring trips north again this year,

And I to my pledged word am true,

I shall not fail that rendezvous.

Perhaps President Kennedy also felt because of his World War II adventures at the age of twenty-six commanding a PT boat, combined with being the youngest president in America’s history, he was invincible. He was not.