Within Arm's Length: A Secret Service Agent's Definitive Inside Account of Protecting the President (20 page)

True to the words of Seeger, he did not fail that rendezvous.

PRESIDENT GEORGE H. W. BUSH

Another president who was no stranger to risk taking was President George H. W. Bush.

A naval aviator during the same war JFK served in, he flew low-level bombing missions against the Japanese in his Grumman Avenger from the deck of a small carrier. Awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his skill and courage under fire, he parachuted into the Pacific Ocean after his torpedo bomber was fatally struck by ground fire. The life raft in which he floated while awaiting a rescue that might never come drifted very close to the Japanese-occupied island of Chichi-jima, which he had just bombed. Japanese officers who were known to cut out and eat the livers from their still living captives inhabited this island. Fortunately, the American submarine
Finback
plucked the future forty-first president of the United States from the ocean, saving him from such a cruel fate. Lieutenant Bush then became an accidental submariner until the
Finback
could deliver him back to his ship.

President Bush never quite got over his love of physical danger, as demonstrated by his numerous parachute jumps since leaving office. Even though he is a former president, he is still a protectee of the Secret Service. During these jumps the Secret Service could do little more than wait on the ground hoping the parachute of their charge would not fail.

WHO IS RESPONSIBLE, POTUS OR THE SECRET SERVICE?

If things should go wrong during these elective adventures, the president or former president would in all likelihood accept responsibility should he live. Officially, however, the Secret Service will take full responsibility, not POTUS. In other words, if a president should be killed or seriously injured in an incident of his own making, the first question asked would be: Why did the Secret Service allow this to happen? The director of the Secret Service would in all liklihood go to Congress and accept full responsibility for the accident. Careers would suffer accordingly.

I am frequently asked the question, Who has the final say regarding the president’s activities, the president or the Secret Service? The answer is both, with the president by far having the most control.

For example, the Secret Service may discourage but will not openly defy the president or former president if he wishes to engage in a dangerous act such as shaking hands with a group of people who have not been screened for weapons, or landing on an aircraft carrier in a jet. The Service should, however, remove—by force, if necessary—a president who wishes to shake hands with a group of people known to harbor a hostile gunman. In other words, barring specific knowledge of tangible, imminent danger, the president usually does what he wishes to do while the Secret Service does its best to protect him.

The bottom line is that many who have occupied the Oval Office are bold, aggressive men who, at a young age, tasted danger and liked it a great deal. Once the opiate of danger has been ingested, it can become as addictive as any drug, no matter how well-educated, old, or intelligent the user may be. There is no cure for this addiction but only temporary fixes.

CHAPTER 12

Presidential Protective Division

The Presidential Protective Division is the most important and prestigious division in the Secret Service. When an American president is assassinated, it is a catastrophic event not only for the United States but the entire world. An attack on the president of the United States is an attack on the United States itself. Consequently, PPD is a place where failure can never be an option and little short of perfection is tolerated. The PPD agent standing next to the president is the last line of defense against anyone or anything that might attempt to harm the chief executive.

When I was selected to become a part of PPD, the fact was not lost on me that I had just become a member of one of the most elite groups of men and women in the world belonging to the most highly regarded protection organization in the world. And, while some were selected based upon politics, most of us were there because we were very good at our profession and had distinguished ourselves over several years of service performing well at everything asked of us.

For me, being selected as a member of the PPD working shift in 1993 was as euphoric an experience as was my initial selection as an agent ten years earlier. Just as there is a long selection process to become an agent, so too there is one to become an agent on PPD. For me, the process lasted ten years.

After the initial buzz wears off from having made the first team, a feeling of overwhelming responsibility takes over. The realization that the life of the president of the United States will rest in your hands for the next several years is indeed awesome and invites reflection. The next reality that sets in is the harsh nature of the assignment, known only to those who have been members of this select club.

While a member of PPD, an agent’s life completely ceases to be his or her own and becomes sole property of the Secret Service and the office of the presidency. The term “family-friendly,” which has become so popular in today’s more warm and fuzzy federal government, will never apply to those entrusted with the life of the president. Single agents fare much better in this assignment than those with spouses. While an agent may be married with children, for the duration of an assignment to PPD there really is no family outside the Secret Service family. An agent may have a house in which his spouse and children live, but his true home is the White House.

The PPD agent is free to plan all of the family outings, vacations, dinners he wishes but should never be disappointed or surprised when such plans have to be canceled, sometimes at the last possible moment. In some cases, such plans have been scrapped as an agent and family were heading for the airport to enjoy a long-overdue vacation together. For the agent it is all a part of the job; for the spouses and children of these agents these occurrences are all but impossible to understand. There is a question that married PPD agents hear at home more than any other: “Why can’t they find someone else?” This is usually accompanied by the sounds of crying children who cannot fathom why their trip to the beach or ballgame is not going to happen.

On one occasion, my CAT team was flying to an assignment out of the Baltimore/Washington International Airport. As the team gathered in front of the terminal, one of my agents pulled up curbside along with his wife and infant son. As the CAT agent got out of the car and kissed his wife good-bye, his son promptly threw up on the wife and began crying. The little guy had been running a fever all morning and was now pretty ill, as was his wife. “Sorry, honey, gotta go,” he said, and disappeared into the terminal, leaving behind a sick wife and child.

In December 1992, President George H. W. Bush, who had just lost the general election to Bill Clinton, was scheduled to travel to Russia and France on January 2 and 3, 1993. This trip had been planned for quite some time. The advance teams had already deployed, and those not involved were looking forward to at least one or two days with their families for Christmas. At the last possible moment, President Bush unexpectedly made the decision to begin his trip with stops in Saudi Arabia and Somalia on December 31.

In order to cover advances for these new stops and to man the required CAT teams and working shifts, scores of PPD agents with approved leave for Christmas were about to get a hard shot of PPD reality. This trip was going to require all agents on the detail. Many agents who had already arrived at their holiday destinations were called and told to pack for a foreign trip.

As the CAT operations agent during this period, it was my responsibility, after shredding a work schedule for thirty-six agents I had spent five days writing, to write a new one in a matter of hours. To make the schedule a reality involved calling several agents back to Washington from their holidays. This was one of the most difficult assignments I was ever given. All agents whose Christmas leave was canceled were of course frustrated with the last-minute change, and in each case I patiently listened to those frustrations for a minute or so before having to terminate the agent’s sentiments in order to provide him with his travel itinerary. The deafening echoes of exploding spouses, emotionally crushed grandparents, and upset children could be heard all the way back to the White House.

Prior to volunteering for PPD, all agents understand that such things as the December debacle will occur. Yet when the reality of it all sets in, some change their minds and ask for transfer. In most cases these early transfers are requested in order to save marriages, because while the agent may be all in the game, his or her spouse may not be. Generally these transfers are granted not because the Secret Service is concerned about preserving marriages but rather because the safety of the president of the United States cannot be entrusted on a daily basis to anyone who is not 100 percent committed to the mission.

What makes these types of events endurable is the fact that everyone on PPD is making the same sacrifices. Because of common hardships, unbreakable bonds form between these remarkable people that will last a lifetime and in many cases longer than the marriages of some agents.

To the casual observer, seeing the president accompanied primarily by muscular, menacing-looking men and athletic, serious-looking women makes the job of the PPD agent appear glamorous and exciting. Thoughts of James Bond, martial arts experts, license to kill, fast cars, and martinis come to the minds of many. This image is an illusion, however, as I believe anyone reading this will have realized. The reality is quite different.

Legions of people have asked me throughout the years to describe exactly what it is like to be one of the Secret Service elite who protected three presidents. In terms of the actual physical experience, I explain that if one were to forgo sleep for twenty-four hours, skip lunch and dinner, stand outside of one’s house in the rain at 3:00 a.m. for several hours, cab to the airport, and board a plane to a large city for a four-hour flight, then repeat this regimen for several days in a row, one would begin to simulate the experience. To make the simulation complete, fail to attend a child’s birthday or graduation, and miss the holidays or your wedding anniversary.

Of course, there is a great deal more to being on PPD, but uncertainty and extreme fatigue are constant companions of the PPD agent. This is why the job is for the young and why burnout usually occurs at the four- or five-year mark of constant presidential protection.

While the public sees agents with the president during public functions, seldom seen by anyone outside the detail are the agents working the midnight shift who after getting off at 8:00 a.m., have to double back for the afternoon shift beginning at 4:00 p.m. I recall arriving at Andrews Air Force Base from Russia in the late afternoon already dead tired from the trip and jet lag, then going home to quickly shower and dress for the midnight shift back at the White House. The following morning, after going home and sleeping for a few hours, I was back at the White House for the evening shift. In that instance I worked three days with roughly four hours of rest. This was not an uncommon occurrence, and all agents, not just on PPD but also on all Secret Service details have experienced this unavoidable abuse on more than one occasion.

A PPD agent’s life revolves around an eight-week schedule. Like that of a factory worker, the routine is essentially shift work. Each agent assigned to the president works for a two-week period on day shift, followed by two weeks on midnight shift, and two weeks on the evening shift. At the end of this six-week cycle the agent goes into a two-week training phase, after which the cycle begins again. The changing of shifts every two weeks, combined with constant travel to different time zones, is, as one would expect, very hard on the body.

In addition to the agents who are directly assigned to the president, there are various sections within PPD, not all of which can be discussed here. These sections primarily include the First Lady’s detail and transportation.

After an agent has been on the working shift with the president for a period of time, he will then be moved to a section for approximately one year, then moved back to the working shift. This at least gives the agent a break in routine and allows for a more normal existence. Still, there are the trips to every corner of the world, announced and unannounced, which never end. It is all part of protecting the president of the United States, and those of us who have survived the experience will all say it was worth it. I have never heard former PPD agents say they wished they had done any protection assignment other than PPD.

FROM CAT TO THE SHIFT

When PPD absorbed CAT in 1992, everyone on CAT became members of PPD. While few of us wanted to be adopted by the detail and lose our divisional status, the change removed a lot of the guesswork. If a man wanted to move over to the working shift after his time in CAT was up, he was free to do so as long as he was deemed competent. Most of us went to the shift when our time came to leave CAT, while some moved to other places. I had loved my assignment in CAT. It was the best four years of my career, but four years was a long time and I was ready to move on.

One day while in the CAT office, I was called to the offices of PPD in the Old Executive Office Building. There I met with an assistant special agent in charge to discuss my future. “Dan, your time is up in CAT. Where do you want to go next?” the ASAIC said to me. “You can have almost any assignment you want in the Secret Service.”

I replied, “I want to stay on PPD and become a member of the working shift.”

He smiled and said okay and told me to report the following Monday.

With CAT behind me and my new assignment as a shift agent on PPD a given, I had in ten years as an agent attained all of the major career goals I had set. No matter what the future might hold, through planning, tenacity, and luck I had managed to land the prime assignments sought after by most young agents but realized only by a few. I would now join the ranks of such notable agents as Clint Hill, Jerry Parr, Tim McCarthy, and Larry Buendorf, as well as the thousands of anonymous agents who had since 1901 directly protected the president of the United States. After paying my dues and learning the basics of my profession for a decade, it was now my turn to help safeguard the leader of the free world up close. No more cockroaches or muddy dogs. I was going to the White House.