Within Arm's Length: A Secret Service Agent's Definitive Inside Account of Protecting the President (21 page)

THE NEW GUY, AGAIN

In June 1993, on my first day as a PPD shift agent, I reported to W-16, the Secret Service command post in the West Wing. Briefing for the shift was at 6:00 a.m., but I was always at least five minutes early. I found out that morning that everyone else was ten minutes early. I met my shift mates, and although I knew each of these agents, my shift leader introduced me and then we briefed for the day. I was happy with the lot I had drawn. These were good men, two of them former CAT agents.

After the briefing, we moved from our command post in the West Wing to the main mansion, where I had worked so many CAT midnight shifts over the past four years. We relieved the previous midnight shift, which was very glad to see us, and moved to our posts.

The senior agent on the shift, whose position was officially known as the shift “whip,” walked me around to each post, explaining the responsibilities. Although I had worked in the White House for four years as a CAT agent and had filled in from time to time as a shift agent, I did not know what the permanent shift responsibilities were or the general shift routine. While an ace in CAT, I was essentially a shift “new guy” that happened to know how to move around the White House without getting lost, at least most of the time.

For a new agent on PPD, there were always tough moments in learning the routine. Each day there seemed to be a never-ending list of new things to be learned, some of which were written and others not. Most information that did exist in writing was provided on small flash cards reminding the agent of what his actions should be at each post. Also issued was a series of flash cards depicting the various formations used in walking with the president.

I had been on the shift about two weeks and was learning just enough about my duties to be a menace. One morning I was posted on the ground floor of the White House when the elevator light came on indicating that “Eagle,” the call sign for President Clinton, was on the way down in the elevator. The door to the elevator opened, and out came the president in a suit dressed for work. I quietly announced over my sleeve microphone, as was standard operating procedure, “Eagle moving to the Oval.” Off we went, with me leading the POTUS to his office for another day of whatever presidents do. He did not need to be led, of course, but there always had to be an agent close by.

All was routine, and as we reached the Oval Office, I opened the colonnade door leading inside the oval office, with Eagle close behind. As we entered, I did a quick look-see to make sure all was in order and then exited through what I thought was the door leading to the hallway between the Oval and the Roosevelt room. It was not. I instead exited through the door leading into the private dining room of the Oval Office, which was located next to the door I was supposed to use.

There was no one in the small dining room other than me standing there trying to decide what to do next. I should have taken another second or two to decide, because I made the wrong decision. I turned and reentered the Oval Office to find a surprised and somewhat annoyed-looking President Clinton. I tried to look as though this were all somehow planned, as I said, “Good morning, sir, all clear,” and then exited through the correct door, leaving behind a puzzled POTUS.

No one knew about this minor but embarrassing incident, and, being new, I was certainly not going to inform on myself. Phil Hyde, my old team leader in CAT, was a big proponent of the old question: “If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a noise?” My going through the wrong door was a tree that had made no noise, and I was going to leave it that way.

ADVANCES AND STAFF COUNTERPARTS

Before the president leaves the White House for any reason, a security site advance is performed by the Secret Service at the location to be visited. It can be as simple as merely finding an arrival point for the motorcade, a bathroom, and the route to be walked, or it can be complex, like a two-week advance in a foreign country with multiple venues.

On each site advance, an agent is assigned a counterpart from the staff of the protectee to work with. This staff person is responsible for creating the protectee’s itinerary—activities on site, sequence of events, who the greeters will be. The agent is then responsible for preparing a security plan around the itinerary.

After receiving the itinerary from the staff advance counterpart, the site agent designates an arrival and departure point for the motorcade, and a location for the emergency motorcade. He designates several different rooms to be used by the protectee, route of travel for the protectee and an emergency egress route, posting of agents, police, and other security assets. He coordinates with explosive ordnance disposal teams and local fire department and does many other things that cannot be listed here. In short, it is an enormous responsibility, and one must be able to keep several things in the air at once in order to be a successful site agent. For a trip to be a success for both agent and staff, it is essential that the two work together in harmony, not in opposition.

A few months after joining my shift, I was assigned to do my first out-of-town advance for President Clinton. The stop was a library in Sewickley, Pennsylvania, and it was fairly simple as far as presidential advances go. By this point in my career I felt experienced and confident enough to handle such a venue but getting to this level of experience had taken time, with some hard learning experiences along the way.

As I sat in National Airport reading the latest edition of the
Washington Times
and waiting to depart for my first PPD advance as a member of the working shift, I remembered my first experience as a site advance agent, during the 1984 campaign. It was a near disaster but a great learning experience and my first encounter with a less than straightforward volunteer staff counterpart.

Before Sarah Palin there was Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman to be nominated by her party for the office of the vice presidency of the United States. She ran with Walter Mondale on the 1984 Democratic ticket against Ronald Reagan. Just out of agent school, I was assigned to proceed to Raleigh, North Carolina, to conduct a site advance for Ferraro. The site was considered major and would have been a challenge for an experienced agent. This was during the middle of a presidential campaign, and there were no experienced agents to be found.

When my supervisor gave me the assignment, I told him that I was happy to have it but wondered why I had been chosen. With no hesitation, he replied, “Because you are the only agent available.”

“You mean one of the few available,” I replied.

He looked up and said, “No, the only agent available in the entire state of North Carolina.”

The site was a large outdoor courtyard shopping mall, with stores on the left and right and streets running along the northern and southern boundaries. Ferraro would be speaking at an outdoor rally at one end of the courtyard. Not only was I in over my head, but my staff counterpart was on his own agenda.

He was in his late fifties and dressed as one would expect an older liberal intellectual to dress: baggy pants, rumpled tweed sport coat, wrinkled button-down shirt, shoes that had not seen polish since JFK. He had long, gray thinning hair and a reddish complexion, and he wore round wire-frame glasses. He looked as if he just stepped out of a Berkeley political science classroom where he had been teaching that socialism was superior to capitalism. I am certain that he immediately sensed my inexperience, and I could also see that he was going to try to take advantage of that inexperience. In the business, this is called “getting rolled.”

For about the first two days of the advance, my Timothy Leary clone pushed for things that probably should not have been done, but I was as green as an agent could be. Although I was relatively certain he was taking advantage of me, I could not put my finger exactly on any one thing that would point to that. Not long out of agent school, and with no real experience or a senior agent to mentor my advance, I was winging it pretty hard.

On the third day of the advance and the day before the visit, I thought that we had pretty much nailed everything down. As we stood looking at the site, my elder counterpart volunteered that he was going to place a gigantic banner behind the podium welcoming Ferraro to Raleigh. He said that he had already ordered it and that it should arrive at any time.

While I was inexperienced, I knew that he should have run this by me beforehand. My counterpart from the Raleigh Police Department was also standing there and firmly offered that such banners violated city ordinance and were therefore not permitted. As far as I was concerned, that settled the issue. Not for the professor, however. Realizing that he was losing this engagement, he elected to try a flanking maneuver. He offered that the banner would serve as an excellent barrier to block any sniper’s view from behind Ferraro. Snipers? Where was this coming from, and what the hell did this man know about snipers? A little too smugly for my taste, he volunteered that he had vast experience in such matters and that he had done site advances for JFK and RFK. I suppose this comment was designed to impress and intimidate the police officer and me, but it failed to do so. I was at the end of my endurance with this pompous ass. He had opened the door, and I couldn’t resist. I then observed that both men he had just boasted about doing sites for were dead, killed by assassins. The police advance officer burst into laughter and the bohemian pseudo-intellectual turned red and stormed away. The banner never happened.

That same year I was tasked with conducting a fairly simple advance for Lady Bird Johnson at an elementary school in Texas. Part of this advance, as with any other, was to obtain a holding room. Here protectees can review their notes before proceeding with their schedule or just collect themselves for a few minutes. This is Secret Service protocol doctrine.

I was working with a very young volunteer staff counterpart, who advised me that Mrs. Johnson would not need a holding room, as she intended to move directly from the cars to the event. I nodded but obtained the holding room nonetheless. The Secret Service, not staff, dictates such things, and it was a good thing I made the decision I did. Upon the arrival of Mrs. Johnson, the panicked young staffer practically screamed that we needed a holding room—that Mrs. Johnson did not want to immediately move to the event. I just smiled, letting the staffer believe that we had no holding room, per her unheeded, meaningless orders, and then led Mrs. Johnson to her holding area. My instincts were correct on this day, and I had learned an unbreakable rule of advance work that would serve me well in the years to come: Always carefully consider any direction or advice offered by a protectee’s volunteer staff, and always stick to Secret Service procedure.

Experience is the best teacher, and I was getting a lot of it that would serve me well throughout my career when the protectee was the sitting president of the United States, not a candidate or former First Lady. I was learning that advances were the most difficult part of protection and that the hardest part of the advance was dealing with staff. Every advance was different, and there always seemed to be a new staffer who did not understand his role. It was like going on a never-ending series of blind dates: You never knew what you were going to get, but you knew it was usually going to be unpleasant. I learned that in many cases staff was as ignorant of what their job was as I had been in Raleigh, and that they needed to be dealt with firmly and professionally right off the bat. For a young agent to become too friendly with some of them was immediately perceived as weakness, which they would exploit. In time I learned to strike the right balance of firmness and friendliness, but one always had to be on guard.

A NEW ADMINISTRATION

On January 20, 1993, William Jefferson Clinton moved into the White House, and along with him came a staff so different from that of George Herbert Walker Bush’s that they could have been from another planet. This was my first experience with a Democratic presidential staff. Starched white shirts, conservative hairstyles, and blue suits had given way to denim, long hair, and Dockers.

In direct contrast to the departing Republicans, most of whom were at least forty years of age, President Clinton’s staff had a mere handful of experienced, mature professionals. The remainder were young people possessing no significant work experience. Some were younger than us by a decade or more, and many were initially disrespectful of the Secret Service. Much of this attitude had to do with their youth and immaturity. Unlike their outgoing Republican counterparts, none seemed to own a watch.

To many of these young people, who were now in charge of planning POTUS’s schedule and who played a large part in the day-to-day running of the White House, this seemed to be nothing more than a grand adventure not to be taken too seriously.

On top of their seemingly youthful arrogance, the junior staff could also be dangerous in an adolescent sort of way. President Clinton was visiting Russia in December 1993, and I was along for the trip as a member of my shift. I had been preposted at an event. A young staffer walked by and into the secure area about to be occupied by POTUS. This was not a concern, as I knew the staffer, who was wearing the proper lapel pin identification that allowed total access to the area. The rub was that the Russian KGB agents assisting us did not understand our identification system and had no idea who this young man was.

As the staffer was walking by, a KGB officer named Yuri grabbed him by the arm to stop him. The staffer jerked away from Yuri and continued on his way, as if he were dealing with a Wackenhut security officer in Toledo. As Yuri was about to do his worst, I put my hand on his shoulder (gently) and explained to him (he spoke English, as most do) that the young man was one of the president’s staff and that he had access to the area. I also asked that he not officially detain or confront the young man. Out of professional courtesy he reluctantly agreed, but first he said, in a heavy Russian accent, “Dan, he is big asshole.” I had to laugh, and while I certainly agreed with Yuri’s assessment of the young staffer, I withheld comment. This request on my part to leave the neophyte unmolested by the KGB would cost me several rounds of vodka later when I was off duty with my Russian friend. I always appreciated the directness of the Russians.