Within Arm's Length: A Secret Service Agent's Definitive Inside Account of Protecting the President (7 page)

CHAPTER 5

Special Agent Training

The key to success of any law enforcement organization is the selection and hiring of the best people available, followed by intensive, exhaustive, never-ending training. Arguably, few personnel in law enforcement are trained to the level of an agent of the United States Secret Service. I don’t believe there is any organization in the law enforcement arena that places as much importance on continued training throughout an agent’s career as does the Secret Service. This is especially true in the areas of firearms and executive protection. This training begins the day a new agent is hired, when he or she is assigned a mentor, and it continues until retirement through frequent refresher training.

In addition to never-ending on-the-job training, each new hire has six months of initial formal training. This training is divided into two phases—criminal investigations followed by protective training—and it is conducted at two separate facilities.

The first school a newly hired agent trainee attends is the Criminal Investigative Training Program (CITP), located in Brunswick, Georgia, at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC). There, a new agent learns the basics common to all agents in federal law enforcement agencies. This school is not specific to the Secret Service but is a generic course designed to certify each student in the 1811 series, or criminal investigator category. The curriculum includes basic firearms training, physical fitness, defensive measures, and how to conduct a criminal investigation from the beginning through judicial adjudication. Each class is comprised of forty-eight students, with twenty-four being Secret Service agent trainees and the other twenty-four from various other agencies within the federal government.

After graduation from CITP, the Secret Service agent trainee attends the second phase of his or her training at the Secret Service Special Agent Training Course (SATC), held at the James J. Rowley Training Center (JJRTC) in Laurel, Maryland, sometimes referred to as Beltsville. This school belongs exclusively to the Secret Service, and it is here that the new agent learns how to provide executive protection for the president, as well as conduct investigations specific to the Secret Service, such as investigations of counterfeit and financial fraud. Firearms proficiency with all issued weapons specific to an agent of the Secret Service is ensured by many hours of range time with the issued Sig Sauer pistol, Remington shotgun, and Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun.

In addition to this training, each new agent is certified as a first responder in order to save lives in medical emergencies. This training, conducted by qualified EMTs and others from the medical community, gives each new agent the knowledge and tools necessary to respond to any medical emergency, from a heart attack to delivering a baby. It has saved many lives over the years.

Each new agent receives a significant amount of water survival training conducted in the state-of-the-art training tank (a large swimming pool) at Beltsville. In addition, the Secret Service trains its own water rescue swimmers, whose skills rival those of military combat swimmers. There is also an almost daily regimen of aggressive defensive tactics and challenging physical training.

Upon graduation from all required training, new Secret Service agents are prepared for any situation they might encounter over the course of their careers, everything from a gunfight, to subduing a resisting suspect, to stopping arterial bleeding, to the all-important covering the president and evacuating him in the event of an attack. Graduation, however, does not signal the end of training for an agent. Quite the contrary. Over the course of a career, each agent returns to Beltsville many times to receive refresher training in protection, firearms, and computers, and to hear the latest about investigative techniques and capabilities. Each is also briefed on the latest Supreme Court decisions relevant to the Secret Service.

Even after reporting to one of the two major protective details, PPD and the Vice Presidential Protective Division (VPPD), each agent undergoes two weeks of training every eight weeks. Known as protective detail training (PDT), it keeps each agent who is on the presidential and vice presidential detail sharp in all related skills. During this two-week period, agents requalify with their service pistol, submachine gun, and shotgun and are given the physical fitness test, consisting of push-ups, pull-ups, abdominal crunches, and 1.5-mile runs for time. A refresher in medical emergencies likely to be encountered by an agent is also given. The final day of PDT is spent engaged in attack on a principal (AOP) exercise, where agents are subjected to several mock attacks simulating assaults on their protectee. These attacks could include responding to a lone gunman on the rope line or a long-distance shooter, a medical emergency, and perhaps a water emergency such as exiting a crashed helicopter. In this scenario, several agents are seated blindfolded in a device submerged in water that simulates a helicopter fuselage. The fuselage is then rolled and inverted, and the agents must swim out of the simulated helicopter on one breath of air while fighting panic and with no visual reference. The problems are a bit different each time, so no one can really know what will come next. All agents, including supervisors, participate. It is without doubt the finest protective training in the world. It is also the major reason the Secret Service has been so successful in protecting the nation’s leaders over the decades.

Like most police agencies, the Secret Service through the years has had its share of changes in training doctrine and philosophy for new agents. The emphasis varies with each new director. Some have believed that the school should be somewhat of a gentleman’s course, while others have implemented measures that resemble those used in state police academies or military boot camp. It is for this reason that agents trained during different time frames will often offer different recollections of their training.

MY TRAINING BEGINS

In compliance with my orders to report to FLETC in June 1983, I departed Charlotte and drove first to my parents’ home, in Gainesville, Georgia, where I spent a weekend visiting the family and some old friends.

The next day found me a little sleep-deprived en route to my first training stint at FLETC. I arrived at the base, checked in, and headed for my room, where I found my roommate, Mike, and several men from my class. Mike was an outgoing, likable fellow who seemed to collect people of all types wherever he went. He also on this day had a cooler of cold beer, which always helps make new friends.

All of us hit if off right away and had a lot in common. Almost everyone was about the same age, twenty-eight. Almost everyone had a work history that was focused on either law enforcement or the military, and almost none of us were married. Later that day, when the beer in Mike’s cooler ran out, most of us went to nearby St. Simons Island for dinner.

The next morning we attended our first day of training, punching one another in the ribs to keep one another awake. I am surprised that none in my class over the course of the next few weeks suffered any permanent rib damage.

It was a long eight weeks, living with Mike in a small concrete block room just large enough for two people, but, as with thousands of other students over the years, we made do. Each day, we attended class, practiced our future trade, and generally had a pretty good time of it.

The saving grace of this experience was that our class was convened during the summer. As a result we could be found every Saturday and Sunday enjoying the beaches of St. Simons Island. Even on weekends, we began each day at the beach with a brisk three-mile run through the surf, then settled into our places while enjoying refreshments, the ocean, and the gracious hospitality of both tourists and locals alike.

Eventually we each grew a bit weary of the routine, the prison-style uniforms, and the food. Our elation was almost unbridled when it came time to graduate. Due to a lively graduation party the night before that was held on base so no one had to drive, almost everyone the next day was a little worse for wear, although functional. Someone gave an unmemorable speech and then we were handed our diplomas, and off we went, back to our home offices to await the next SATC class and the next round of the best training in the world with some of the best friends and comrades a man could wish for.

Soon after returning to Charlotte in August 1983, I received orders to report to the final phase of agent training at the JJRTC for SATC 84. Our class was to run from September through October 1983, and it would be here that I would learn the part of being a Secret Service agent that interested me the most: protection.

Our new home would be the General Scott Hotel, in a very bad neighborhood of Washington, DC, on Rhode Island Avenue, not far from our main classroom building, which was located during those days at 1310 L Street. Over the years, this area has been cleaned up, and it is scarcely recognizable today as the same place. In those days, if you walked out of the hotel and turned left you would live to see another day, but if you turned right you could be murdered in seconds. This was during a time when new agents reported for training with the issued revolver, so at least we had protection.

Unlike at FLETC, where two agents shared a small room, at the Scott we had no roommate. The rooms at General Scott were old but comfortable, and quite large, with two double beds. There was also a parking garage below the hotel where you could park at no cost.

The Scott was a three-dollar cab ride to Georgetown, which had the richest social environment for young men to be found anywhere in the United States, as far as we were concerned. Everyone could see that this was going to be a great deal more enjoyable than the spartan digs we had endured at FLETC. And we were given a stipend to pay for our hotel and living expenses, unlike at FLETC, where we lived on base, with everything provided.

Most of our instructors were fresh from the field or a protective detail. They all had a laid-back demeanor, and few, if any, were in any kind of decent physical shape. There were one or two instructors who conducted fitness classes, and they were it as far as PT instructors went. My two special agent class coordinators were both new from the detail and never worked out with us. We saw one of them in the morning, then again in the evening before we swooped out of the building and into Georgetown, usually to a bar known as The Sign of the Whale, where we would relax from a long day of training.

Still, management let it be known that any of us could be sent home at any time with absolutely no warning or explanation, and that we were under constant evaluation. Given the amount of rope reeled out by the service, some students did come dangerously close to hanging themselves at times, and that was part of the plan. An agent frequently works alone as well as with a team, and each must be trustworthy enough to work within the lines of conduct established by the Secret Service. In many cases there is no one to monitor agents on the road, and they are simply expected to do their work in a professional, unobtrusive manner. Hence the philosophy of laissez-faire training. If a man tripped up in training, he would most certainly trip up in the world. If he did foul up conduct-wise in training, he would be dismissed, and some in other classes were.

The most intense part of our training, mandatory for employment, was firearms. Almost every day we fired hundreds of rounds of ammunition so that by the end of the week, each man could scarcely hold a gun. Shoulders grew sore and faces swollen from the recoil of 12-gauge shotguns with sharp metal folding stocks. But as a result of this training we were all becoming very proficient with these lethal tools of our trade. All in my class were super-competitive alpha males, and there was no such thing as a relaxed day of shooting. In any course of fire, whether it was with the revolver, submachine gun, or shotgun, we all tried our best to outdo each other, with the loser buying the beer at our next social outing, which usually occurred that evening.

Secret Service Uniformed Division firearms instructors provide this firearms training. They are arguably the finest firearms instructors in the world. Each is an expert in the use of all weapons utilized by the Secret Service, as well as possessing the ability to convey this expertise to others. In some cases, this is no small feat, as some new trainees have never fired a weapon, while others possess so many bad traits and habits that they almost have to be trained from scratch.

As training progressed we all came to know and understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses and became like a family that worked, played, and occasionally fought together, but we were a family nonetheless. We might argue among ourselves, but woe to the poor soul who trifled with any man from my class. To push one of us was to push all.

I recall one late Saturday evening in a Georgetown bar when a young, somewhat intoxicated professional of some sort tried to start an altercation with a classmate. Had our classmate obliged, it would have been certain catastrophe for the drunken hero. This young man, emboldened from too much alcohol, was unhappy with the fact that his female companion was paying more attention to one of my friends than to him. He had apparently spent a great deal of time and money on this young woman, and he became a bit annoyed when she elected to leave with my friend instead of him. There were several of us sprinkled about the establishment. After making the unwise decision to push my friend to prove his bravery in front of this woman, the pseudo-tough guy found himself opening the door to the bar with his head while carried in a horizontal position by several perfectly attired Secret Service agents. It was all in good fun with nothing bruised other than perhaps the offender’s head and deflated ego. Although the bouncer found the situation amusing, he suggested we find another place to finish out the evening, but he invited us to come back soon. We gladly complied with both of his requests.

INSTRUCTORS MADE OF IRON AND INSTRUCTORS WHO THREW IRON

A number of instructors were tasked with shaping us into agents, and each had his own area of expertise and approach to teaching. Our primary hand-to-hand combat instructor was into competitive martial arts, and he was a very unusual guy. During competitions and training sessions he had broken most of his fingers. Two or three digits still pointed at odd angles, and he delighted in being the object of a demonstration. He seemed to love pain.