Within Arm's Length: A Secret Service Agent's Definitive Inside Account of Protecting the President (8 page)

One such demonstration included having another instructor kick him full force in the groin; he would display zero emotion and no change in facial expression. As a result of his unique talent for ignoring pain, we referred to him as “Iron Balls,” but of course never where he could hear us.

Most, but not all, of these instructors were fun people who enjoyed their work, including the somewhat seemingly demented hand-to-hand instructor. One instructor, who did not seem to fall into the category of even approachable, did, however, seem to enjoy throwing cast-iron training handguns at the head of any student he did not feel was paying attention to the lesson. These dummy weapons were designed for official training purposes, although they could also be used unofficially to deliver a point, as a classmate discovered.

One day, a student was not paying attention, and this instructor let fly with the training weapon, striking the student squarely in the head drawing considerable blood and nearly knocking him unconscious. The instructor looked at my bleeding classmate, who was beginning to resemble a case from the ER, and spelled his name for the student in case he wanted to file a complaint. We looked at each other and looked down at our colleague, each of us with an “oh, shit” look on our faces, and then helped him to the emergency medicine office, where he was tended to and promptly returned to class. Even if my friend had required stitches and hospitalization, which, fortunately, he did not, there would have been no complaint filed.

This particular instructor became one of our best friends after graduation. He was from the old school, and simply believed that hard lessons were the ones best remembered. Being a graduate of the Marine Corps school of pain presided over by Staff Sergeant McLean, I had no problem with this sort of thing and understood his methods. Then again, I was never struck in the head by a flying cast-iron handgun.

ELEVATORS AND DISLOCATED JOINTS

As with most who serve in the military and law enforcement, everyone in my class enjoyed life a great deal, and there was always something fun going on, usually at someone’s expense. One morning, that someone was me.

On this day, the class was sitting around the mat room and practicing various holds on each other while waiting for our sadomasochistic instructor to arrive. Without warning, I was seized by three of my classmates, who handcuffed my ankles together and my hands behind me. We had been practicing handcuffing, and I was duped into believing it was practice until I was carried like a freshly slain deer toward the elevator banks. Upon reaching the elevator, my classmates lowered my PT shorts to my knees and threw me into the elevator after pushing the buttons for all floors. Keep in mind that this was a main Secret Service building, where many people worked and rode the elevators each morning. Just before the door closed, my pals picked me up again, and this time delivered me to the women’s locker room, where I was unceremoniously deposited on the floor amid several female Secret Service employees in various stages of undress. Hearing screams of disapproval, my classmates returned to retrieve me, at which time I was delivered to the mat room and then released in time for class as if nothing had occurred. If this type of incident occurred today it would probably trigger a congressional investigation. In those days, this was considered good, clean fun, and as usual, no complaints were lodged.

During the same session, while practicing a counter to a rear chokehold, I dislocated the elbow of my partner and good friend, who happened to have been one of my morning assailants. There was an audible pop heard by all in the mat room, he went pale, and his elbow was not in the place where it should have been. He was taken to George Washington Hospital, where his elbow was relocated to its normal place, and then he returned to training. Even today controversy about the issue still swirls, and I am asked whether or not I intentionally popped my friend’s elbow.

THE FORMAL FOLLOW-UP

A great deal of our training was both practical and fun. An example of this was training in how to operate out of the formal follow-up.

The vehicle behind the presidential limousine is called the follow-up, and each agent in the Secret Service is a virtuoso at jumping in and out of it while the vehicle is moving. In today’s super-modern Secret Service, this vehicle is an armored Chevrolet Suburban and does a fantastic job in its role of carrying the working shift and all of their equipment. In the 1980s, before the advent of giant all-wheel-drive SUVs, the Secret Service employed what were known as formal follow-ups. These were Cadillac sedans heavily modified with running boards, handrails, and convertible tops. Up until about 1990, almost all formal follow-ups were a version of this, and the shift usually rode with the top down if weather permitted. Upon slowing down and preparing for arrival, the shift would climb out onto the running boards while holding onto the handrails for a fast jump to the ground, where they could quickly surround the limo. It was the most impressive-looking thing the Presidential Protective Division did publicly, and new agents could not wait to try it.

Prior to the state-of-the-art drivers’ training now done at Rowley, all vehicle training was conducted at a nearby abandoned airstrip used by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), predecessor to the CIA during World War II. This was the setting for our formal follow-up training. The strip was a paved runway about thirty-five hundred feet long. It had not been used in decades for the intended purpose but provided a perfect place to run cars at full speed for thirty seconds or so.

Richard was our instructor for the day, had recently come to training from PPD, and was a bit of a wild man, a fact we were about to discover. The exercise began with Richard demonstrating to the class on a stationary follow-up how to mount the running boards, which foot went up first, and how to hold onto the handrails. He then demonstrated how to get off the boards safely while the vehicle was moving. After a few more demonstrations, it was time for us to give it a try.

We assumed that Richard was going to simply drive up and down the old runway at a slow speed a few times just to give us an idea of what the whole experience was like and to provide a basic familiarization. This was not the case.

With Richard behind the wheel, the car first moved out slowly, with four agents walking next to the follow-up and some inside for the ride. As the car gained speed, the agents walking alongside jumped on the boards in the prescribed manner and held on as Richard put the accelerator to the floor until he easily hit sixty miles per hour.

Approaching the end of the landing strip, Richard began to slow down in order to make a 180-degree turn and speed to the other end. As he turned left with tires squealing, the agents on the right-hand side were holding onto the rails with all their strength as Richard accelerated and the centrifugal force pushed to the outside of the turn. Then Richard sped flat-out to the other end of the runway, where he decelerated and turned, this time to the other side, nearly flinging off the students on the left side of the car, who were holding on white-knuckled, hoping not to lose their grip. Richard gave each car full of students several runs up and down the strip until he was convinced every agent knew how to work the formal follow-up. Like most of SATC, the exercise was a tremendous amount of fun, but we were all glad to be alive at the end of the day. We felt confident that we could certainly work the formal if called upon.

After eight weeks, graduation day finally arrived. The ceremony was held in a small room at 1310 L Street, Washington, DC, which barely accommodated the class of twenty-four and the small audience. Graduations from SATC are now gigantic productions accommodating over two hundred people and go on for an hour or so. In 1983 the proceedings lasted about fifteen minutes. I recall that the deputy director of the Secret Service made the commencement speech, but I do not recall anything more, as our class, much like FLETC, had enjoyed a vigorous graduation party the night before. With the presenting of diplomas, it was time to bid farewell to my friends and think about heading back to Charlotte, where I would begin my career in earnest.

CHAPTER 6

Back to Charlotte

On Halloween night, 1983, I returned from Washington, DC, to my apartment in Charlotte, North Carolina, having completed all required training to be a full-fledged agent. I was both exhausted and thrilled. During the six-hour drive home, I reflected on all that had happened in the six short months since I had been offered the job of Secret Service agent. In spite of the fact that training had been highly enjoyable, I was looking forward to some time alone to reflect a bit and sleep, which I did for most of the weekend. I was also looking forward to whatever assignments might come my way, even check investigations.

The following Monday, I reported to the office ready to go to work. One of the first things that happened upon my return was that my friend Mike and I, along with another agent, Ron, all of us rookies, were sent to Atlanta, Georgia, to work at an event for President Reagan. Atlanta was always a good town to visit, and with this being our first protective assignment since graduation, we were very enthusiastic. Even though we knew it would only be standing post at some obscure location in the general vicinity of President Reagan, it was still protection.

We arrived in Atlanta and checked into our hotel, where all out-of-district agents were staying, and immediately began to run into old friends from SATC. The first official activity was to attend the agent briefing. This is a gathering, usually in a hotel ballroom or conference room, at which the advance team from the presidential detail briefs all agents assigned to help with the visit. Each member of the advance team is introduced, and the itinerary of POTUS (the president of the United States) is read. Each agent is given general instructions regarding the event, including where and when to report the next day.

After the agent briefing, which lasted about an hour, most of the new agents on this trip proceeded to the hotel bar, where we began to mentally prepare for our next day’s assignments and compare stories about our respective field offices. Mr. Coates, the SAIC of Atlanta, was there, and I said hello to him, careful not to thank him for hiring me. I fondly remembered the verbal beating I had received a year earlier for my thank-you note. He asked me how the job was going, and I told him that it was going very well. It was also on this trip to Atlanta that I saw what would change my immediate career goal from getting to PPD as soon as possible to another assignment instead.

My assignment for the visit was standing post at the motorcade arrival and departure area to ensure that no one placed an explosive charge. While there, I saw five very fit-looking agents sitting in a Mercury station wagon with M16 rifles and semiautomatic pistols. This was a Secret Service Counter Assault Team (CAT).

CAT is one of the special, or tactical, teams of the Secret Service, and it is comprised of agents whose mission it is to respond with speed, surprise, and violence of action against organized attacks against the president. I had heard about CAT but knew little about the program, as it was fairly new and was practically classified at the time.

I walked over to the Mercury for a better look and started a conversation with the agent in the rear of the station wagon. He was also a former marine, and after I talked to him for a few minutes, I was so impressed I decided that CAT was where I wanted to go next in my career after my assignment in Charlotte ended. The CAT agent handed me a piece of paper that was like an application, of sorts, for the program, and told me to fill it out when I got back to Charlotte and send it back to him.

While talking to the CAT agent in Atlanta, it did not come up in conversation that an agent had to be at least a civil service grade GS-9 before applying to the program. I was a GS-5 and would not attain the grade of GS-9 for two more years. CAT would have to wait for the time being, but it was without doubt the next thing on my career scope.

CAMPAIGN 1984 AND TEMPORARY PROTECTION ASSIGNMENTS: SENATOR TED KENNEDY

The president of the United States may assign Secret Service protection to anyone he wishes. An example of someone who did not rate protection by law but received it by presidential directive was Senator Ted Kennedy. This type of detail is comprised of agents from various field offices like Charlotte. These small details that last for a few days to a few weeks are where junior agents learn the protection business. It is also where, for each young, idealistic agent, the reality hits that, contrary to popular belief, protection is anything but glamorous. Instead, it is very demanding work that requires a great deal of stamina and vigilance.

During the final thirty days of the 1984 presidential campaign, Kennedy went on the campaign trail for Democratic nominee Walter Mondale, who was washed away in a landslide victory by Ronald Reagan. Since Ted was the last of Joseph and Rose Kennedy’s sons still living, two having met their fates as the result of assassins’ bullets and one blown into vapor during World War II, President Reagan signed an order in October 1984 granting Kennedy Secret Service protection until the end of the campaign.

Just over a year out of agent school and still assigned to the Charlotte office, I volunteered for this temporary detail and was happy to be on the road for what turned out to be a very interesting thirty days with the senator. Of the fifteen agents selected for this assignment, almost everyone was similar to me, probably by design. We were all young, male, single, and did not care how many days the assignment lasted.

This assignment was considered very high-profile due to our protectee. Prior to assuming our duties with the senator, the entire detail spent a day at the Secret Service training center in Beltsville conducting protective detail training.

The assignment with Senator Kennedy was a tough routine that only the young could have endured, working thirty straight days with no days off and sometimes visiting several cities a day. It was my first experience waking up in a dark hotel room with zero idea of what city or state I was in and with the feeling of total sensory deprivation. It was as if a large part of my memory had been totally erased. This phenomenon would occur many times over the next twenty years as I woke up in hundreds of hotel rooms around the world, having to force myself to remember where I was and, more importantly, what time I had to be ready for work.