Within Arm's Length: A Secret Service Agent's Definitive Inside Account of Protecting the President (9 page)

My shift started out on midnights, and I watched over the senator until 8:00 a.m. He was traveling to a new city each day. We were relieved early around 6:00 a.m. by the day shift, at which point we would stagger into a cab and travel to an airport for a flight to the next city the senator would visit. After arriving, we would drone on to our hotel, where we would normally find our rooms not yet available and proceed to sleep in the lobby until they were ready. In some cases this was not until 3:00 in the afternoon. After getting three or four hours of sleep, it would be time to wake up and, in a haze, prepare for the next midnight at the new location. This was probably as close to feeling like a ninety-year-old at the age of twenty-nine as you could get. This went on for ten days before we moved to a shift that ran from 4:00 p.m. to midnight.

It was on this assignment that I learned, among other things, that friendly crowds are in some cases more dangerous to a protectee than hostile crowds, and that sometimes the most innocuous-appearing individuals could present the biggest problems. Hostile crowds tend to at least understand the fact that they can only get so close to a protectee and that any intrusion over a certain barrier will result in arrest. Friendly crowds tend to move forward toward a popular protectee like a human wave, which cannot always be stopped by something as temporary as a rope line or five agents.

In 1984 the Kennedy family was still royalty in the state of Massachusetts. Everywhere we went in that state, enormous crowds would appear to hear the senator speak and to try to get as close to him as possible. While we always had rope lines surrounding the stage, some paid little attention to them, with most of these menaces to security being ancient blue-haired ladies. As the senator would come down from the stage after his speech and work the crowd, we would always be overwhelmed by what appeared to be hundreds, if not thousands, of women in their seventies and eighties, each wanting to touch Senator Kennedy and with no regard for the flimsy barrier or our presence. On one such occasion, as the senator was moving down a rope line shaking hands, a woman of about eighty-five unfastened the rope from a stanchion in order to be next to him. I politely escorted her back into the crowd and refastened the rope, but others slipped through and closed in on Senator Kennedy. Due to the gender and age of our interlopers, we were not permitted to employ our usual tactics in such situations. We had to simply form a human shield around the senator, hoping none of these constituents poked him in the eye with a pen while demanding an autograph.

Patrick, Senator Kennedy’s youngest son, accompanied his father on some of these stops and was practically mauled by the geriatric set. On one occasion Patrick was wearing one of his uncle Jack’s PT-109 tie clasps. These items were given away by President Kennedy during his brief time in office and were quite valuable—not to mention the sentimental value they held for Patrick. After one rope line encounter Patrick ended up with his hair tousled so badly by these women that he looked as if he had just gotten out of bed. He also had his tie almost ripped from his neck, and his precious heirloom went missing. I felt badly about Patrick’s having lost his PT-109 tie clasp, but we were only five agents against hundreds of elderly groupies.

Senator Ted Kennedy was an excellent protectee. He understood how we worked and what his responsibilities as a protectee were. He always told us what he intended to do before he did it, making our job of protecting him much easier. He had been around the Secret Service since 1960, when JFK was elected president, and had been assigned a Secret Service detail of his own in 1980, when he unsuccessfully ran against incumbent Jimmy Carter for the Democratic nomination for president. He knew what we would and would not do on his behalf, and an example of this understanding occurred early in the assignment.

One evening the entire entourage had just arrived at the home of a former senator in Malibu, California, where Ted would remain overnight with several associates. It was getting dark, and people were milling about, trying to find luggage and so forth, when a young, attractive woman turned to me and directed, not asked, that I carry her suitcase into the house. This was not going to happen under any set of circumstances. Secret Service agents never carry luggage for anyone, and to be not asked but ordered by her to do so was, from an agent’s perspective, totally vulgar. The security doctrine behind this response is that an agent must not have anything in his hands; he must be available to respond to a threat. Luggage handling is also a function of paid staff, not people who are there to protect the principal. During my twenty-one-year career I made an exception to this on one occasion and of my own volition.

I was temporarily assigned to the Secretary of the Treasury detail on a trip to several countries. It was one of those details that was more of a courtesy than anything else, because the Secretary of the Treasury was our ultimate boss. We had arrived at the hotel where the Secretary and his wife would be staying and picked up our post, which consisted of one agent standing in front of the Secretary’s door. The luggage had been delivered to the suite door and left there. As I stood in front of the door to the suite the Secretary’s wife appeared and began to wrestle with the large, heavy items. There was no one around and certainly no threat, so I moved the luggage into the room for her. One reason I elected to help was that she did not ask. Had she asked, I probably would have done it anyway, but I was impressed by the fact that she did not use her position as the wife of our boss to utilize the Secret Service for duties not intended.

In Malibu, as I stood in the driveway silently staring at Senator Kennedy’s young friend, formulating a response that would not result in my being sent home from the assignment, Ted intervened. In the classic Kennedy dialect, he said to her, “Err, ah, the agents don’t carry bags.” Someone who was actually paid to do such things appeared, and the source of my annoyance disappeared along with her bags. The agents don’t carry bags. Damned right. We will die for our protectees if necessary, but don’t ask us to carry bags. It was reassuring to see that Ted knew and respected this.

HOLLYWOOD NIGHTS

On this assignment, we spent several days in Los Angeles and Hollywood, where Senator Kennedy campaigned for Walter Mondale by day and by night attended a never-ending series of parties hosted by the Hollywood elite.

Some of these functions lasted well into the early-morning hours, and one had to be impressed by the stamina displayed by these icons of the screen. I recall thinking that Warren Beatty was obviously not working at the time, because he seemed to be at every function the senator attended and delighted in being as close to Kennedy as possible.

As famous and wealthy as these people were, many found it more interesting to sip their martini and talk to an agent than to associate with their fellow actors. Sometimes their interest in the Secret Service made it difficult for us to do our work of keeping an eye on the senator, as we stood surrounded by a group of actors, each taking turns asking questions. Almost all had a Secret Service anecdote each felt compelled to share with us, some going back to the JFK era.

Character actor Richard Anderson, who played Oscar Goldman on
The Six Million Dollar Man,
always seemed to get a kick out of offering to make all of us bionic. Robert Wagner, or RJ, never talked to us but would nod and throw a cool, knowing look our way as he passed by. RJ was always the epitome of Hollywood cool as he held the obligatory drink and cigarette of a senior movie star. Sinatra was more outgoing and at one event actually referred to us as “those Secret Service cats.” One somewhat obscure actor was preparing to appear in a film as a Secret Service agent and asked for some pointers. Each of us, when the moment presented itself, took turns coaching this young actor in how to be more realistic in his role. He was very appreciative and wanted to know if there was anything he could do for us. We answered yes and asked that he tell his producer and director that, contrary to most Hollywood efforts, real Secret Service agents do not wear sunglasses indoors.

One evening I was standing post outside the senator’s hotel room door with strict orders to allow no one to enter when actor Gregory Peck appeared. There was to be a party in the senator’s suite, and Mr. Peck was an invited guest, although he was early. He was tall, and his persona was identical to the one portrayed on the screen. As he looked at me, saying nothing while smiling pleasantly, I felt as if I were standing before General MacArthur, or perhaps Captain Ahab. I said, “Good evening, Mr. Peck,” and knocked on the door to the suite, allowing him to enter. I was not going to make General MacArthur wait to see Ted Kennedy.

FEAR OF FLYING

Because many of the towns we visited were small, we flew almost everywhere on compact, twin-engine aircraft. I had earned a pilot’s license in 1982 and had also flown a great deal in the marines—mostly with my men in the back of helicopters that practically defied the laws of aerodynamics they were so old and worn-out. Many were a testament to an old saying: “If you put a powerful enough engine on a brick, it will fly.” These little planes that Ted and his Secret Service detail flew in did not scare me, although they did raise some apprehension from time to time; it always gave me a feeling of great adventure to be in one. You just never knew what would happen.

At twenty-nine, I had not yet experienced the epiphany of mortality. Ted, on the other hand, had personally seen the light in 1964, when a small plane in which he was a passenger crashed, killing several on board and breaking his back. Ted was in traction and rehabilitation for months and as a result hated flying, at least in small airplanes. It seemed to be a continuation of the “Kennedy curse”—one of his sisters, Kathleen, had been killed in a crash in 1948, as had his brother Joe in World War II as a naval aviator.

On one memorable occasion, we had the great experience of flying in a DC-3 operated by Provincetown-Boston Airlines from Boston to Hyannis, Massachusetts. The DC-3 was an aviation classic—the last one having been built in 1946—and one of the greatest airplanes ever flown. It was the mainstay of all commercial airlines from the late 1930s until the late 1940s, and it was quite a thrill to fly in one of these historical old beauties. Despite their age, several hundred still fly today at locations around the world.

On this day, the weather was terrible, with low clouds, rain, and a lot of turbulence. It was too rough a ride for cabin service. As we flew onward in our intrepid DC-3 through black clouds heavy with rain that streamed down the windows in tracks, I noticed from my left side window that, in addition to rain, there was a steady stream of oil running down the cowling of the old radial engine. I was not alarmed, as I knew all of these old engines leaked something but were still safe. It was when they stopped leaking that you had to worry, because it meant the engine was out of whatever fluid was being swept into the slipstream. The weather conditions continued to deteriorate, to the point that I almost expected to see a gremlin on the wing at any moment.

Realizing how much Senator Kennedy hated flying, and especially in this type of weather, I turned and observed him seated two rows behind me, staring at the seat in front of him with his normal reddish complexion now a ghostly shade of pale. He looked up at me and I gave him a reassuring smile he did not return, at which time he resumed his staring contest with the seat.

After descending through solid dark gray cloud cover and then breaking out over Hyannis at about a thousand feet, the pilot put us in the landing pattern and expertly squeaked the tires on the Hyannis runway. When the engines were shut down, the door with ladder included was lowered, and before any of us could unstrap, Ted was moving down the aisle and off the airplane. We quickly moved after him, wondering why he was in such a great hurry and where he was headed without his Secret Service detail.

As we entered the tiny terminal, we saw his destination. Soon, fortified after his latest flying adventure, he moved to the waiting cars. The senator had also been sitting on the left side of the plane and had no doubt seen the stream of oil being blown back across the cowling, in addition to the evil-looking weather. It was in similar weather that he had crashed twenty years earlier and was nearly killed.

One of our most memorable aviation mishaps occurred while we were on the ground. Our shift of four agents, the senator, and Patrick Kennedy had boarded a twin Cessna. We had just strapped our seatbelts when the nose of the aircraft began to pitch up ever so slowly, as if we were already in the air. With a discomforting metallic thud, the tail settled on the tarmac like a model plane missing its clay counterweight in the nose. We were still sitting stationary on the ground, with the engines stopped. Everyone could not help but laugh—everyone, that is, except the senator, who found no humor in our predicament.

The two pilots, not yet in the plane, stuck their heads in and politely asked that the heaviest of us move to the front of the aircraft. Ted was by far the heaviest, but he liked the rear seat and no one was going to tell him to unstrap and move forward. We four agents changed seating, and with the added weight of the pilot and copilot, the airplane began to pitch downward until the nose gear once again found its proper place on the ground. With the balance of the airplane now corrected, we took off without incident.

WALKING THROUGH A TIME WARP

The last few days of the assignment were spent at the Kennedy family compound in Hyannis Port. When we arrived at the residence, I was impressed by its majestic New England elegance. The main compound included the home formerly owned by the patriarch of the family, Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy, along with another house across the driveway that had been owned by the late Robert F. Kennedy. By 1984, ownership of the ambassador’s home had been relinquished to Senator Kennedy, and Ethel Kennedy still lived periodically in her and Bobby’s home.

Nearby sat another house, which faced one of three streets bordering the compound. Located at 111 Irving Avenue, it was a large Cape Cod, with gray shingle siding, and had once been owned by the late President John F. Kennedy.