The First Family Detail Read online

  ALSO BY RONALD KESSLER

  THE SECRETS OF THE FBI

  IN THE PRESIDENT’S SECRET SERVICE

  THE TERRORIST WATCH

  LAURA BUSH

  A MATTER OF CHARACTER

  THE CIA AT WAR

  THE BUREAU

  THE SEASON

  INSIDE CONGRESS

  THE SINS OF THE FATHER

  INSIDE THE WHITE HOUSE

  THE FBI

  INSIDE THE CIA

  ESCAPE FROM THE CIA

  THE SPY IN THE RUSSIAN CLUB

  MOSCOW STATION

  SPY VS. SPY

  THE RICHEST MAN IN THE WORLD

  THE LIFE INSURANCE GAME

  Copyright © 2014 by Ronald Kessler

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Crown Forum, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

  www.crownpublishing.com

  CROWN FORUM with colophon is a registered trademark of Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available upon request.

  ISBN 978-0-8041-3921-2

  eBook ISBN 978-0-8041-3922-9

  Jacket design by Michael Nagin

  Front jacket photographs: (top to bottom) “Obamas Walk to Church” © Pool/Getty Images, “Nixon Family Riding in Convertible Limo” © Wally McNamee/Corbis, “Bill Clinton Jogging” © Wally McNamee/Corbis, “Jackie Kennedy, with Apparent Secret Service Men” © Bettmann/Corbis/AP Images, “U.S. President George Bush and Family Return to White House” © Mannie Garcia/Reuters/Corbis Back jacket photograph: © AFP/Getty Images

  v3.1

  For Pam, Greg, and Rachel Kessler

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  PROLOGUE

  1. “REGULAR JOE” BIDEN

  2. HILLARY

  3. CLANDESTINE MOVEMENTS

  4. POTUS

  5. THE STRIPPER

  6. SIFTING THREATS

  7. PENNY-PINCHER

  8. WILMINGTON SHUTTLE

  9. ADVANCE

  10. PEANUT FARMER

  11. WHITE HOUSE COLLAR

  12. BOYS WILL BE BOYS

  13. A BULLET FOR THE PRESIDENT

  14. NANCY

  Photo Insert

  15. CORNER CUTTING

  16. “KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN”

  17. HAWKEYE

  18. ENERGIZER

  19. DALLAS

  20. OPERATION MOONLIGHT

  21. MISSING SUNGLASSES

  22. WATCH THE HANDS

  23. THROWING A FIT

  24. EXPOSING ROMNEY TO DANGER

  25. INTRUSION

  26. RISKING ASSASSINATION

  Secret Service Chronology

  Acknowledgments

  PROLOGUE

  Chappaqua is a picturesque hamlet that recalls towns of the 1950s. Its tiny downtown center is full of mom-and-pop stores where owners greet customers by name. Here among the rolling wooded hills thirty-five miles north of Manhattan, Bill and Hillary Clinton bought a five-bedroom Dutch Colonial home for $1.7 million in 1999.

  The nine thousand residents of this Westchester County town adhere to an unofficial code of conduct: When you drive past the white house on Old House Lane, don’t rubberneck, slow down, or pull over to the side of the road. Protected by Secret Service agents and by a tall white security fence, sensors, and surveillance cameras, the house seems almost as secure as the White House.

  With one exception.

  A Secret Service agent recalls that when he was first assigned to guard Bill Clinton at Chappaqua, a supervisor walked him around the complex, showing him all the security posts and describing how to work each one.

  “At the front post, where there is a guard booth, I was instructed on what to do when a visitor drives up,” the agent says. “Gather, collect, and maintain a picture form of ID, log them into the visitors’ book, and make sure they’re on the list to come in,” he says. “If they weren’t, there’s someone you could call. There’s a certain protocol you go down, and it was scripted with everything you do. And as I was being instructed by the supervisor, he told me, ‘Except there’s one that you don’t log into the book: the blonde.’ ”

  Smiling, the agent asked, “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you’ll know,” the supervisor said. “She’s maybe in her forties, attractive, blond, tan.” He said she lived nearby and drove an SUV.

  “When she comes in, you don’t log her in,” the supervisor instructed. “You don’t take her ID.”

  Nor, he said, should the agent run her name, date of birth, and Social Security number through the criminal databases the Secret Service uses to check on arrests, outstanding warrants, and other potential problems. No other exceptions were to be made, whether they were landscapers, Clinton staffers, or relatives. Only the president and vice president are exempt from such security checks.

  “If we know about it ahead of time, we’ll call you and let you know to open the gate for her,” the supervisor said. “You don’t stop her, you don’t approach her, you just let her go in.”

  When the newly assigned agent began talking with other agents at the command post located over the Clintons’ detached garage, he learned his fellow agents’ unofficial code name for the woman: Energizer.

  The code name beginning with “E” followed Secret Service protocol: In assigning code names to a protectee’s family, the Secret Service chooses names that all start with the same letter. Thus, Bill Clinton is Eagle. When she was protected, Chelsea Clinton was Energy. As a former first lady who is protected by the Secret Service, Hillary Clinton has the code name Evergreen. During the years when Hillary was secretary of state, the Diplomatic Security Service protected her during the day, but Secret Service agents protected her at night.

  An agent describes Energizer as a very attractive, gracious lady who regularly brings homemade cookies to agents. “Her figure looks great, but her bust doesn’t fit the rest of her figure; it is rather endowed,” the agent says. Explaining, he says, “She brought us cookies when I was up there. I was in my booth and approached the passenger door. She reached over with a plate of cookies.”

  “Here, Agent, I brought these for you,” she said.

  “She had to lean over to see me through the window and hand me the cookies, so it was very easy to see her cleavage,” the agent recalls. “It was a warm day, and she was wearing a low-cut tank top, and as she leaned over, her breasts were very exposed. They appeared to be very perky and very new and full. They didn’t go along with her face. There was no doubt in my mind they were enhanced.”

  Whenever Hillary leaves town, Energizer arrives.

  “It was kind of funny,” says another agent who was assigned to Chappaqua. “She [Hillary] would leave, and the mistress would arrive just a few minutes later. Obviously, someone has made a phone call.”

  “The mistress would show up sometimes moments after Hillary had left,” a third agent says.

  “I let her in many times at the front gate,” another agent says. “Normally, we held a driver’s license or other form of picture ID when visitors were in the residence. The ID was kept at the main gate’s guard booth we manned 24/7. Not so in her case.”

  “I would log in John Doe, the lawn maintenance contractor, or his staff members, and check them out, but you’ll never see a record of Energizer anywhere,” the first agent says. “At one point, I’m walking back from one post to the other, and former president Clinton is sitting there with Energizer, drinking lemonade on his swing right at the back of the residence. Hillary
was away. It was during the week, and Energizer stayed most of the week.”

  If Hillary is heading back home unexpectedly, agents on her Secret Service detail notify her husband’s detail so they can warn the former president.

  “The bosses of each detail call each other to make sure she’s gone ahead of time,” a current agent says. “They warn, ‘Hey, we’re wheels down at LaGuardia. You’ve got about forty-five minutes to make sure she’s gone.’ ”

  Thus, Bill Clinton is assured that the likely next Democratic presidential candidate never surprises him when he is with Energizer. A fourth agent says that on one occasion, agents assigned to Hillary neglected to give her husband’s agents enough warning that she was about to arrive home when his mistress was there.

  “The agents had to scramble to get Energizer out of there so there wasn’t some kind of a big confrontation,” he says.

  Bill Clinton did not respond to a request for comment.

  The duplicity goes back to when he and Hillary were in the White House. As in the movie Dave, they would emerge from the Marine One helicopter holding hands. Once inside the White House, they would start screaming at each other. At night, the Clintons’ loud arguments could be heard throughout the White House residence.

  Hillary Clinton charms audiences and often speaks of her compassion for the little people. But Secret Service agents, who provide lifetime protection for presidents and their spouses, know the real story about the nation’s leaders and their families. Required to sign confidentiality agreements, they are sworn to secrecy, but they opened up for this book. What they reveal spotlights the true character of presidents and presidential candidates. In the end, that may be the deciding factor in the success or failure of a presidency. At the same time, the agents expose Secret Service corner cutting that they say endangers the lives of presidents, vice presidents, and their families.

  “You can easily judge the character of others by how they treat those who can do nothing for them or to them,” publisher Malcolm S. Forbes once said.

  In Hillary Clinton’s case, because she is so nasty to agents and hostile toward law enforcement officers and military officers in general, agents consider being assigned to her detail a form of punishment. In fact, agents say being on Hillary Clinton’s detail is the worst duty assignment in the Secret Service.

  1

  “REGULAR JOE” BIDEN

  The nuclear football is a leather-covered titanium business case that weighs forty pounds. Secured with a cipher lock, it contains a variety of secure phone capabilities and options for launching nuclear strikes that President Obama may authorize.

  The president authenticates his identity with codes found on a small plastic card he carries with him. In case the president is incapacitated or dies, an identical nuclear football is assigned to Vice President Joe Biden.

  Since Obama or Biden would likely have fifteen minutes or less to respond to an impending attack from a country like China, Russia, or North Korea before the United States could be wiped out by nuclear-tipped missiles, the military aide who carries the satchel is supposed to accompany the two leaders wherever they go.

  When they board Air Force One or Air Force Two, the military aide carrying the football can be seen right behind them. Staying over at hotels, the military aide sleeps in a room adjoining the president’s or vice president’s room. When Secret Service agents script an arrival or departure from a hotel or office building, they make sure the military aide rides the elevator with the protectee. In motorcades, the military aide travels in the vehicle right behind the president’s or vice president’s limo. In the event the president or vice president comes under attack during a public appearance, Secret Service agents have standing instructions to evacuate the military aide together with the protectee.

  “Whoever has the duty as military aide to the president is responsible for physical custody of the football and ensuring its access to the president 24/7, within a matter of seconds,” says retired Navy vice admiral John Stufflebeem, who was the military aide to President George H. W. Bush and later oversaw the top secret program himself when he was deputy director for global operations assigned to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

  But as soon as Biden—code-named Celtic—took office in January 2009, he laid down a rule: Instead of the usual retinue of at least fifteen vehicles preceded by a police escort in his motorcade, whenever he was in Delaware, where he has his longtime home, he wanted a Secret Service motorcade of two—the limousine or Suburban he rides in plus a follow-up Suburban behind him with agents.

  Biden specifically ordered the Secret Service control vehicle, which holds the military aide and a doctor in case the vice president needs emergency medical treatment, to follow at least a mile behind his limousine. Also ordered to disappear from view were the spare limo, which sometimes carries the military aide and the doctor, and the Secret Service intelligence vehicle, where agents pick up local transmissions to evaluate threats and keep track of people who have been assessed as potential assassins.

  Since the vice president and his wife, Jill, travel to their home in Greenville, outside of Wilmington, at least once a week, that puts the country at risk, potentially unable to retaliate against a nuclear attack whenever the second in command hits the road for a golf game at one of his favorite country clubs, a haircut at his favorite barbershop, a party, or a speaking engagement.

  “When you go to any city outside Washington, you have a full-blown vice presidential motorcade much like the president’s motorcade,” a Secret Service agent says. “Its length may be fifteen, twenty, or more vehicles, including for staff and a counterassault team. But when he’s home in Wilmington, he has told the service—and for whatever reason Secret Service management bends over and accommodates him—that he does not want anything other than the limousine he’s in and the immediate Suburban that we’re in. He wants everybody else out of sight. That includes the vehicle with the military aide and the doctor.”

  As a result, the agent says, “You’ve separated vital assets from the vice president in Wilmington when he’s motorcading around. We are told, ‘Don’t come near us, don’t let us see you, the vice president doesn’t want to see you.’ ”

  Even in normal traffic, in the event of an attack, by the time the military aide caught up with Biden, it would be too late.

  “If something happens and they’re caught in traffic, you would lose even more precious time,” an agent says. “If the vice president suffers a heart attack, the doctor would likely get there too late.”

  In addition to putting the country at risk when he is in Delaware, Biden insists on only two Secret Service vehicles when he vacations in places like the Hamptons.

  In contrast to Biden’s cavalier attitude, “When President Reagan rode his horse at his ranch, the military aide with the nuclear football was on horseback with him,” says former Secret Service agent Patrick Sullivan, who was on Reagan’s detail.

  After President Truman ordered the release of the first atomic bomb, President Eisenhower, as a former general, recognized the need to provide the president with a mechanism for ordering an immediate nuclear retaliatory strike from any location. Under what is called the National Security System, five military aides rotate carrying the nuclear football for the president. The Air Force, the Navy, the Marines, the Army, and the Coast Guard each assign an aide. Another five military aides rotate traveling with the vice president.

  When the president is in the Oval Office, the military aide with the nuclear football remains just outside, ready to rush in if the National Security System signals an alert through communications equipment contained in the football. The encrypted voice communications may be transmitted by satellite, microwave relay transmission, cell phone, land line, or shortwave radio.

  At night, the military aide sleeps in workout clothes in an underground bunker at the White House. If an alert comes, he can rush to provide the president with the football in his bedroom at the residence. The vice president has the
same arrangement at his offices in the West Wing and in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, and at the vice president’s residence on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Observatory in northwest Washington.

  Only the president—or, if he has died or is incapacitated, the vice president as his constitutional successor—can order the release of nuclear weapons. The National Military Command Center provides both leaders with an authenticator card with codes that verify the president’s or vice president’s identity.

  Because what is called the Sealed Authentication System is so highly classified, all of the information that has appeared in the press about it has been wrong. Contrary to the lore, the football itself does not operate like an ATM, with the president or vice president inserting the authenticator card and punching in launch codes to authorize a strike. Instead, along with written options, the nuclear football contains a secure phone to open up communications with the National Military Command Center at the Pentagon. During a conference call, the president or vice president reads the codes from the authenticator card to verify his identity. Military leaders and White House national security advisors then brief the president or vice president on the nature of the threat and the options for retaliating.

  “As part of the conference call, the president is told how many seconds or minutes remain if the president would wish to respond, before he might not be able to do so because nuclear weapons will hit the White House or his current location,” Stufflebeem says.

  If the president or vice president wants to consult the written options, he may do so. If he then chooses a retaliatory option or options, his command is read back to him. When he confirms it, the command center uses the military’s launch authorization codes to release nuclear missiles.

  Every second counts. By the time the command center establishes communication with the president or vice president through the nuclear football, nuclear missiles from a submarine may have already wiped out New York City. While the country’s ballistic missile defense system may counteract other incoming missiles, a retaliatory strike is essential to disable the enemy’s military capability and prevent further strikes. That, in turn, depends on the president and vice president discharging their most important responsibility by making sure the military aide with the football is near them at all times. The Pentagon does its part by staging regular practice drills to verify that the military aide is able to execute his job of giving the president or vice president immediate access to the football.