The First Family Detail Page 12

  Richard Nixon’s close friends Charles “Bebe” Rebozo (right) and Robert Abplanalp tried to smuggle a nude stripper into Nixon’s home at the Florida White House in Key Biscayne when the president was there, according to Secret Service agents. Associated Press

  After leaving the presidency and being afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease, Ronald Reagan could no longer go riding with his wife, Nancy, at their California ranch. “Well, there must be a positive side to this,” the former president remarked to a Secret Service agent. “Maybe I’ll get to meet new people every day.” Associated Press

  Under pressure from White House or campaign staffs, the Secret Service regularly lets people into events without magnetometer screening. U.S. Secret Service

  Secret Service management’s failure to back agents and a culture that condones cutting corners led uniformed officers to allow party crashers Tareq and Michaele Salahi and Carlos Allen into a state dinner at the White House. Associated Press

  Because the Secret Service would not provide enough magnetometers at his campaign events, Mitt Romney regularly left himself open to assassination by giving speeches to outside crowds that had not been screened. Associated Press

  At the James J. Rowley Training Center, the Secret Service gives new agents firearms training and wows members of Congress with supposedly spontaneous scenarios that are actually secretly rehearsed beforehand. U.S. Secret Service

  The Secret Service keeps the presidential limousine, known as the Beast, in the garage under its headquarters. Pamela Kessler

  Secret Service dogs are cross-trained to sniff out explosives and attack an intruder. The dogs are prey-driven, and ball play—shown here in the basement of Secret Service headquarters—is their reward after they locate their “prey.” Pamela Kessler

  The Secret Service’s Technical Security Division installs sensors to pinpoint intruders on the White House grounds and deploys devices that detect radiation and explosives at entrances to the White House. White House

  15

  CORNER CUTTING

  On the spur of the moment, Vice President Joe Biden decided one evening to attend a gathering of community activists at a church in a dangerous, crime-ridden urban neighborhood. Drug deals were being made openly on street corners there, and gunshots could be heard in the area. When a Secret Service agent told a local police officer about the plan, he looked at him as if he were crazy.

  Still, agents obliged. Since this would be what agents refer to as an “off-the-record movement,” meaning no advance notice goes out that the protectee is attending, agents did not insist on setting up stand-alone magnetometers. But they did insist on screening each participant for weapons with handheld magnetometers.

  Soon, a line formed as the screening by the agents delayed entrance to the late evening meeting. At that point, one of Biden’s staffers told an agent on the detail that Biden wanted the screening stopped.

  “The vice president doesn’t want to see these people lined up,” the staffer yelled.

  The agent explained the need for hand-magging: Anyone with a weapon could decide to take out the vice president. The agent suggested that the staffer leave security decisions to the Secret Service.

  Unappeased, the staffer then called a Secret Service supervisor, who overruled the agent at the scene: Agents could search every other person in line. It left open the possibility that someone with a weapon could get a shot at the vice president. According to a witness to the conversation, in ordering the detail leader on the scene to cease screening everyone, the Secret Service supervisor, who was black, essentially accused the agent of being racist, insinuating that the agent had called for everyone to be screened because the participants at the meeting were black.

  Secret Service agents say this kind of corner cutting and high-handed undercutting of basic security rules is par for the course. The corner cutting and laxness began in 2003 when the Secret Service moved from the Treasury Department to the Department of Homeland Security. Forced to compete for funds with twenty-one other national security agencies in a department that has 240,000 employees, the Secret Service became more political and compliant. Mark Sullivan, who was appointed director by President George W. Bush in 2006, proudly proclaimed that the Secret Service “makes do with less.”

  Like all Secret Service directors, Sullivan came up through the ranks. He was highly regarded as an agent. But when it came to managing the agency, he was in denial about the wide gap between the image of invincibility the Secret Service likes to project and the reality.

  The most egregious example of the corner cutting is that on a regular basis, when staffs of the president, vice president, or presidential candidates apply pressure, Secret Service agents comply with management’s wishes and allow people into events without magnetometer screening. That is akin to letting passengers onto a jetliner without passing them through magnetometers.

  Anyone who allowed a passenger onto an airliner without going through a magnetometer would be fired and possibly prosecuted. But Andy Card, President George W. Bush’s former chief of staff, tells me Secret Service management assures the White House staff that stopping screening is not a problem. The White House trusts the service and its claim that it offers “layers of protection.”

  Aides want to believe in the omnipotence of the Secret Service because it serves their political ends: They want presidents to be accessible to the public and don’t want to annoy supporters with inconvenient security measures that lead to delays. Yet if one of the people allowed through without screening drew a weapon or threw a grenade and assassinated a president or a candidate, it would be entirely because of the Secret Service’s negligence.

  An agent who was on Obama’s presidential candidate detail says it was “not uncommon” to waive magnetometer screening at events when the crowd was larger than expected. While the overflow might be seated far from the candidate and often behind a buffer zone, “someone could still fire a gun, make their way to the front, or detonate explosives,” the agent says.

  Other agents say magnetometers have also been waived for events attended by President George W. Bush and every recent leading presidential candidate. Agents attribute such blatant lapses in security to the fact that the Secret Service does not have enough manpower to screen everyone properly.

  “At major events, we are typically understaffed, and in order to appease staff, senior Secret Service management on the president’s or vice president’s detail under pressure simply orders us to open up the magnetometers—just open them up, let them through,” a current agent says. “On any given day, it is acceptable to senior management to open up screening and compromise security.”

  “It’s complacency,” says an agent who was on Obama’s detail. “They say we can make do with less.”

  Shutting down magnetometers as an event is about to start is shocking enough. But when Vice President Biden threw the opening pitch at the first Baltimore Orioles game of the season at Camden Yards on April 6, 2009, the Secret Service had not screened with magnetometers any of the more than forty thousand fans. Moreover, even though Biden’s scheduled attendance at the game had been announced beforehand, the vice president was not wearing a bulletproof vest under his navy sport shirt as he stood on the pitcher’s mound.

  According to an agent, before the Baltimore event, senior management on Biden’s detail decided “we don’t need magnetometers,” overruling stunned agents on Biden’s detail and in the agency’s Baltimore field office.

  “A gunman or gunmen from anywhere in the stands could have gotten off multiple rounds before we could have gotten in the line of fire,” says a current agent who is outraged that the Secret Service would be so reckless.

  Referring to the decision to dispense with magnetometer screening, an agent says, “The Secret Service has dismantled the first line of defense against an assassination. They can say it’s okay, but it will not be okay when the president or vice president is killed.”

  When confronted with exampl
es of corner cutting, Secret Service management takes a dismissive, blasé attitude. In his office on the ninth floor of Secret Service headquarters, Nicholas Trotta, who headed the Office of Protective Operations, talks about lessons learned from previous assassinations and assassination attempts. After the attempt on President Reagan’s life, “we expanded our use of the magnetometers.” Now, he says, “everyone goes through the magnetometer.”

  Often, just seeing a magnetometer in use is a deterrent, Trotta notes. But what about instances when the Secret Service buckles under pressure from campaign personnel or White House staff to let people into events without being screened? Not prepared for this question, Trotta tries to backtrack and change his story.

  “When we have a crowd of seventy thousand people, we may or may not need to put all those people through magnetometers,” Trotta says. “Because some of those people in certain areas might not have a line-of-sight threat that can harm the protectee.”

  But what if an assassination occurred because someone was not screened? Trotta looks uncomfortable. Still, he plows on ahead, saying a lot of factors come into play.

  “The president can go to a sports arena or stadium and may stay in a box,” Trotta says. “Let’s say if he’s on the third base side up in a box, the people on the first base side, center field, they might not be the threat. But the people around him may be the threat. So now we screen that area, and the critical part is to make sure that there’s no handoff, so you have a dead space that is secure.”

  Buffers or not, has Trotta never heard of an assassin leaving his seat to zip off a shot or to throw a grenade at the president? In fact, it was a decision to stop magnetometer screening that almost led to the assassination of President George W. Bush on May 10, 2005. That was when a man threw a grenade at him as he spoke at a rally in a public square in Tbilisi, Georgia. Because magnetometer screening had been stopped by local authorities, the man was able to take a grenade into the event where Bush was to speak.

  The grenade landed near the podium where the president was speaking, but it did not explode. Later, witnesses said a man wearing a head scarf and standing off to the side had reached into his black leather jacket and pulled out a military grenade. He yanked the pin, wrapped the scarf around the grenade, and threw it toward Bush.

  Inside a grenade, the chemical reaction that creates an explosion occurs when two spoons disengage. But because the spoons got stuck when the grenade landed, no explosion occurred. After analyzing the device, the FBI concluded that it could have killed the president. If all onlookers had been screened, the grenade would have been detected, and Bush’s life would not have been in jeopardy.

  Prior to that attack, the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy and the attempts on the lives of Presidents Reagan and Ford and Governor George Wallace could have been prevented if bystanders had been screened with magnetometers.

  When told of Trotta’s rationale for stopping magnetometer screening, Secret Service agents cannot believe he said what he did indeed say.

  “I was in absolute shock regarding his comment about the mags closing down and potential attackers being too far away to cause any problems,” says an agent on one of the two major protective details. Imagine, the agent says, if three or four suicide assassins came in with guns firing.

  “Saying not everyone in a seventy-thousand-person event is close enough to shoot the protectee is an amazing answer,” says another agent on one of the major protective details. “I’m embarrassed that an assistant director would give you that answer.”

  Danny Defenbaugh, a former FBI agent who publicly criticized the Secret Service’s decision to stop magnetometer screening at an Obama campaign event in Dallas, notes that word can quickly spread that the agency engages in such lax practices.

  “The people who want to assassinate the president will watch and look for the Secret Service to close down the magnetometers before an event starts,” he says.

  Trotta’s cavalier responses are symptomatic of the Secret Service’s refusal to acknowledge or address problems that undermine the agency’s mission. The laxness begins with the Secret Service’s most basic responsibility: to provide agents with weapons that will protect them and the president.

  At the Rowley center, the Secret Service likes to impress members of Congress with agents’ marksmanship. But what the agency doesn’t tell Congress, according to agents, is how they are outgunned because the Secret Service continues to use the outdated Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun. In contrast, the Army and other federal law enforcement agencies have switched to the newer and more powerful Colt M4 carbine.

  While a counterassault team travels with the president and is armed with the SR-16—similar to the M4—other agents on a protective detail also need to be ready to repel an attack. Many of those agents are equipped only with the MP5. In addition, all agents are armed with a SIG Sauer P229 pistol with the barrel modified to accommodate a .357 round instead of the standard smaller nine-millimeter round.

  “The service, you would think, would be on the leading edge when it comes to weapons, and they’re just not,” says a current agent. “They’re still carrying MP5 submachine guns,” developed in the 1960s. He notes that the State Department’s Diplomatic Security agents and U.S. soldiers overseas are armed with the M4. Developed in the 1990s, it is “much more powerful. It has better range and better armor-piercing capabilities,” the agent adds.

  The Army uses the M4 as its main weapon. The FBI trains agents to use both the MP5 and the M4. Even the Amtrak Police Department is equipped with the M4.

  “You’re going to be getting attacked with AK-47 assault rifles, you’re going to be getting attacked with M4s,” an agent says. “We want to be able to match or better whoever’s attacking us. You want to get the same range or better. The problem is if you’re getting a shoot-out in a motorcade, with the MP5, you’re shooting a pistol with a submachine gun round—you’re basically shooting a pistol round. You don’t want your rounds falling short and not even able to reach out to the bad guy. And that’s essentially what you’ve got going on with the weapons they have now.”

  16

  “KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN”

  Secret Service agents breathed a collective sigh of relief when George H. W. Bush took office. Unlike previous presidents, such as Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter, Bush treated agents with respect and consideration.

  Bush “made it clear to all his staff that none of them was a security expert, and if the Secret Service made a decision, he was the one to sign off on it, and they were never to question our decisions or make life difficult,” former agent Pete Dowling says. “So consequently it was kind of a moment in time, because all the entities really worked well together to make his protection and the activities that he participated in successful.”

  Like Ronald Reagan, Bush was so considerate of the agents who protected him that he would stay in town on Christmas Eve so agents could spend it with their families. Then he would fly to Texas the day after Christmas.

  “Bush is a great man, just an all-around nice person,” an agent says. “Both he and Mrs. Bush are very thoughtful, and they think outside their own little world. They think of other people.”

  “Bush understands that politics is politics and friendship is friendship,” an agent who was on his detail says. “He can be friends with a lot of people who may not agree with him. The only things that bothered him were things that were important to the country. Little things just kind of seemed to roll off of him.”

  When Bush—code-named Timberwolf—was vice president, agent William Albracht was on the midnight shift at the vice president’s residence. While agents refer to the President’s Protective Detail as the Show, they call the Vice President’s Protective Detail the Little Show with Free Parking. That’s because, unlike the White House, the vice president’s residence provides parking for agents.

  Albracht was new to the post, and Agent Dowling filled him in.

  “Well, Bill, every da
y the stewards bake the cookies, and that is their job, and that is their responsibility,” Dowling told him. “And then our responsibility on midnights is to find those cookies or those left from the previous day and eat as many of them as possible.”

  Assigned to the basement post around 3 A.M., Albracht was getting hungry.

  “We never had permission to take food from the kitchen, but sometimes you get very hungry on midnights,” Albracht says. “I walked into the kitchen that was located in the basement and opened up the refrigerator. I’m hoping that there are some leftover snacks from that day’s reception,” the former agent says. “It was slim pickin’s. All of a sudden, there’s a voice over my shoulder.”

  “Hey, anything good in there to eat?” the man asked.

  “No, looks like they cleaned it out,” Albracht said.

  “I turned around to see George Bush off my right shoulder,” Albracht says. “After I get over the shock of who it was, Bush says, ‘Hey, I was really hoping there would be something to eat.’ And I said, ‘Well, sir, every day the stewards bake cookies, but every night they hide them from us.’ With a wink of his eye he says, ‘Let’s find ’em.’ So we tore the kitchen apart, and sure enough we did find them. He took a stack of chocolate chip cookies and a glass of milk and went back up to bed, and I took a stack and a glass of milk and went back to the basement post.”

  When Albracht returned to the post, Dowling asked, “Who the hell were you in there talking to?”

  Albracht told him what had happened. “Oh yeah, sure, right,” Dowling said.

  When he was vice president, Bush flew to a fund-raiser in Boise, Idaho, during the 1982 election campaign. He was to have dinner at the Chart House seafood restaurant on North Garden Street, on the banks of the Boise River.