The First Family Detail Page 15

  Thus, on the morning of July 2, 1881, when President James A. Garfield walked through a waiting room toward a train in the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad station in Washington on his way to New England, he was as unguarded as Lincoln had been. Emerging from the crowds, Charles J. Guiteau shot the president in the arm and then fatally shot him a second time in the back.

  Having delivered a short speech at a small gathering in New York endorsing Garfield’s candidacy, Guiteau had come to believe that he had orchestrated Garfield’s victory. Guiteau decided he deserved an ambassadorship to Vienna or Paris. When the appointment didn’t materialize, Guiteau had a divine revelation that came “like a flash” as he lay in bed: God commanded him to kill the ungrateful president. On September 19, 1881, Garfield died of his wounds. He had been president just four months.

  Even then, steps were not taken to protect the next president, Chester A. Arthur. The resistance to doing so was rooted in the perennial question of how to reconcile the need to protect the country’s leaders with their need to mingle with citizens and not lose touch with their concerns.

  After Garfield’s assassination, the New York Tribune warned against improving security. The paper said that the country did not want the president to become “the slave of his office, the prisoner of forms and restrictions.” Other critics railed about what was called “royalism”—surrounding the president with courtiers and guards, the trappings of the English monarchy.

  Given the competing aims, the hit-or-miss way the Secret Service stumbled into protecting the president is not surprising. The agency began operating as a division of the Treasury Department on July 5, 1865, to track down and arrest counterfeiters—not assassins. Back then, an estimated one-third of the nation’s currency was counterfeit. States issued their own currency, printed by sixteen hundred state banks. Some seven thousand varieties of these notes were in circulation, each with a different design. Nobody knew what their money was supposed to look like.

  Ironically, Abraham Lincoln’s last official act on the day he was shot was to sign into law the legislation creating the Secret Service. By 1867, the Secret Service had brought counterfeiting largely under control. With the agency’s success, Congress gave it broader authority to investigate other crimes, including fraud against the government. That led circuitously to the Secret Service’s mission today.

  In 1894, the Secret Service was investigating a plot to assassinate President Grover Cleveland by a group of “western gamblers, anarchists, or cranks” in Colorado. Exceeding its mandate, the agency assigned two men who had been conducting the investigation to protect Cleveland at special events and on trips. The two agents rode in a buggy behind his carriage. But after political opponents criticized him for receiving protection, Cleveland told the agents he did not want their help.

  As the number of threatening letters addressed to the president increased, Cleveland’s wife persuaded him to beef up protection at the White House. The number of police assigned to guard the White House rose from three to twenty-seven. In 1894, the Secret Service began to supplement that protection by assigning agents to protect the president on an informal basis, including when the president traveled.

  Yet that did not help William McKinley, the next president. Three Secret Service agents were with him when Leon F. Czolgosz, a twenty-eight-year-old self-styled anarchist, shot him on September 6, 1901. McKinley was attending a reception that day in the Temple of Music at the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. Long lines of citizens passed between policemen and soldiers to shake his hand. Czolgosz had waited for more than two hours in eighty-two-degree heat for his turn. He shot the president twice with a pistol concealed in a handkerchief. Bullets slammed into McKinley’s chest and stomach. Eight days later, the president died of blood poisoning.

  In a handwritten confession, Czolgosz said, “When I shot him [McKinley], I intended to kill him, and the reason for my intention in killing was because I did not believe in presidents over us. I was willing to sacrifice myself & the president for the benefit of the country. I felt I had more courage than the average man in killing [sic] president and was willing to put my own life at stake in order to do it.”

  Still, legislative reaction was agonizingly slow. It was not until a year later that the Secret Service officially assumed responsibility for protecting the president. Even then it lacked statutory authority to do so. While Congress began allocating funds expressly for the purpose in 1906, it did so annually as part of the Sundry Civil Expenses Act.

  Presidents tended to scoff at the dangers they faced. President Theodore Roosevelt wrote to Senator Henry Cabot Lodge that he considered the Secret Service to be a “very small but very necessary thorn in the flesh. Of course,” he wrote, “they would not be the least use in preventing any assault upon my life. I do not believe there is any danger of such an assault, and if there were, as Lincoln said, ‘Though it would be safer for a president to live in a cage, it would interfere with his business.’ ”

  Unsuccessful assassination attempts were made on President Andrew Jackson on January 30, 1835, President Theodore Roosevelt on October 14, 1912, and Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 15, 1933, before he was sworn in the following month. Yet when it came to protection of the president, Congress continued to drag its feet. Although it kept considering bills to make it a federal crime to assassinate the president, Congress failed to act. Members of the public continued to be free to roam the White House during daylight hours.

  Finally, at the Secret Service’s insistence, public access to the White House grounds was banned for the first time during World War II. To enter the White House, visitors had to report to guard posts at gates around the perimeter. By then, Congress had formally established the White House Police in 1922 to guard the complex and secure the grounds. In 1930, that police agency was folded into the Secret Service, and it is now called the Secret Service’s Uniformed Division.

  By the end of World War II, the number of agents assigned to protect the president had been increased to thirty-seven. That increased security soon paid off. At 2:20 P.M. on November 1, 1950, two Puerto Rican nationalists tried to force their way into Blair House, across the street from the White House, to kill President Harry S. Truman. The president was staying there while the White House was being renovated. Truman—code-named Supervise—was napping on the second floor. As usual, Bess Truman—code-named Sunnyside—was out of town. She hated Washington.

  The would-be assassins, Oscar Collazo, thirty-six, and Griselio Torresola, twenty-five, hoped to draw attention to the cause of separating Puerto Rico from the United States. Agents and White House Police officers took down the gunmen. But White House Police officer Leslie Coffelt died in surgery four hours later. In a last heroic act, Coffelt had leaped to his feet and propped himself against his security booth. He pointed his revolver at Torresola’s head and fired. The bullet ripped through Torresola’s ear. The would-be assassin pitched forward, dead on the street. Coffelt earned a place on the Secret Service’s Honor Roll of personnel killed in the line of duty.

  Two other White House policemen and Collazo recovered from their wounds. A total of twenty-seven shots had been fired. The biggest gunfight in Secret Service history lasted a mere forty seconds.

  The following year Congress finally passed legislation to permanently authorize the Secret Service to protect the president, his immediate family, the president-elect, and if he requests it, the vice president. In 1962, Congress expanded protection to include the vice president, vice president–elect, and the next officer to succeed the president. Under current law, their immediate families receive protection as well. Since the next officer to succeed the president is the speaker of the House, and he is protected by the Capitol Police, the Secret Service does not protect him.

  While they may not decline protection, it is up to those who are by law given Secret Service protection just how much they receive. By their very nature presidents want more exposure, while Secret Service agents want mo
re security, leading to inherent tension. As President Kennedy’s aide Kenneth O’Donnell said, “The president’s views of his responsibilities as president of the United States were that he meet the people, that he go out to their homes and see them, and allow them to see him, and discuss, if possible, the views of the world as he sees it, the problems of the country as he sees them.”

  Before his trip to Dallas on November 22, 1963, Kennedy received warnings about potential violence there. United Nations ambassador Adlai Stevenson called Kennedy aide Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and urged him to tell the president not to go. Stevenson had just spoken in Dallas, where he said demonstrators had confronted him, cursing and spitting on him. Senator J. William Fulbright also warned Kennedy.

  “Dallas is a very dangerous place,” Fulbright told him. “I wouldn’t go there. Don’t you go.”

  Just as Vice President Joe Biden is oblivious today to the need for a full escort of agents when traveling in Delaware, Kennedy brushed aside the warnings. Kennedy aide O’Donnell told the Secret Service that unless it was raining, the president wanted to ride in an open convertible, according to the Warren Commission Report, which was largely based on the FBI’s exhaustive investigation. If it was raining, Kennedy would use a plastic top that was not bulletproof. Kennedy—code-named Lancer—personally told agents he did not want them to ride on the small running boards at the rear of the car.

  Moreover, only two Secret Service agents had traveled to Dallas to make advance preparations for the trip. At the time, the advance protocol did not include an inspection of buildings along the motorcade route, which was publicized in advance. In all, Kennedy’s Secret Service detail consisted of about twenty-four agents, or seven agents per shift. Another twelve agents protected Jackie Kennedy and the president’s two children.

  At 12:30 P.M., the president’s limousine was traveling at about eleven miles per hour. Shots resounded in rapid succession from the Texas Book Depository. A bullet entered the base of the back of the president’s neck. Another bullet then struck him in the back of the head, causing a massive, fatal wound. He fell to the left, onto his wife Jackie’s lap.

  Agent William R. Greer was driving the limo; agent Roy H. Kellerman was sitting to his right. Neither agent could immediately leap to Kennedy’s assistance, as would have been the case if agents had been allowed to ride at the rear of the car. Between them and Kennedy was a second row of seats between the front and rear seats, making it more difficult for the agents to protect the president. The “kill shot” to the president’s head came at least 4.8 seconds after the first shot that hit him. If they had been there, the interval would have given agents on the rear running board of the limousine plenty of time to jump on the president, push him to the floor, and shield him from the bullet that took his life.

  Agent Clinton J. Hill, riding on the left running board of the follow-up car, raced toward Kennedy’s limousine. He pulled himself onto the back of the car as it gained speed. He pushed Jackie—code-named Lace—back into the rear seat as he shielded both her and the president.

  “If agents had been allowed on the rear running boards, they would have pushed the president down and jumped on him to protect him before the fatal shot,” Charles “Chuck” Taylor, who was an agent on the Kennedy detail, tells me.

  Secret Service director Lewis Merletti later confirmed that. “An analysis of the ensuing assassination—including the trajectory of the bullets which struck the president—indicates that it might have been thwarted had agents been stationed on the car’s running boards,” Merletti said.

  In typical Washington fashion, the Secret Service took corrective measures when it was too late. Following the Kennedy assassination, the agency doubled its complement of agents, computerized and increased its intelligence data, bolstered the number of agents assigned to advance and intelligence work, created countersniper teams, expanded training functions, and improved liaison with other law enforcement and federal agencies.

  It was but another tragic example of how undercutting protection can make the president vulnerable to assassination. Now that they can constantly interact with the populace through electronic media, presidents have even less excuse to ignore Secret Service security advice. By following that advice, presidents can do two things at once: greet the public while sparing the country the agony of another assassination.

  20

  OPERATION MOONLIGHT

  The Marine One helicopter carrying President Obama and his family was preparing to lift off from the South Lawn of the White House when the order came into the Washington field office from Secret Service director Mark Sullivan: Instead of protecting the president by watching for snipers, agents were to speed to southern Maryland to watch over Sullivan’s assistant, Lisa L. Chopey, at her home.

  The secret assignment, called Operation Moonlight, entailed dispatching two Secret Service agents on two daily eight-hour shifts over at least two months beginning in July 2011 to drive at taxpayer expense to check on the “welfare” of Chopey, forty-one, after she and her father were allegedly harassed by Michael J. Mulligan Sr., her forty-three-year-old neighbor.

  As part of the personal favor to Sullivan’s assistant, stunned agents were also instructed to retrieve confidential law enforcement and financial records on Mulligan. Sullivan’s instruction to supervisors was that agents were not to tell anyone what they were doing, outside of their own thirty-five-agent Protective Intelligence Squad in the Washington field office at 1100 L Street NW.

  Copies of Secret Service records kept at the Washington field office confirm the instruction to regularly go to Chopey’s home in La Plata, Maryland, “to make sure everything is all right” after the altercation with Mulligan.

  Chopey had already reported the altercation to the police, and two officers had responded. The Secret Service has no legal authority to protect its own employees, and criminal law prohibits retrieving confidential information for any reason not related to official law enforcement duties. What’s more, as a result of Sullivan’s diversion of agents, critical posts for protecting President Obama and Vice President Biden went unmanned.

  Agents were told the altercation with Mulligan occurred as Chopey was about to leave for work. Mulligan had had a previous dispute with Chopey’s father, Peter Tritola, who lived with her, and Mulligan had allegedly assaulted him. The Secret Service file includes a petition for a restraining order—known locally as a peace order—filed against Mulligan with the District Court of Maryland for Charles County. Signed by Chopey under penalty of perjury, the public document lists her address on Huntt Road in La Plata.

  According to her account, Chopey arrived at the entrance to Huntt Road around 7:35 A.M. on June 30, 2011, and stopped to check her mailbox there. She then returned to her vehicle and drove toward her residence. A green all-terrain four-wheeler with Mulligan at the wheel came speeding toward her, circled her vehicle several times, and cut in front of her, forcing her to stop. The driver spun its tires to throw rocks and gravel toward her.

  The four-wheeler then began circling Tritola, who had come outside. Mulligan spun its wheels, spewing rocks and gravel at him and at Chopey’s brother and niece, who also had come outside upon hearing the commotion. Chopey wrote that she called local police, and two officers arrived at her residence. She obtained a court order barring Mulligan from contacting her, entering the grounds of her home, or harassing her. Mulligan subsequently entered an Alford plea, meaning he admitted the prosecution would likely prove its second degree assault charge against him. He was ultimately sentenced in Circuit Court for Charles County to a suspended jail term of six months and three years of unsupervised probation.

  When the instruction to watch over Chopey came in on July 1, “a supervisor called the two agents scheduled to conduct surveillance of Marine One and told them to discontinue their assignment and come to the field office,” an agent says. When they arrived on the sixth floor of the field office, they were given Google map directions from the office to Chopey’s
home and told to drive there and watch out for her. The Google map directions are contained in the Secret Service file, along with a handwritten notation to use a GPS tracking device instead.

  “They gave these two agents a brief summary of what had happened and said do a welfare check and make sure this individual is not near them,” an agent says. “They’re supposed to make sure she’s okay and not being harassed by this gentleman. They went out there and were told to make telephonic contact with her each time.”

  The two agents “are presented with a difficult challenge, because they don’t have any authority to do that,” the agent says. “This [assignment] has nothing to do with the Secret Service, but to make this even worse, the supervisor tells the guys, ‘By the way, you don’t discuss this outside the Protective Intelligence Squad. This is a personal favor for the director, and we can’t talk about this.’ It was at the direction of Director Sullivan, but his name is conveniently missing from the file, which was kept at the supervisor’s desk on the sixth floor.”

  As an agent, “your position does not entitle you to give Lisa Chopey personal protection by the Secret Service,” the agent says. “The Congress, not the director, mandates to whom we give protection. You cannot pick and choose who you want to give protection to.”

  A copy of a U.S. Secret Service Command Post Protectee Log in the file shows that beginning on Friday, July 1, 2011, agents wrote their names and signed their initials with times and dates when they went to check on Chopey and her father. That included when agents were diverted from conducting surveillance as Obama’s helicopter lifted off from the South Lawn at 4:30 P.M. on July 1. The helicopter was transporting President Obama, Michelle Obama, and their two daughters to Camp David for the weekend.