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  Nixon made it clear that he considered Kennedy’s support of McGovern a threat to his own reelection. For that reason, protection of Ted Kennedy would end after the election. Then, said the president, “If he gets shot, it’s too damn bad.”

  But like so many of Nixon’s schemes, this attempt at scandal-mongering failed. Agents knew of Kennedy’s philandering while married to his wife, Joan, but they never let on.

  Like many presidents, Nixon engaged in symbolic gestures that were phony. During the 1973 oil embargo, he told the press he was flying to his San Clemente home on a United Airlines commercial flight to save fuel. He then had the military fly him back on a JetStar, which required flying the plane empty to California to pick him up.

  “It was to show we were saving fuel,” Air Force One chief steward Charles Palmer recalls. “We sent the plane in [to California] empty.”

  Nixon often spent time with Abplanalp on his friend’s island, Grand Cay in the Bahamas. Abplanalp started his company, Precision Valve Corporation, in 1949 to manufacture a new type of aerosol valve that he had invented in a machine shop in the Bronx. Aerosol technology was not new, but the metal valves on aerosol cans were unreliable and expensive to make. Abplanalp used plastic in a model that could be mass-produced. He lowered the price per valve from fifteen cents to just two and a half cents and made a fortune. When Abplanalp died in 2003, the company was producing four billion valves a year.

  “Just to give you an idea of his athletic prowess—or lack of it—he [Nixon] loved to fish,” a former agent says. “He’d be on the back of Abplanalp’s fifty-five-foot yacht, and he would sit in this swivel seat with his fishing pole. Abplanalp’s staff would bait Nixon’s hook and throw the hook out. And Nixon would be just sitting there, with both hands on the pole, and he’d catch something, and the staff would reel it in for him, take the fish off, put it in the bucket. Nixon wouldn’t do anything but watch.”

  One afternoon, Nixon was watching television at his San Clemente home, called La Casa Pacifica, while feeding dog biscuits to one of his dogs.

  “Nixon took a dog biscuit and was looking at it and then takes a bite out of it,” says former agent Richard Repasky, who was watching him through a window.

  Even in summer, Nixon insisted on a fire in the fireplace. One evening after he had left the presidency, Nixon forgot to open the flue damper.

  “The smoke backed up in the house, and two agents came running,” says a former agent who was on the Nixon detail.

  “Can you find him?” one of the agents asked the other.

  “No, I can’t find the son of a bitch,” the other agent said.

  From the bedroom, a voice piped up.

  “Son of a bitch is here trying to find a matching pair of socks,” Nixon said, apparently joking.

  “Monday through Friday, Nixon would leave his home at 12:55 P.M. to play golf,” Dale Wunderlich, a former agent on his detail, says. “He would insist on golfing even in pouring rain.”

  “When you saw him play golf, you were embarrassed for him,” a former agent says. “I mean it was awful. When the Watergate scandal came out, my initial reaction was it was impossible that he was involved in that, because he couldn’t come out of a rainstorm unless somebody was with him. He was a sorry figure, really. Brilliant man, but if you set him loose by himself, out with the regular citizens in the world, I don’t think he could function.”

  Nixon’s relationship with his wife, Pat—code-named Starlight—was a distant one. Like John F. Kennedy and Jackie and Lyndon Johnson and Lady Bird, the couple slept in separate bedrooms.

  On Air Force One, “Nixon kept to himself,” former Air Force One steward Russ Reid says. “He stayed in his compartment, and the first lady stayed in her compartment by herself. Occasionally, they would hold hands when they were getting off the plane just for show. There was little conversation.”

  Pat was considerate of Secret Service agents. Instead of ordering agents around, she would ask politely, “Is it okay if we go” to a shopping center. But especially after they left the White House, Pat’s drinking problem worsened. Pat drank martinis and “was in a pretty good stupor much of the time,” an agent on Nixon’s detail says. “She had trouble remembering things.”

  “One day out in San Clemente when I was out there, a friend of mine was on post, and he hears this rustling in the bushes,” says another agent who was on Nixon’s detail. “You had a lot of immigrants coming up on the beach, trying to get to the promised land. You never knew if anybody was going to be coming around the compound.”

  At that point, the other agent “cranks one in the shotgun, he goes over to where the rustling is, and it’s Pat,” the former agent says. “She’s on her hands and knees. She’s trying to find the house.”

  Pat “had a tough life,” the agent says. “Nixon would hardly talk. The only time he enjoyed himself was when he was with his friends Bebe Rebozo and Bob Abplanalp, when they would drink together.”

  An agent remembers accompanying Nixon, Pat, and their two daughters during a nine-hole golf game near their home at San Clemente. During the hour and a half, “he never said a word,” the former agent says. Nor would Nixon and his wife talk in Secret Service vehicles.

  Eventually, Nixon gave up golf.

  “Nixon was playing golf near San Clemente,” a former agent recalls. “He said, ‘This is a game for lazy bastards.’ He quit halfway and never returned to the game.”

  Like most presidents, Nixon made a show of going to church or having services held in the White House.

  “Going to church was more show than anything else,” an agent says. “That was not unusual with most of them. It was more to give the appearance you are a good Christian. Nixon went the least of all. They [the Nixons] wouldn’t go after they got out of the White House.”

  Throughout Nixon’s career, Pat Nixon managed to hide from the public the fact that she was a smoker. She died of lung cancer in June 1993.

  An agent describes Nixon’s daughter Julie as “a princess, the sweetest girl you would ever want to meet in your life.” On the other hand, Nixon’s daughter Tricia was “a little eccentric. If she went out and shook hands, she would go nuts when she got back in the car to try to clean her hands off.”

  Agents could never figure out what Julie saw in her husband, David, the grandson of former president Dwight Eisenhower. While he treated agents well, they considered David Eisenhower to be the most clueless person they had ever protected. One day, the Nixons presented their son-in-law with a barbecue grill as a Christmas present. With the Nixons inside his house, Eisenhower tried to start the grill to char some steaks. After a short time, he told Agent Wunderlich that the charcoal would not light.

  “He had poured most of a bag of briquets into the pit of the grill and lit matches on top of them, but he had not used fire starter,” Wunderlich says.

  “Do you know anything about garage door openers?” Eisenhower asked another Secret Service agent. “I need a little help. I’ve had it two years, and I don’t get a light. Shouldn’t the light come on?”

  “Maybe the lightbulb is burnt out,” the agent said.

  “Really?” David said.

  The agent looked up. There was no bulb in the socket.

  When David Eisenhower was going to George Washington University School of Law in Washington, because of increasing threats against his father-in-law, agents gave him what they call loose surveillance. One time when he came out of a class, Eisenhower drove his red Pinto to the Safeway in Georgetown.

  “He parks and buys some groceries,” an agent says. “A woman parks in a red Pinto nearby. He comes out in forty-five minutes and puts the groceries in the other Pinto. He spent a minute and a half to two minutes trying to start it. Meanwhile, she comes out, screams, and says, ‘What are you doing in my car?’ ”

  “This is my car,” he insisted. “I just can’t get it started right now.”

  The woman threatened to call the police. He finally got out, and she drove o
ff.

  “He was still dumbfounded,” the former agent says. “He looked at us. We pointed at his car. He got in and drove off like nothing had happened. Our attitude was, this guy doesn’t even know his own goddamn car.”

  Subsequently, Eisenhower bought a new Oldsmobile. He planned to drive it from California to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to see his grandmother Mamie Eisenhower. Agents remember President Eisenhower’s widow, code-named Springtime, as prim and proper.

  “We would say we are going to the Mamie Eisenhower Finishing School,” an agent who was on her detail says. “Everything had to be correct and proper. She would never raise her voice. The car had to be driven correctly. Manners at the table had to be correct.”

  Afraid of flying, Mamie traveled overseas by ship. She graciously invited the wives of her Secret Service detail on the trips, paying for fares.

  David Eisenhower was driving the new car across the country to see her when it broke down in Phoenix. He called a local dealership, which said it would fix the car the next morning. After staying overnight in a motel, Eisenhower arrived at the dealership, where the car had been towed. The dealership told him the problem had been fixed: The car had run out of gas and needed a fill-up.

  David Eisenhower again figured in a Nixon drama when the former president and Pat were having dinner at Julie and David’s home in California.

  “They’re eating, and we’re keeping an eye on them through a window,” a former agent says. “All of a sudden, Nixon gets up and comes outside and says to the agents, ‘Let’s go. Get the car. I’m leaving.’ ”

  “Okay, where is Mrs. Nixon?” an agent asked.

  “She’s not coming. She’s staying.”

  A few days earlier, a Nixon aide had accused agents of stealing a case of wine, infuriating them. But driving back to Nixon’s home in San Clemente, Nixon said triumphantly to the agents, “Well, I know who took the wine.”

  “Mr. President, you discovered where it went?” an agent replied.

  “Yes, David! Goddamn kid, he could’ve told me. He could’ve had it if he wanted it. He doesn’t know how to ask.”

  “Nixon got so mad, he left,” the agent says.

  “Nixon was a strange guy,” a former agent says. “Politics was his whole life.” Despite the way he disgraced the presidency, Nixon “had his fingers on a lot more with the Republican Party than most people know,” a former agent says. When Ronald Reagan was running for president, “Reagan called him just about every day,” the former agent says. “Reagan wanted him to go out and support him on the campaign trail.”

  Nixon said it would be the “kiss of death” if he supported Reagan publicly. “But you’ll have all the money you need,” Nixon told Reagan. “I still control the purse strings of the Republican Party.”

  In 1985, Nixon dropped Secret Service protection when the press started trying to find out how much his protection cost.

  “He wanted to get away from press inquiries and Freedom of Information requests,” an agent on his detail says. “He said, ‘It’s nobody’s goddamn business how much time I spend and what I do.’ ”

  Nixon was “very private, and he hated the press,” an agent says. “He hated to divulge anything.”

  6

  SIFTING THREATS

  After the election of Barack Obama, threats against the president soared by 400 percent. Most came from racists who had no political affiliation. Many of the comments appeared on white supremacist websites.

  Even before Obama decided to run, Michelle Obama told her husband of her concern that a black presidential candidate could be in jeopardy because of his race. The threats have since leveled off to about ten a day, about the same number George W. Bush received on average while in office.

  The threats come in by letter, e-mail, phone, and fax. Lately, they have even been tweeted. They vow to kill the president, the first lady, or their kids.

  The Secret Service investigates each threat, and if the culprit can be located, the Protective Intelligence and Assessment Division places the suspect into one of three categories. Those considered Class III threats are the most dangerous. They appear to have a serious intention of carrying out an assassination and have the means to do it. For example, they may have had firearms training.

  Close to a hundred people are on the Class III list. These individuals are constantly checked on. Courts have given the Secret Service wide latitude in dealing with anyone who may be an immediate threat to the president.

  “We will interview serious threats every three months and interview neighbors,” an agent says. “If we feel he is really dangerous, we monitor his movements almost on a daily basis. We monitor the mail.”

  If the president is traveling to a city where a Class III threat lives, Secret Service agents will show up at his door before the visit. Intelligence advance agents will warn him to stay away from the president during his visit. They will ask if the individual plans to go out and, if so, what his destination is. They will then conduct surveillance of his home and follow him if he leaves.

  Nothing is left to chance.

  “If they aren’t locked up, we go out and sit on them,” former agent William Albracht says. “You usually have a rapport with these guys because you’re interviewing them every quarter just to see how they’re doing, what they’re doing, if they are staying on their meds, or whatever. We knock on their door. We say, ‘How’re you doing, Freddy? President’s coming to town, what are your plans?’ What we always want to hear is ‘I’m going to stay away.’ ”

  “Well, guess what,” an agent will say. “We’re going to be sitting on you, so keep that in mind. Don’t even think about going to the event that the president will be at, because we’re going to be on you like a hip pocket. Where you go, we go. We’re going to be in constant contact with you and know where you are the entire time. Just be advised.”

  John Hinckley is still considered a Class III threat. In 1982, he was found not guilty by reason of insanity in the shootings of President Reagan and three others who were with him. Since then, he has been confined to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, D.C. But Hinckley is periodically allowed to leave the psychiatric hospital to visit his mother in Williamsburg, Virginia. If he spends any time in Washington outside the hospital, his family notifies the Secret Service, and agents conduct surveillance of him.

  Class II threats come from suspects whose intentions are serious but who may not be capable of carrying out an assassination. Often, they are in jail or mental institutions.

  “He may be missing an element, like a guy who honestly thinks he can kill a president and has made the threat, but he’s a quadriplegic or can’t formulate a plan well enough to carry it out,” an agent says.

  A Class I threat may be someone who blurts out in a bar a desire to kill the president, but after interviewing the suspect and investigating his or her background, the Secret Service concludes that the individual was not serious.

  “You interview him, and he has absolutely no intention of carrying this threat out,” an agent says. “Agents will assess him and conclude, ‘Yeah, he said something stupid; yeah, he committed a federal crime. But we’re not going to charge him or pursue that guy.’ You just have to use your discretion and your best judgment.”

  In most cases, a visit from Secret Service agents is enough to make anyone think twice about carrying out a plot or making a public threat again.

  Since 1917, threatening the president has been a federal crime. As later amended, the law carries a penalty of up to five years in prison and a fine of $250,000, or both. The same penalty applies to threatening the president-elect, vice president, vice president–elect, or any officer in the line of succession to become president.

  Threats against the first lady and first children are evaluated in the same way as threats against the president and vice president, but the number of threats against them is far lower. When George H. W. Bush was president, the Secret Service obtained intelligence that a Colombian drug car
tel had put out a hit on his family. Even though they were adults and would not normally receive protection, the Secret Service assigned agents to protect Jeb, George, Marvin, Neil, and Dorothy.

  Jeb Bush remembers that when agents showed up at his house in Miami, they found the front door unlocked. “Their first recommendation was that I lock my doors,” he tells me.

  To most potential assassins, killing the president would be like hitting the jackpot. Often, they start off by threatening governors or members of Congress.

  “We want to know about those individuals,” a former agent who worked intelligence says. “Sooner or later, they will direct their attention to the president, if they can’t get satisfaction with a senator or governor.”

  Upon hearing a threatening call, White House operators are instructed to patch in a Secret Service agent at headquarters. Opened in 1999, Secret Service headquarters is an anonymous nine-story tan brick building on H Street at Ninth Street NW in Washington. For security reasons, there are no trash cans in front of the building. An all-seeing security camera is attached below the overhang of the entrance.

  Just inside is a single metal detector. No mention of the Secret Service, not even on the visitor’s badge that the security officer issues. It is just when you get into the inner sanctum that you see a wall announcing that this is the United States Secret Service Memorial Building, the name given headquarters when President Clinton dedicated the building, and a reminder of the thirty-five agents, officers, and other personnel who have died in the line of duty.

  Threatening calls to the White House are traced, and an agent listens in. He may take over the call, pretending to be another White House operator just helping out.

  “He is waiting for the magic word [that signifies a threat to the president],” a Secret Service agent explains. “He is tracing it [the call].”