Life Inside the Bubble: Why a Top-Ranked Secret Service Agent Walked Away From It All

by Dan Bongino

  This umbrella organization could be organized by the various law-enforcement specialties (financial crimes, drug enforcement, counterterrorism, diplomatic protection, etc.), and the problems of communication and information sharing between agencies would be replaced by far less serious intra-agency squabbles, which are more easily fixed. Under one agency, databases could be merged and access to them refined and expanded. The elimination of redundant missions would open up personnel for reassignment based on national priorities. The suffocating layers of management would be eliminated and strict accountability chains created. Office space could be downsized, and equipment and sophisticated law-enforcement laboratories could be combined for “one-stop shopping.” The thousands of duplicative federal administrative forms that accomplish the same goal through redundant agency administrative paths would be eliminated and, most importantly, a new era of accountability would begin.

  In addition to needing a complete reorganization of our federal law-enforcement bureaucracy, I believe new models of security need to evolve. The threat of terrorism is not going to disappear anytime soon, despite the current administration’s belief that evil is purely a product of societal failings. I would strenuously argue that the long history of humankind refutes that premise. Violence has always been about a raw display of power, and the reasons humans can find for engaging in violence are too numerous to count. There is a disturbing but very real power in violence for someone who feels disenfranchised or to whom society has not provided economic power or the power of prestige and societal acceptance that accompany success. When society has left you behind, for whatever reason, either due to your own failings or circumstances beyond your control, you will seek some meaning for what has become a meaningless existence. That meaning may come from the group acceptance of a gang, the personal empowerment of violence at the expense of others, or a perverse ideological platform that provides an explanation for your own failings. Jihadist propaganda, readily available in a world made small by the growth in Internet communication, will become that platform for increasing numbers of the world’s Tsarnaev brothers, in search of a cause and a way to make their statement to the world.

  It is not surprising to the intelligence or law-enforcement communities that jihadist propaganda would appeal to a segment of our society, and that self-radicalization is not only possible but very likely for some of our own citizens. The rigors of daily American life, as well as our responsibilities to our families and our jobs, lend order and structure to our lives and eliminate the need to pursue violent propaganda. We tend to view the world as a series of actions and consequences, and the idea of engaging in deadly violence to further a cause is repulsive to most of us. But violence to achieve an ideological goal, however repulsive to civilized men and women, has been the norm for most of human existence. The ability to use force to subjugate people you perceive as your enemies or to take what you desire, whether earned or not, is quite natural, and the power achieved can reinforce that kind of behavior. It is our unprecedented level of prosperity, and the corresponding fulfillment of most of our fundamental needs as humans, that make this idea of “violence as natural” so foreign to us.

  This presents an obvious danger for a society looking to prevent terrorists from causing the mass chaos they caused in Boston. Once again, the franchise model of terrorism requires interaction, and each interaction leaves a ripple that if detected could be used to investigate and thwart an attack. One person acting alone will not leave as many of these ripples and has a substantially greater chance of avoiding detection. Sadly, this is likely to result in a new series of security measures and encroachments on individual liberties that we are not accustomed to in the United States. These encroachments will not be voluntary and will inevitably change the way we view public events in the future. Subjecting yourself to a frisk at a public event may become standard operating procedure, and security cameras will proliferate to the point where any public area of a major city will likely be monitored.

  The New Year’s Eve celebration in Times Square and the presidential inauguration are examples of high-profile outdoor events with large crowds that have successfully implemented security plans that have kept all participants safe to date. The security models used by the New York City Police Department and Secret Service for these events will most likely be the standard going forward. These events attract millions of revelers and despite some setbacks they have never had a major security breach. Security officials accomplish this by creating “access zones” where the public can view the event. Similar to the “box within a box” approach I described earlier in the book, these models do not attempt to do the impossible.

  During a number of interviews I conducted prior to the 2012 presidential inauguration, I was asked, “How does the Secret Service secure the entire city for the inauguration?” The answer is: they don’t. The same approach is applied to the city of Washington that I used at the Caterpillar factory visit that I coordinated for President Obama. The factory was full of dangerous equipment and chemicals, so we built a “box” within the factory and focused our limited assets on securing that limited area. The DC Metro police and other law-enforcement agencies can secure the streets of Washington, DC, but the Secret Service PPD has to secure the president’s location only. During the inauguration we accomplished this by utilizing strategically placed barriers to ensure that people who entered locations where they would be close to the president did so only through specific “people-funnel” checkpoints.

  For a presidential inauguration we insist that everyone pass through a metal detector, but this is not necessary to substantially reduce the risk of another Boston-type attack. The Boston bombers were carrying antipersonnel improvised explosives devices (IEDs) designed to kill or maim large numbers of people and inspire fear. In order to carry out that type of attack, you need a dense crowd in which to detonate the device. If the Boston Police Department had a plan in place for the marathon similar to the NYPD’s Times Square plan, where anyone accessing such areas as the starting line, the halfway point, and the finish line, where people tend to congregate, was subject to a bag check and quick pat-down in lieu of metal detectors, the attackers would have been forced to rethink their plans.

  It troubles me to have to suggest a “new normal” way of life in our country because of the evaporation of individual liberty that will result as a consequence of increased security. So far lawmakers have not made any progress in revising laws that protect individual freedoms and the right to privacy. Provisions within poorly written sections of the PATRIOT Act, for example, have been misused and will continue to be until the law is refined. In addition, the billions of dollars spent on federalizing airport security have consistently failed to produce the desired results, while subjecting the public to frustrating, often embarrassing security screenings.

  A lesson to take from this move toward a surveillance state is that no security measure comes without a trade-off. As Israeli major general and terror expert Amos Yadlin has stated, “it’s not the tools but the rules of engagement.” The PATRIOT Act was a tool with poorly defined rules of engagement that were left open to law enforcement’s interpretation. When the rules are open to interpretation, law enforcement will always seek the broadest interpretation to make their case. It is not personal; the men and women of the federal law-enforcement community whom I have worked with are members of our wider communities—fathers, mothers, neighbors, soccer coaches—and have no personal interest in violating your liberty. They are simply working with a set of imperfect tools.

  The same can be said for expanding the use of surveillance cameras. There is nothing inherently evil about surveillance cameras, but when government officials are unclear about the rules of engagement as to where these cameras will be placed, why they will be placed there, and what will be done with the footage, Americans grow understandably concerned. From my experience, surveillance is nonthreatening only to those doing the watching, not those being watched.

 
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  OUR GOVERNMENT HAS FAILED US

  DURING MY RUN for the United States Senate I learned that in the business of politics, themes are important. Themes are helpful because they assist your audience in both understanding and categorizing the information you are trying to get across to them. A theme should speak to a larger idea but be compact enough to remember.

  If I had to sum up the theme of this book, it would be “beware of the soft tyranny of bureaucracies.”

  When everyone has responsibility for something as critical as security and emergency response, then no one has ultimate responsibility. Having lived inside the bubble, I have seen for myself how our government has grown to such a point where decision makers can take credit for politically beneficial outcomes and hide behind the false facade of “the bureaucracy” when scandal and tragedy strike. There is no moral difference between the hard tyranny of acting against the citizens you swore to serve and the soft tyranny of hiding like a coward and allowing someone under your chain of command to take the fall.

  The events and experiences I described in these final few chapters were specifically chosen to show the contrast between individual sacrifice and dedication, and the systematic failures of our current government. I was constantly awed by the many men and women I worked with during my time as a Secret Service agent and their dedication to their mission. It is challenging to reconcile how some federal employees can be so selfless when others are completely out of touch with the country they are supposed to serve.

  The problem with our government is not the people but the system that fosters a “just following orders” approach and marginalizes good people attempting to do the right thing. A perfect example is the recent Benghazi hearings, where whistle-blowers finally were allowed to testify after enduring months of intimidation and threats by those in the administration who did not want the truth to be told. We are rapidly approaching the point where we must ask ourselves if we want a limited, smaller government that performs a small number of tasks well, or an expansive government that performs a large portfolio of tasks poorly. The consequences of the wrong choice are very real, as I have documented in the recent tragedies in Arizona, Benghazi, and Boston.

  I was privileged during my twelve years with the United States Secret Service and my four years with the New York City Police Department to work with local, state, and federal officials from the law enforcement, legislative, judicial, prosecutorial, diplomatic, and military divisions within our system of government. I found bravery, honor, and sense of duty to be the rule, not the exception. Although government employment can provide for a solid middle-class existence, no one is going to become wealthy as a government employee. Despite this unavoidable economic fact, some of the brightest, hardest-working people I have ever encountered have decided that service to the government and the American people was their proper path.

  This begs the important question: how is it that a government populated with hard-working, dedicated men and women applying their intellectual and physical gifts to public service could produce law enforcement, security, and counterterrorism failures such as Fast and Furious, Benghazi, and the Boston bombings?

  The answer lies in bureaucratic failure. In the example of Fast and Furious, the government’s failure to slow the proliferation of illegal firearm sales by prosecuting the case in a timely manner appears nearly criminal. As I describe in my analysis, I place the blame squarely on the Department of Justice. It is not the people within the department who have failed, but the system they work within that is broken. The incentives within the system have been perverted as a result of the growth in the levels of bureaucracy within the DOJ and the politicization of its agenda. Rather than being incentivized to prioritize and fight criminality with the greatest negative impact on American citizens, the incentives are set up to prosecute cases that are neatly packaged by investigators in order to give federal prosecutors easy guilty verdicts. This is done to avoid lengthy trials and potentially losing the case, which would negatively affect both the DOJ’s budget and prosecutorial success rate. Do not underestimate the impact of these factors—many cases with merit whose investigation and prosecution would make our country substantially safer are bypassed or delayed due to bureaucratic ineptitude and crass political considerations, not personal failures. Forcing a system of unethical incentives on individuals, regardless of the content of their character, is inevitably corrupting.

  This broken system being forced upon the federal agents and employees working within it undoubtedly played a role in the numerous failures leading to the Benghazi attacks. It is assumed that our government has a moral requirement to do everything in its power to defend those serving the country overseas. So how do we explain the lack of assistance to those who came under assault with the imminent threat of serious personal injury or death? How do we excuse it when someone in government ignores desperate pleas for help just to save a political career?

  Based on my experience within the walls of the White House, I am confident that a number of military, diplomatic, law-enforcement, and Obama administration officials were well aware of the SOS signal from the heroes in Benghazi and the danger of their situation. Yet they were left to die.

  Not only were their pleas ignored but, based on the accounts of a number of contacts I have spoken to, the military unit that was initially activated to rescue the Benghazi victims was instructed to stand down. It is simply not possible that all the eyes and ears that saw and heard the pleas of Ambassador Stevens and his team all belonged to people lacking a moral compass who did not care about the victims. These people were likely forced into compliance by a top-down decision-making process that was driven by politics first and the safety of the personnel in Benghazi a distant second. The penalty for failing to “go along” was and is severe. Jobs may have been threatened, and this is a sad testament to where we have come as a government.

  Growing levels of bureaucracy in all areas of our government have made it possible to deflect the deadly consequences of decisions. The blame can be spread thin as a result of the diffusion of responsibility that comes with the explosive expansion of the bureaucratic class. The “I was just following orders” phenomenon is facilitated by a bureaucracy so large that even senior-level diplomatic officials comprised only a small part of the decision-making pie. It allows these officials to tell themselves that although the decision to abandon those men and let them die in Benghazi was both morally and legally bankrupt and a violation of their oath to support and defend the Constitution, it was not theirs alone and they were “just following orders.” This was even stated by the State Department’s own politically driven Accountability Review Board, assigned to investigate the Benghazi terror attacks, when it concluded that “systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus of the State Department … resulted in a Special Mission security posture that was inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place. Security in Benghazi was not recognized and implemented as a shared responsibility by the bureaus in Washington charged with supporting the post, resulting in fragmented discussions and decisions on policy and security.” It is also noted in the report that “certain senior State Department officials within two bureaus in critical positions of authority and responsibility in Washington demonstrated a lack of proactive leadership and management ability.”

  The broken system unfortunately surfaces again in the missed opportunities to disrupt the Boston terror attacks. Despite an analysis done after the 9/11 attacks that conclusively stated that interagency government communications were severely lacking and contributed greatly to a number of missed opportunities to break up the 9/11 terrorists’ operation while in the planning stages, we still suffer from the same problem and failed again with the Boston terror suspects.

  Again, this is not a function of an army of federal law-enforcement officials who do not take seriously their solemn responsibilities to the American people; i
t is a function of a system set up to fail and minimize the effects of anyone looking to change it. No organization can overcome the effects of having over a hundred thousand federal law-enforcement officials isolated within different fiefdoms of government. All of these government agencies have different communications networks, investigative priorities, budget priorities, and cultures that, at times, run directly counter to the missions of their brother agencies. We saw in the Fast and Furious investigation that we had ATF agents investigating suspected gunrunners who were, unbeknownst to the ATF, working as informants for the FBI. In the Benghazi attacks, we had a politically driven Accountability Review Board conclude—seemingly blind to the fact that we have tens of thousands of federal agents currently investigating low-priority crimes—that resource constraints “had the effect of conditioning a few State Department managers to favor restricting the use of resources as a general orientation.” And finally, we had a terror suspect, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, exit the country, setting off what Department of Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano called a “ping” in the DHS computer system, which the FBI was unaware of and led to no investigative follow-up. Secretary Napolitano never describes the “ping” because she likely does not understand what the “ping” means either.

  Any private citizen can set up a Google Alert and receive an e-mail the instant his name appears on the Internet, but incredibly, our behemoth federal government has yet to figure out how to keep track of terrorists who freely come in and out of our country. If this sounds like an oversimplification, I assure you it is not. The dense fog of bureaucracy has descended on our government, and wading through it to find your path is more and more difficult. I remember my early days with the Secret Service working in the Melville field office when I was actively engaged in the investigation of a fraud ring with a distinct connection to terrorism. I involved the FBI’s local office because of the terrorism angle and was taken aback at having to make an appointment to drive over to their office and take physical custody of a document on one of the suspects that was redacted (blacked out) to the point where it was almost unreadable. I had a top-secret clearance and was authorized to carry a firearm next to the president of the United States in order to protect him and his family, but apparently I was not trusted to read another agency’s document regarding a suspect I was investigating. The delays in the investigation due to this web of obstacles were substantial and serve as a small example of the large problem we face in an ever-expanding government.