Meanwhile, in Houston, the local office of the Secret Service started looking over the Astrodome, picking out the holding rooms, secure hallways, choke points, command posts, and pathways for the Vice President. This information was bumped up the ladder to the Secret Service VPPD, the Vice Presidential Protective Detail in Washington, which in ten days would have its own Advance team on scene. When that team arrived, the Lead Advance man would convene his own staff of three Site Advance and a Press Advance, along with the four Secret Service Advance, the chief of the local office of the Secret Service, two Wocka Advance men and the captain of the Houston Police Department’s Dignitary Protection Division, to sit down for a meeting with the host of the affair, the Astros’ owner, Dr. John McMullen. The critical question: What kind of event did McMullen want the Vice President for? Sure, it’s the first-ball thing, but where would he make the throw?
McMullen said, Well, there’s a pitcher’s mound ...
The mound? The Service didn’t want him exposed on the field like a baited goose. Did McMullen want his 44,000 fans held at the gates and frisked for metal?
Absolutely not.
Still, the Lead Advance said, the political people might want him on the mound. You know, taller ... heh heh.
Well, said the Service, you got your choice: you want him on the mound, we put him in a vest. You might ask if he can throw in a flak vest. Heh heh.
The Lead Advance said this was a matter for Washington. He bumped it up the ladder to the Office of the Vice President—Washington HQ. Meanwhile, the Secret Service Advance bumped it up to his Washington HQ.
“Now, what about the cocktail party?”
These things had to be decided! If the Lead Advance changed the pregame cocktail reception from a simple Mix and Mingle to a ten-minute Brief Remarks, well then, this would have operational consequence.
“Do you want him to talk?”
“Should he talk?”
“He talks, there’s press ...”
“No press.”
“Well, he doesn’t have to talk ...”
“Okay, Mix and Mingle.... Who’s got the motorcade?”
In the course of the next two days, this dozen men would walk over every foot of ground that the Vice President would tread, scouting this bit of his future life. They were seeing it as his eyes might, then improving the view, imagining and removing every let or hindrance. They were determined that nothing would be unforeseen. And, of course, they were timing every movement. Then, for all the following days, and most of the nights, they would fan out to their respective turfs: the Site Advance to each location the Vice President would visit; the Press Advance to local papers, TV and radio stations, then to the sites to inspect for sound cables, platforms, camera angles, and backdrops; the Service to all the sites, for inch-by-inch security checks; the Houston PD to its command post; the WHCA to its phones, cables, switch-boxes, walkie-talkies, cellulars, and other wondrous gizmos the Vice President might require; the head of the VP’s Houston operation and the Lead Advance to the three-room office created for the occasion, fully equipped and volunteer-staffed, in a wing of the Houstonian.
From this office, day by day, the Lead Advance faxed to the Director of Advance and the Schedulers in Washington the minute-by-minute breakdown of the visit. With every transmission this was refined, by two minutes here, ten minutes there; a holding room added, an extra car in the motorcade ... And each day, by return fax, the Washington OVP sent out a new version, with its additions and refinements: Lee Atwater would be a guest aboard Air Force Two (need a guest car in the motorcade); approval on the interview with ABC in the broadcast booth (third inning) ... Then, each night in Houston, the Advance team reconvened for another Countdown Meeting, preliving the trip anew.
The ultimate product of this process was a sheaf of papers detailing not only the schedule, but a description (with diagram) of each event, the staffing (on the plane, on the ground), assignments for every car in every motorcade, and phone numbers (hardwire and cellular) for every division of the traveling party at every site. In Washington, the night before the trip, all this data would be printed in a booklet, four and a quarter inches wide by five and a half high, just the size of a suit pocket, with baby-blue stiff paper covers, the front one printed with a handsome black Vice Presidential seal. This booklet was called “the bible,” and in a sense, the making of the bible was the making of the trip: little that was not on its pages was going to happen in the life of the man. And with the bible’s completion, a certain psychic line was crossed: the trip to the ball game was no longer a plan. It was an Event of the Vice Presidency. It was at this point, with the final retype, that the first letters of words began to jump up and salute: in the bible, that is, in the life of George Bush, every noun he touched became a proper noun. So the pregame reception had to become the Reception; or that cheap molded plastic across a steel frame would become, with the brush of his backside, the Box Seat; even as his person, the locus of Veephood, the Big Gulp of this institutional juice, became, had to become, in the bible, a black-type-all-caps monolith that began every schedule item:
6:10 P.M. THE VICE PRESIDENT and Mrs. Bush arrive Astrodome and proceed to Astrohall to attend Reception.
Met by: Dr. and Mrs. John McMullen (Jacqueline)
Now, in the Countdown Meeting, the Lead Advance was reading from the latest bible-fax from Washington. “Okay, we move him straight to the cocktail thing. Any other greeters?” There were negative shakes of heads at the table. “Okay, event ...”
EVENT: HOUSTON SPORTS ASSOCIATION OWNERS RECEPTION
CLOSED PRESS
NO REMARKS
MIX AND MINGLE
6:15 P.M. THE VICE PRESIDENT and Mrs. Bush arrive Reception.
6:50 P.M. THE VICE PRESIDENT and Mrs. Bush conclude Reception and depart Astrohall en route Astrodome.
Again, the Secret Service wanted to know: “Is he gonna throw from the seats or the mound? We gotta know. It’s a different route. If it’s from the mound, we got a bathroom to put on the vest. ... It’s a different route! If ...”
The Lead Advance cut him off with a glare: “No word yet from Washington. ... Now, how’s he getting to the Dome?”
“We can walk him.”
“From the hall? How long?”
“Five minutes.”
“Give him ten. There’ll be people.”
“We can close the sidewalk.”
“What if it rains?”
“Umbrellas?”
“Umbrellas!”
The Site Advance for the Astrodome bent to his legal pad and wrote: Walk to Dome: Umbrellas.
Of course, no storm could moisten or muss the Vice Presidential person in the Dome, where giant air conditioners maintained a dry and steady seventy-two degrees. It was the Secret Service Advance—specifically, the man from TSD, the Technical Security Division—who first divined that the Vice President might have to pass three of those air conditioners in his progress through stadium halls. Of course it was the later TSD team, the fellows who swept the whole Dome with dogs, just before arrival, who actually disassembled the machines’ steel covers, checked the works inside for untoward signs, and posted a man to guard each unit.
The air-conditioner guards were part of the Astrodome security force, as were the men in vigil at every janitor’s closet and bathroom he would pass, as were the men who closed off the hallways he would tread. For the evening, the steady complement of thirty full-time security personnel was swelled by ninety temporary hires, mostly off-duty cops from the Houston and Harris County forces. Each was paid eighty dollars for the evening, the cost defrayed by the Astrodome—a small price to pay for the honor.
Anyway, a drop in the bucket, compared to the public cost for the FBI and the Houston Police Department’s Special Ops. As there were no new threats, the FBI team had to locate only the kooks who’d made threats before, and all suspicious characters in the Houston area. Nothing intrusive or heavy-handed, just a check on their whereabouts. The H
ouston PD Motorcycle Squad had to cover the motorcade, but that was only thirty miles, easily handled by the normal team of twenty-two men and two sergeants. Of course, the department also had men on every bridge over the route, and officers at most intersections. Still, the bulk of the load fell to the Dignitary Protection Division, fifty men who guarded the Vice President inside and outside the Dome. The bible called for the Vice President to come off the field to the owner’s box, field level, on the first-base side. He’d only stay for a while, until they moved him up to a skybox. Fortunately, the command post was set up on the third-base side, up in the catwalks, where the HPD Special Ops, the Astrodome men, and the Secret Service could keep a minute-by-minute binocular vigil.
At least they could be sure the VP would stay where they put him. Some VIPs don’t, and then it’s white-knuckle city. Once, on a visit to Houston, Eisenhower snuck clean away; it turned out he went to play golf. Years later, the Houston force lost Dick Nixon for a panicky hour in the old Lamar Hotel; finally found him in the coffee shop, chatting up a waitress. John F. Kennedy was the worst: he’d throw himself right into a crowd; worst thing you can do to the cops, tears them up; someone could get him with a pocket knife, an ice pick ... anything ... no way they could see it. Thank God, George Bush wouldn’t do that.
He was good about being on time, too, which the motorcade fellows really liked. As it was, they spent half their lives waiting; it was dreariest when the schedule got busted and H-hour came and went and nobody even knew anymore what was supposed to happen. But with George Bush, they could fire up their gleaming Harleys at H-hour minus five, and he’d be there, with his crew in the cars, right on the hour. Then came the part that was their specialty, as they roared away from Ellington Field, southeast of town, and onto the wide open concrete of I-45, where seven or eight of their buddies had already closed the first few ramps and held back traffic on the northbound side. Not a car, not one truck in the way! And another half-dozen men in jodhpurs would peel away from the motorcade, and throw their hogs wide open—sixty, seventy, eighty miles an hour!—roaring up to the next ramps to close them until the motorcade sailed by. And after the trailing Harleys passed, they’d open those ramps again and thunder on past the motorcade, with the wind keening off their farings and flattening their smiles inside their helmets—ninety, a hundred, if they could—past the motorcade again to block off the ramps and road ahead. Forty minutes! From the stairs of his airplane at Ellington to the door of the Houstonian. You couldn’t do it any faster at midnight Sunday—not legally, anyway. That limo was never gonna need a brake job. Never had to stop—not while these boys were around. And they knew the Vice President appreciated their work, the way he liked to see them lined up on the tarmac at Ellington, at the end of every trip. Always wanted them lined up there, even in the rain, when he’d get wet if he stopped to wave.
But that’s the way he was. Everybody who was in on the trip talked about it—the way he was. Like when they’d get the Army to chopper him from Ellington right to the Houstonian: he wouldn’t land on the hotel grounds—didn’t want to disturb the guests. They’d land him instead nearby, at the Polo Club. Of course, that meant another motorcade to move him a quarter-mile, across the road to the hotel door. But that wasn’t his fault. In Washington, when he went to the office, he wouldn’t let them block the streets, he made them stop at the lights! A whole motorcade pulled up, waiting for a stoplight! He didn’t want to disturb the other drivers. He’d tried that in Houston, too. But not tonight—forget it! He came in only three hours before the game, and that meant rush hour. They weren’t going to have him tied up in that—no way—not in Houston traffic. And if some drivers got hot and started honking, or jumped out of their cars to see what the hell was blocking the way—well, they could always stop traffic at the top of the ramps, so the Vice President wouldn’t be bothered.
No, from within the motorcade, you couldn’t see anything like that. There was just the calm, empty highway, and the soft hum of the tires on the asphalt of the center lane. With a little motorcade like this, there wasn’t even a press bus, diesel-rumbling behind. No, this one was short and sweet: only a couple of patrol cars, with the Lead Advance and the Lead Agent riding in the first one; and a lead Secret Service car, discreet, just a blue light flashing on the dash; and then the backup, which was only a sedan, carrying Dr. Gasser, the personal physician; and then the real limo, with the Vice President, and Mrs. Bush, and their old friend Jack Steel, the head of the Houston Office of the Vice President; and then the Secret Service wagon, the hulking black Chevy Suburban with the shaded windows and four agents, two facing front and two facing rear, armed with submachine guns and heavier weapons, as they were the CAT squad, the Counter Assault Team, which might have to stay and fight off attackers while the rest of the agents got the hell out with the Vice President; and then the Control Car, which carried the Chief of Staff, and the Director of Advance, and the Military Aide; and then the Support Car, with the Lead Wocka man, and the Press Secretary, and the Personal Aide, and the Vice Presidential Photographer; then, the first Staff Car, which carried the Staff Secretary and the Secretary to the Staff Secretary; then the first Guest Car, for Lee Atwater, the head of the Vice President’s political action committee, which was called the Fund for America’s Future, but was really his Presidential campaign in mufti; then, just one Staff Van, for the rest of the staff, typists and low-level Wocka geeks; and just one Press Van, for a few reporters who had to tag along; and then, of course, the ambulance, with its strobes flashing, red bubble-lights whirring; and another patrol car, or two at times, with their blue lights and strobes flashing, and a few of the men on Harleys, who were there in case any cars broke through the rear motorcycle cordon, a half-mile or more behind, and got too close to the Vice President ... and that was about all.
With the volunteer drivers for the Staff and Press vans, there were occasional gaps in the train, but mostly they stayed tight and smooth. Certainly, they did at the front of the column, with the Secret Service drivers, men who could handle a motorcade without any fits or starts. In Washington or anywhere near, the Vice President always had his own Secret Service men driving, or occasionally his Capitol office driver, the soldierly Korean, Mr. Kim. But even in another city, the Vice President was almost always driven by a member of his own detail. The thinking was, he’d prefer a man from his own world, a face he knew, and a name to go with it. He’d be more secure that way, more comfortable.
Those were the twin imperatives in the Vice Presidential motorcade, and in all the effort around the Vice President: security, and comfort. They were the givens of his life, along with the thousands of hours of intense unseen labor by others. In this case, some four hundred people, a couple of hundred thousand dollars, and a couple of hundred million dollars in government equipment got the Vice President to the ball game in perfect security, and comfort. They also made it possible for him to spend the better part of a day, leave his office, board an airplane, travel halfway across the nation, land in another city and travel overland thirty miles to a ballpark, and never see one person who was not a friend or someone whose sole purpose it was to serve or protect him.
This is living in the bubble, and George Bush had long since perfected the art. By this time, midway through his second term, he had almost ceased to note the special circumstances of his being. After almost six years as Vice President, the bubble was his milieu. He had learned to accept its cost, as he had its perquisites, as his destiny, even his due, owed not to him, as he’d sometimes point out, but to the high office he held. Actually, he was seldom asked about it anymore. The public and the press expected it. They seemed to like it, really, for the glamor they imagined therein. The few who asked were old friends who came to visit and saw what had become of his life. They’d inquire, in uneasy near whispers: “Doesn’t it ... drive you nuts?” And he’d shrug it off with a quick joke, which they’d retell, as evidence of his grace, his discipline under pressure, his will to serve. But, really, th
ey didn’t see the half of it. No one who hadn’t lived in the bubble could know what it was like: a trip of a thousand miles, two thousand, or more, across a continent, around the globe, without one word exchanged with a stranger; a year, two years, four years, without driving a car, without being allowed to drive a car; instead, the hush of the limousine and the silent smile from the Service man at the wheel; the stewards in the plane, hovering to know his pleasure; the jacket with his name embroidered as memento of his visit to the ship or the plant, the campus or the launchpad; the visor, the ball cap, the golf shirt, the golf bag, tennis racket, squash bag, T-shirts, cufflinks, tie tacks, tie clips, memo paper, matchbooks, lighters, ashtrays, swizzle sticks, the coasters, glasses, mugs, china teacups, plastic drink cups, plastic bags, all with his name and seal upon them; the minute-by-minute schedule, instructing him where to stand, whom to greet; the men in suits and earplugs, always around, talking into their wrist microphones; the men in slightly better suits, handing him typed pages, telling him where he’d be going and whom he would see, who his friends were among the crowd and what he was supposed to tell those friends, what the press would be asking and what he ought to say in response; the simple, awesome fact that from the moment he opened his door in the morning until he retired for the night, no matter what he chose to do, or where he went, or what he wanted, he would never be alone.
What It Takes Page 2
