Criminals & Presidents: The Adventures of a Secret Service Agent

by Tim Wood

  Done! Danny goes to the First Lady’s detail and I go to TS…a simple switch of personnel. I mean a body is a body right? It turned out to be one of the absolutely best deals for me during my entire career.

  TS agents conduct presidential motorcade advances and drive the President’s limo and various other Secret Service vehicles in a PPD motorcade. It is hard work…it is high visibility…a motorcade advance is complicated, one of the hardest assignments an agent gets, second only to lead advances (good luck getting one of my pals from the First Lady’s detail to admit that, but it is a true as the Vegas sky is blue).

  The first thing I had to do was complete the Protective Operations Driving Course (PODC) training. And this was the absolute best training I ever received. PODC teaches the agent how to drive. Really drive. Drive hard, drive fast, and drive safe. We had IROC-Zs for our training cars, and I had some experience with an IROC-Z—geez! If I’d been through PODC back in my Vegas days…well, it’s probably better that I hadn’t at that point in my career.

  What are you going to do if your driving forward and the lane is blocked? Perhaps an explosion at an intersection? An RPG to the vehicle in the front? No problem, just throw the vehicle in reverse, do a 180-degree turn and drive as hard and as fast in the opposite direction as you safely can…and do this maneuver in one lane of traffic. The good old J-turn. Absolutely some of the most fun you can have in a car! And it’s surprisingly easy to do. You just have to know how.

  Years later, when my daughter was getting her driver’s license, she made a bet that if she made a perfect score on the test, I’d teach her to do a “J” turn…she came very, very close.

  Driving the presidential limo was a great honor and a huge responsibility—one of my TS buddies used to introduce his fellow TS agents to civilians with by saying, “I want you to meet Agent So-and-So, he is one of twelve people in the world authorized to drive the President of the United States.” That’s an exclusive club. I remind my family of this regularly when we are on vacation road trips. If the Redhead makes a comment about my driving, I just remind her, “Relax, I used to drive the President of the United States.”

  Every time the President moves anywhere, even frickin’ walking; there is a TS agent conducting a motorcade advance. The TS agent works with the local police to plan routes, secure the routes, and have plan A, B, C, and even D in his/her hip pocket. I was doing a TS advance in Albuquerque once and after days of planning the White House advance staff decided to use Marine One for a movement to a venue that was a long motorcade from his last stop. My police counterpart was so relieved there would be a helicopter movement instead of a long distance motorcade. “Not so fast partner,” I said, “This will not make the motorcade advance easier, it will make it harder and more complicated.”

  “How so?” he asked.

  “Well, now we need two motorcade packages—one to get him to the takeoff LZ (landing zone) and one to pick him up at the landing LZ.” When you are transporting the President, nothing, absolutely nothing, is easy.

  By the luck of the draw, I was the TS advance agent for the motorcade of President Clinton with the Kennedy family for the funeral of Jackie Kennedy Onassis. Her burial was at Arlington National Cemetery outside Washington, DC, next to her late husband, President John F. Kennedy. We motorcaded from the south grounds of the White House to Reagan National Airport in Northern Virginia, where President Clinton met the Kennedy family and casket. We took her up George Washington Parkway to Arlington. George Washington Parkway was lined with mourners and media. It was a very somber moment in my Secret Service career.

  * * *

  Doing a foreign motorcade advance was always a big challenge. Obviously the language barrier is an issue, but dealing with foreign countries and their diplomatic protocol would give anyone a headache. I did a TS advance in Paris for President Clinton and the diplomatic protocol was a nightmare. We were at the French president’s residence for a state dinner. It went late into the night. All of a sudden, the Secret Service lead advance agent tells me the French president just invited President and Mrs. Clinton to the Louvre for a midnight private tour. One problem. Diplomatic protocol called for the French president to say good-bye to the visiting president when he leaves the residence and protocol called for the French president to be at the Louvre so he can be the first to greet the arriving visitor.

  “Can they motorcade together?” I asked.

  “No, absolutely not,” I was told by the White House Staff Lead Advance. Now this is a problem.

  “Can we motorcade to the US ambassador’s residence, stand by, and wait for the French president to arrive at the Louvre?”

  “No. Absolutely not,” the staff lead tells me.

  Great, now what am I supposed to do? Drive in circles? And then I got a great idea. “Why don’t we motorcade over to Notre Dame Cathedral, stop by the Seine River for a view of the lights of Paris?” It was close to two o’clock in the morning and the Paris cops told me the streets at Notre Dame were deserted. The Secret Service lead and the SAIC said, “Good idea; let’s do that to kill some time.”

  So off we went to Notre Dame. There is a pedestrian bridge over the Seine River right near Notre Dame. We stopped the motorcade there. The President and Mrs. Clinton got out of the limo and walked out onto the pedestrian bridge. They spent about twenty minutes enjoying the view and then we loaded them up and drove to the Louvre. The French president was waiting to greet President and Mrs. Clinton for the arrival and the private tour of the Louvre.

  The next morning the front pages of all the Paris newspapers had a huge photo of President and Mrs. Clinton strolling hand in hand on the bridge—how romantic! Banner headlines! Paris! The city of lights and romance! And it was all my idea. Your welcome, White House staff.

  * * *

  After my tour in TS I went back to the shift and started doing lead advances for PPD visits. I loved doing leads, because they were always very challenging and required us to “think out of the box.” I did a lot of lead advances and for some reason, just the luck of the draw, I guess, it seemed my staff lead advance counterpart was usually the same guy. He was a Hollywood movie producer who volunteered his time to travel and complete the staff lead advances. As a matter of fact he was the staff lead advance for my TS advance in Paris, he was the one who was so difficult about President and Mrs. Clinton leaving the French state dinner for the Louvre tour. This guy was a pain in the ass and (usually) very uncooperative about our security needs.

  He and I were paired up as the respective lead advances for a President Clinton visit to St. Petersburg, Russia. He was always coming up with harebrained ideas that were extremely challenging from a security perspective. The President was going to tour a local St. Petersburg museum, exit a side door on the street, walk three blocks along the sidewalk, enter a small park, and visit St. Basil’s Cathedral for a private tour. Then the staff wanted to motorcade him across a wide boulevard to an open-air flea market for an “off the record” (OTR) stop to mingle with the local folks. Both of these movements were potentially dangerous and extremely challenging.

  When the site advance agent and I started looking at the walk along the sidewalk we were both very concerned about the high ground issues—it was a wide street with two and three story row houses along the far side of the street. I argued for a motorcade to the cathedral. But, Mr. Hollywood Producer said, “No, we can’t do that! Absolutely not! It’ll ruin the photo shots by the press! We want him walking to the park and the cathedral.”

  I knew this was extremely dangerous. It would be impossible to cover this walk along the sidewalk to the park from the threat of a sniper. Once in the treed park we would be okay—there were lots of trees for blocking the line of sight.

  I told the site advance agent to get some buses, big busses to park on the street blocking the line of sight from the two and three story buildings across the street. I knew Mr. Hollywood Producer
would not go for this tunnel along the sidewalk; it would ruin his photo shot. I waited for the right moment, when Mr. Hollywood Producer was preoccupied with other issues and approached him. I told him the walk was very dangerous and I’d have to be creative to cover those three blocks. “No problem,” he said and he got back into his discussion with the other staff.

  When President Clinton exited the side door of the museum, he was met by a wall of buses parked along the curb. Hollywood Producer went berserk. President Clinton was engaged in a deep conversation with whoever was accompanying him on the walk and I don’t think he even noticed the buses. But Mr. Hollywood Producer was pissed off! I didn’t really care, because I had successfully mitigated the long-range sniper threat.

  After the tour of the Cathedral, we loaded up in the Beast for the OTR at the flea market.

  I was very worried about this flea market stop. It was an OTR, and theoretically, for an OTR, no one knows the President is going to make the stop, thus the odds of an assassin lying in wait are slim. But still, a flea market in a shady part of town is not ideal. After Mr. Hollywood Producer told me about the proposed OTR, I took one of the advance team agents with me and we strolled through the flea market to size it up. We didn’t like the looks of things. It appeared to be a haven for crooks, thugs, and other non desirable characters of St. Petersburg.

  This OTR was going to be a challenge and the working shift would have to be on alert for problems. Fortunately, the President was behind schedule and as we loaded into the motorcade at St. Basil’s Cathedral, Mr. Hollywood Producer told me to skip the OTR and motorcade directly to the next scheduled event.

  * * *

  During the 1996 reelection campaign of President Clinton, his staff decided he should do a whistle-stop train trip to the convention in Chicago and I was assigned as the lead advance. I started working on that advance the Monday after the Fourth of July 1995. It consumed most of my time until we arrived at the shores of Lake Michigan for the Democratic National Convention in late August.

  One of the first things we did was ride the rails for the proposed route of travel. As luck would have it, once again, the Mr. Hollywood Producer was my staff lead advance counterpart. We boarded a private “charter” train in Huntington, West Virginia; this train had three cars—the engine, a support rail car, and a luxury private coach. It was a small group—me, Mr. Hollywood Producer, another senior White House staffer, one of the PPD ASAICs, a representative from Amtrak, and a representative from the train company that operated the rail line.

  We would make stops at small towns; get out of our private train and look around with the staff for them to decide if this small town would be included in a reelection rally for the presidential train whistle stop. If the staff liked the look of the small town, we would make decisions about where to stop the train, where to set a stage and build a crowd…then jump back on the charter and whizz off to the next potential stop. All of this took about twenty minutes. I didn’t have much time to inspect the potential venues and give final approval to the staff. But at this point in my PPD career I had completed many site advances and I could visualize the security setup, make a quick sketch of the venue, and calculate a “ballpark” estimate of how many cops and how many agents it would take to secure the venue before we moved on to the next small town they where they wanted to hold an event.

  At one stop, we had the “charter” pull off on a side rail and we walked over to a Dairy Queen for lunch. We were sitting in the restaurant that was right next to the tracks with a street crossing the tracks. I was sitting with the two train guys and they were telling me how dangerous grade crossings were. They were telling me about how many cars get hit by trains every year, usually because the drivers of those cars try and beat the track warning barriers as they start to come down to stop traffic.

  Sure as shit, as we are sitting there, we hear the ding-ding-ding of the track barriers, with the flashing red lights and watch the wooden arm as it starts to activate to block the street so a train can pass. We were looking out the window and I’ll be darned if a flat bed stake truck tried to sneak under the barrier arms as they are coming down. The first arm comes down and gets wedged between the cab and the bed of the truck.

  Now the truck is stuck with the hood and front wheels on the track and the loud whistle of the approaching train blaring in the distance. We dropped our burgers and ran out to the grade crossing. I’m standing there thinking, this is going to be ugly when that speeding train hits that truck. The two train guys got under the wooden barrier arm; lifted it up and the truck driver sped forward across the tracks. Whoosh. The train goes by and disaster is adverted. It was a close call for that driver. His lucky day…having two train experts sitting fifty feet from the crossing. Those two guys knew what to do and they reacted quickly enough to save the truck driver from total disaster and sure death. I was totally impressed, but these fellas just shrugged it off as another day on the tracks.

  After the route was set and the stops were identified, I made numerous return trips to each city along the route with other members of the advance team to finalize our security plan. We had over eighteen hundred grade crossings along the route that traversed five states, West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana. I made a note to check and double check the police posts at each grade crossing—not only for the assassins waiting to sabotage the train, but some dumb ass trying to get across the tracks to the grocery store for a gallon of milk.

  The train ended up being one quarter of a mile long. The staff must have had every donor in each of the states we were traversing on that train at one stop or another. It was almost comical. When we stopped the train at one of the predetermined small towns for a rally, the staff would unload a bunch of donors that rode from the last stop and reload the cars with donors from the current stop. I guess folks just get a kick out of telling their social circle all about the time they rode the 1996 presidential reelection campaign train. What’s really funny is that during the three-day trip, President Clinton only made one sojourn from the presidential car up through rest of the train to meet and greet these folks. So the vast majority never saw him up close. I guess I shouldn’t be so cynical, but when you stand next to the President of the United States every day, it doesn’t seem like a big deal. But that’s the life of a Secret Service agent.

  I felt bad for the guy who donated the use of his private rail car. It was a beautiful, old 1920s restored car. The outside rear had the porch and railing like you see in all the old photos from when this was the only way to travel across country. This thing was a gem and the guy that owned it was a super nice guy. We were about a day from the President’s arrival in Huntington for the departure and good old Mr. Owner was under the impression he would be riding the rails inside his “loaned” private car with the President.

  My staff lead counterpart, Mr. Hollywood Producer, got wind that the owner was planning to ride in the back and he put the kibosh on that real quick. I remember a heated discussion between the two, right beside the private car. He relented and agreed to ride up front with the straphangers, but he wasn’t happy.

  Later that same day one of the staff press aides was inspecting the rear patio in order to find the optimum photo angle to place the press during stops where President Clinton would address the throngs of supporters if he made a speech from the rear of the private car. You know, like the famous photo of President Harry Truman on the porch of his private train.

  Well, the top overhang of the private car had a scalloped awning around it. The White House staff press aide didn’t like that scalloped awning. Blocking too much of the “shot.” So he called a welder from the train depot and told him to cut it off with the old blowtorch—cut right through the metal and remove the scalloping. Only problem was he didn’t bother to run this major modification by the owner.

  I’d become pretty good buddies with the owner and to be honest, I thought the staff was treating h
im like the hired help, so I kind of put the bug in his ear about the welder and his blowtorch. He went completely bullshit. Absolutely crazy. He threatened to pull his private car out of the show entirely if they so much as touched the thing. I’m sure a lot of this reaction to this news was the result of his disappointment with being told he would not be riding in his private car with the President; but what ever the reason, he was pissed.

  Finally, Mr. Hollywood Producer compromised with him—the staff removes the awning scalloping, agrees to have it replaced when the show is over, and Mr. Owner gets to ride in his car with the President. Like most folks, he didn’t envision the entourage that accompanies the President wherever he goes. Once we started the train, the owner quickly realized there was no room in the private car—what with the senior staff, military aide, Secret Service agents, speechwriters. Shit, it was packed. I spent most of the trip standing on the rear platform of the private car, just to be out of the way. A few hours after launch, the owner went up to the “public” cars and found a nice seat for the rest of the three days.

  The three-day train trip through five states was a complete success. Every one of those eighteen hundred grade crossings had a cop or at least the local rural volunteer fire department posted when the train went by.

  * * *

  By the time President Clinton was starting his second term of office, I was a senior agent on the shift and I’d advanced to be named the number one whip on my shift (the whip fills in for the shift leader on his days off). On January 20, 1996, all the whips from all the shifts were given the honor of walking along the Beast for the motorcade parade from the Capitol swearing-in ceremony down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House. It was quite an honor. I was the top of the food chain on PPD.

  But somehow, the job has a way to humble us all. After the parade was over, I was given a post standing assignment later that evening at one of the numerous presidential inaugural balls. The Secret Service site advance agent posted me in the boiler room in the basement of the venue. Me, a steel folding chair, and this huge, loud steam boiler. For six hours. I went from the pinnacle to the basement all in one day.