by Crisis of Character- A White House Secret Service Officer Discloses His Firsthand Experience
I flipped out. I pounded the dashboard. They had to stop the car so I could get out and vomit.
Back in the car, I talked about it with my superior. He brushed it off as not “a big deal.” He advised that if I was asked about it I should say I didn’t remember; I couldn’t recall. We kept listening and we kept talking, and he soon realized how poor that advice was. Cooking at 85 mph on the New Jersey Turnpike, which feels like you’re driving down a lit-up runway for miles, he asked, “Well, what do you think you should do?” I wanted him to contact the chief and get the ball rolling down the chain of command so that we could get ahead of this thing. The Uniformed Division was a tight-knit group of about a thousand strong, and we had a policy of talking it out whenever possible rather than leaving a paper trail. We rushed back to Beltsville so we could make the call.
Forced by the Starr investigation, the president was to give testimony on the Paula Jones case any day now. Somehow Matt Drudge and his website received a leak. In response the president had signed a subpoenaed affidavit, legally sworn testimony denying any sexual relations with Paula Jones, the low-level Arkansas state employee who had accused him of sexual harassment, and more so, any relationship with Monica Lewinsky. He said they didn’t have any contact with each other, hadn’t even been alone in the same room together. He swore to it and said others could corroborate.
Monica Lewinsky signed another affidavit. Ken Starr had been following the Clintons like a bloodhound. But at each turn of each scandal (Whitewater, Vince Foster’s suicide, Travelgate, Filegate, the affairs, the bribes, Troopergate, and more) it all came down to deny-deny-deny and the Clintons’ word against everyone else’s. Only this time, Clinton arrogantly denied his affair with Monica on a legal affidavit, sworn testimony. The shit was hitting the fan.
Ken Starr now needed to prove Clinton was a liar—a perjurer. He needed evidence. Since they subpoenaed our logbook, I knew I was on Starr’s list.
I couldn’t listen. I couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t drive anymore. My partner asked me what was wrong. I can remember the feeling, my heart racing, my mind whirling, racked with pain, doubt, remorse, and regret. Oh my God, Starr, the Clintons, the Service, the FBI, the Justice Department, my friends, my family—no, not my friends and family—but everyone is going to implicate me, my integrity, my professionalism, my ethics, my foundation, my character. What about Genny and my unborn child? I didn’t sign up for this! We never signed up for this! Why did the Clintons have to do this to us? Haven’t I treated them well, done my best? They just couldn’t do the right thing! They couldn’t stop themselves!
And we couldn’t help them save themselves. We couldn’t stop them from embroiling us, either. They had embodied the hopes of their generation. How do you do that to your supporters, your constituents, your believers?
It took me a good hour and a half to finally get home, and when I did I talked to Genny briefly. She had already heard the news. We agreed that we’d have to see how the next day played out. I needed to blow off steam and went for a run. She understood. I returned with my head on straight. The chief of the Uniform Division had called—the chief, I couldn’t believe it! I called right back. I had warned my lieutenant that my situation was about to blow sky-high and that the agency had to take the matter seriously. At first he hadn’t believed me, but later he went around the chain of command to alert our superiors. I hadn’t expected his call to travel so far and so fast, but clearly we were all worried.
“Gary, first off, before you say a f—ing word, don’t tell me any information, because they’ll subpoena me and it’s just going to make it harder on you and everyone else. I don’t want to know why you’re calling, because then I may have to corroborate later, but I’m going to put you in touch with the Service’s lawyers. You’re not the only officer involved. Hang tight, and they’ll contact you. Got it?”
My chief had been around a long time. I respected him immensely and hoped that he really did care and would back me up. He had been a UD officer, then became a special agent and then head of the UD. He knew the job from the bottom up and led from the top down.
I hung up and looked at Genny. We exchanged blank stares.
My dream of becoming an instructor or even staying and working the security detail at JJRTC, my entire career, my income for my family and our unborn child, were in jeopardy.
I waited in silence for a call back.
14.
MUD DRAG: PART I
I, Officer Gary J. Byrne, received my first Justice Department subpoena. Word went out that Ken Starr had found fired staffers from the White House and had an ax to grind. Some of them dragged me into the investigation. I’ve often wondered who gave me up. I believe the reason the Starr investigation targeted me was that they knew I was nobody’s stooge. I had my hunch it was a certain Press Lobby staffer whose passes I pulled from him. He was subsequently kicked out of the White House for insulting an officer. I’d had him removed.
What I did surmise much later from both the Secret Service grapevine and from news reports was that because I had knowledge of Bill and Monica I had been outed to the papers and to Starr by at least one colleague, the Silver Fox. That’s what we called Lewis C. Fox, the first of the subpoenaed servicemen. The Silver Fox was a great guy and in many ways had ushered me into my Oval Office posting. He was a cop’s cop. When I first met him he was among the crew’s more experienced members. With his mane of pure silver hair and innate charm, he looked like the Most Interesting Man in the World from the Dos Equis beer commercials.
The Fox had retired by 1998 but had served at our postings and was right there for much of Billary’s dramas. Being retired and a bachelor, he didn’t have the strings others and I did. I found out that the Fox was having dinner with friends at a bar when the TV reported the Drudge Report leak, the same story I heard while barreling down the New Jersey Turnpike. The Fox told his buddies something like, “Oh you guys don’t know the half of it…” and proceeded to tell people what he’d seen. He didn’t reveal any secret info, and since he was retired, nothing he said was considered “privileged,” as it was for me. His monologue was the talk of the joint. He went on to say that the guy they should see is Gary Byrne, because Gary’d had the most run-ins with Monica and the other women and could blow the president and his cohorts’ affidavits wide open. Legend has it that a friend of a reporter was in that bar and used the diner pay phone to call his buddy. It’s a small and dangerous world. The papers were hunting the Fox even before Starr was, but the bloodhound soon closed in. Somehow they caught my scent along with his.
It was the Fox who first went on record claiming that he had seen Monica and the president in the Oval Office alone together for forty-five minutes. Hardly stop-the-presses news—until the president responded to Matt Drudge’s leak by saying Monica and he had never been alone in a room together! President Clinton had exclaimed that all the reports were absolutely false—the ones about her actually being a paid mistress on top of other illegal, risky, and unethical activities that I knew had occurred. The story circulated through TV, radio, the papers—and that relatively newfangled thing called the Internet. I knew shit was avalanching downhill and I was in the valley below it.
Starr sent subpoenas to the Secret Service headquarters’ legal counsel’s office, and I was notified of mine.
“Hang tight, Gary. We’ll deal with this,” they told me.
With the Justice Department heading the investigation and filing the subpoenas while playing both sides, I felt legitimately outgunned, the way a lawyer might feel in a gunfight. This wasn’t my turf, and everyone might as well have been speaking Greek. I hung tight but worried that I’d be hung out to dry like my fellow UD officer Hank O’Neil.
The lawyers were going to legally stonewall the subpoenas. Though they were addressed to the USSS office, the subpoenas were for myself, not the Secret Service. As far as I was concerned, Secret Service meant secret, dammit. We were not in the business of telling anyone what we s
aw while on the job.
Secret Service personnel had never been subpoenaed previously, but I thought if I was I would be granted immunity. It could be perceived that I was committing obstruction of justice, but the FBI was targeting not just the Secret Service but the Clintons. Everything was all very political, and the difference between stonewalling and obstructing depended on which side you were on. While the FBI felt I was illegally obstructing, the Service considered my actions appropriate. The Service’s lawyers thought that their stalling tactics would work as they filed endless appeals.
I just wanted to concentrate on my job.
After several subpoenas ended up in my circular file, I was yanked off my JJRTC security detail and told to come in for briefing by the Secret Service’s legal heavyweights.
The Justice Department played both sides like a fiddle. For the offense Ken Starr was appointed in August 1994 by Attorney General Janet Reno. President Clinton had appointed Reno. For the defense, she also appointed Gary G. Grindler to represent the Secret Service against Starr. Grindler and Starr duked it out, with officers like myself caught in the middle.
I spoke often with Genny. Our talks were straightforward and serious. We sorted out our life’s goals, what we could expect from the legal process (and that we couldn’t avoid it), and how we would go through it. She stuck with me. She was carrying our first child. The legal system was about to slice-and-dice her husband, but she always told me to “do the right thing.” She was my rock. I never had to worry about leaving the shit at work to meet the shit at home. Home was sanctuary. I just never wanted to disappoint her—or our expected baby.
JJRTC leadership thoughtfully allowed me to use a federally marked Tahoe so I could avoid D.C. parking issues. I could at least be spared one aggravation. Each morning I drove from the “shit box,” what we affectionately called our rental home while our new home was being built for our growing family, to JJRTC in Beltsville. Then I drove to the Secret Service’s D.C. headquarters, just a block from the White House, though I couldn’t park there, nor did I want to.
At first I just wanted to tell my story and get the hell out, but the first week turned out to be a mind-bending experience as the Secret Service attorneys told me how complicated this was going to be. They had no “fiduciary” duty to me—and this worried me. I enjoyed none of the confidentiality privileges normal in an attorney-client relationship. They were loyal to the government, but more specifically to the Service. Anything I told them was going to be shared with the Service and in one way or another with my leadership. They warned me that this was going to be a long, drawn-out process. They explained my rights and I was surprised that my rights needed so much explaining. I felt incredibly demoralized.
I was told that I could never reveal information that might jeopardize the safety and security of the president. That was nonnegotiable. They explained to me that information needing security clearances required separate and individual subpoenas. They advised me that I could never buckle under pressure. Never, no matter how hard the Starr people pressed or insisted, was I to surrender information regarding the president’s movements, our standard operating procedures, the secret layouts of the White House, or security protocols. But within those caveats was a wide gap between what was absolutely non-shareable and what could be non-shareable. I was caught in a very tricky situation: I couldn’t perjure myself or withhold information gained from my employment, but I also couldn’t reveal secret information. That’s how it was in Secret Service.
But I knew that if I kept dodging FBI and Justice Department questions, they’d soon believe I was withholding evidence or even obstructing justice. And if I was overly forthright, I faced prosecution for revealing privileged information. I was dead.
Complicating matters even further, our lawyers informed me that they didn’t have the same clearances I did, so I had to be careful about sharing info with them. They weren’t deemed “need to know” for certain procedures involved in my answering their questions! If I felt it necessary to include an explanation of a procedure in my answer, they’d have to be administratively deemed “need to know” by going to the White House and being given a tour by SAs and UD officers. I couldn’t just depend on vetting every potential answer with them first.
My head was spinning. My stomach turned. It reminded me of the scene from A Few Good Men. Yes, that scene. “You can’t handle the truth!” I’d joke, but the truly unfunny joke was that they truly couldn’t always legally handle the truth (that is, the facts) of my job and what I had witnessed on duty.
My ADD and dyslexia didn’t help in managing the legal mumbo-jumbo. But this legal stuff was never part of our job description. I wasn’t just outflanked, I was outgunned and surrounded: I was a captive but hopefully still had a fighting chance.
The second thing the attorneys and I agreed was that I had to keep my job. Being a stooge was a non-option, and I knew in my gut that’s why Starr homed in on me. Someone had ratted me out, but at least I could take solace in its being for a good cause. The FBI hoped I’d reveal their smoking gun, but I couldn’t do that without violating protocol. I wouldn’t be a stooge—I wanted to keep my word, my integrity, my character—but I needed to tread carefully to ensure that no Clinton, congressional, Justice Department, or Secret Service hard-liner packed me off to jail or stripped me of my ability to take care of my family.
I had to toe the line enough to keep my job, but I couldn’t live with myself or sleep at night if I didn’t tell the truth. My conscience, my sleep, my head, and my stomach were going to take a beating for weeks on end while they dragged me through the mud, but I couldn’t let myself be racked with doubt, regret, and inner turmoil for the rest of my life. My unborn child was on the way and I needed to support that child, but I needed to be able one day to look my child in the eye and not only teach, but demonstrate real tough-in-the-clutch honesty. I could have relied on “I don’t recall” or “I don’t remember,” but I would have been a liar. Plausible deniability is talk I reserve for criminals. I wouldn’t stoop to the Clintons’ level to protect myself. I wouldn’t have been any better than they were.
It was my epiphany: They couldn’t jail me for telling the truth and doing the right thing. I repeated this to myself. It became my inner motto. I needed “Worthy of Trust and Confidence” to mean something. The Service’s attorneys assured me that I couldn’t be fired for telling the truth when subpoenaed. But doing the right thing meant doing. Doing the right thing would never be doing nothing.
After that first week, the SS attorneys started asking. I started telling. Since they were representing the Secret Service, I didn’t have to tiptoe so much. But as they made clear in the first week, I didn’t have to tell them, nor did they want to know, anything they didn’t ask. And as I mentioned, I couldn’t readily vet my questions with them. Whatever I told them was trial evidence and to be shared with Starr. But if the FBI, the Justice Department, and the Secret Service didn’t think to ask, I didn’t have to tell, and that was fine by me.
If you had told me in 1995 that it would be a mistress that would politically assassinate the Clintons, I would have laughed in your face. The Clintons and their people appeared to be way in over their heads with so many other things, but those internal things never got out, things that are still classified today or were swept way under the rug. And I won’t describe those things because I know they’re still classified. While this situation was overwhelmingly confusing, country still came first, and I’d never let my enemies take that from me.
The headline read, “Starr Zeroes in on Secret Service Guard.” The story said,
The independent counsel cited Gary Byrne by name in his motion to compel his testimony. The hope is that Byrne could shed some light on what led to Monica Lewinsky’s dismissal as a White House intern. A former Secret Service officer, Lewis Fox, told investigators Byrne was concerned about the intern’s visits to the Oval Office. On the day before Lewinsky was told of her dismissal, Byrne spoke with Deputy
White House Chief of Staff Evelyn Lieberman about the intern. Starr wants Byrne to tell a grand jury why he went to Lieberman. For her part, Lieberman says she doesn’t recall details of the meeting.*
Shit.
I liked Evelyn a lot, but the pressure had gotten to her. It had been she and I against Monica and President Clinton when we had tried to kick Monica out. But when I saw that headline, it was my word against all of theirs.
I phoned a friend I’ll call Mark H., a legal heavyweight and former legal counsel for the CIA and for Pennsylvania senator Arlen Specter. He now worked at a private D.C. firm. I called him from a pay phone, revealing little, but he was interested in my situation and scheduled a meeting. As crazy as all this was for me, this was right in Mark’s ballpark.
We quickly established my absolutes: I wanted to do the right thing. I wanted to keep my job. I didn’t view those terms as being at odds. Mark wanted in—this was the stuff of lawyers’ dreams, his A Few Good Men moment. His firm would work pro bono but should the government ever reimburse for their legal fees they’d file for them. That was fine with me.
I knew how lucky I was. Many of my colleagues were on the hook for their own legal expenses, which ran to upwards of $350 per hour. It ruined them financially. That’s part of the damage the Clintons callously inflicted on the men and women sworn to lay down their lives to protect them. The Clintons knew that on meager Secret Service salaries they could never legally afford to challenge them, to reveal their secrets. Financially strapped and fearful of retribution, White House personnel found it sensible to fall back on a convenient “I don’t recall.”
