Crisis of Character: A White House Secret Service Officer Discloses His Firsthand Experience with Hillary, Bill, and How They Operate

by Crisis of Character- A White House Secret Service Officer Discloses His Firsthand Experience

  As usual, we traveled with an Uzi and a host of firearms handy, but our shift leader explained to everyone that our threat level was low. “As a matter of fact,” he added, “our main driver, Officer Byrne, has a higher threat level than the protectee does.” He left it at that. I wish he had explained a little further. It became the stuff of whispers and I had to keep explaining myself multiple times before the day was done. Everyone looked at me as if I had leprosy. I gave my big smile. My shiny red cranium tactical-operator Oakleys couldn’t hide my embarrassment. When we walked outside to get everything set, a DEA agent gave me a pat on my bag and joshed, “Dude, how are you still alive?”

  There was always an undertone under the joke. I always laughed it off. I didn’t mind having enemies; I just wanted them in front of me.

  This detail was easy. Life was good again. It was the new normal. Even walking back onto the White House grounds was a great feeling.

  I was vigilant and alert. I told the lead agent to let me know if he wanted me to do anything differently and that I was glad to be a part of the detail. He told me to relax, but if he made a scissors motion with his hand, as if playing rock-paper-scissors, it meant he wanted me to close the gap with the car in front of us and leave little room for an attacking vehicle to ram us and knock us out of the motorcade.

  Havel had requested that we have some Heineken beer ready so we wouldn’t have to stop for any on the way to the hotel. That was cool with us: one less stop and one less risk.

  We all exchanged cordial greetings with the president and his wife. She patted me on the shoulder.

  “Heineken?” Havel asked. He had a great accent.

  We were doing 85 mph on the highway—fast for a four-ton armored vehicle. I learned to appreciate it while training at JJRTC when braking suddenly around obstacles. The RA gave me the scissor signal—time to tighten up our convoy.

  The park police pushed traffic out of the way. I kept thinking, This is awesome! The Czech president and his wife were pointing at everything as if they were at Disney World marveling at the sights as they downed beers. I was reminded about how great America was—even other countries’ presidents got excited to see America! That night, President Havel explained he had an unscheduled meeting with another head of state in another hotel—that’s how a typical shift could turn into a fifteen-hour one.

  In April 2002, I saw the Bush family once again during a JJRTC tour similar to the one we had conducted for the Clintons. It was strange to see George W. Bush grown up and president. It took me back to when I first arrived at the White House—a rookie being cued in by old hats. I hoped President Bush could bring back what was so sorely missed and what once existed under his father. Dynasties made me nervous, but I sorely hoped Bush 43 (our forty-third president) would restore the White House to the level of dignity that Papa Bush had promoted. I thought of my own father, the life I led, and what my son might be like. Was I as strong as my father? Had I kept my promise to protect others? Would my children retain their character? I was honored that the new president remembered me and shook my hand, just as his father would have. I asked about Bush 41 (our forty-first president). It was blast.

  A year passed and I was running my class. A fellow instructor warned me, “Hey, just a heads-up. A plane just flew into one of the skyscrapers in New York City.”

  I looked at him, puzzled. “Well, how’d that happen?”

  He shrugged. I figured it was some jackass single-prop private plane pilot who screwed up. I knew that a B-17 dual-engine prop plane had once crashed into the Empire State Building on a foggy night. Shit happens, but that morning there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

  Another instructor dashed in. “Second plane just hit another tower.”

  “No, someone already told me that.”

  “No, this was a second one on the other World Trade Center tower.”

  “Well, how’d that happen?” I was angry now.

  “We’re obviously under some kind of attack.”

  Not long afterward I received official notification. “All trainees head to your lanes,” I barked through the loudspeaker. “Don’t do anything. Don’t say anything. All trainers meet me in the cleaning room.”

  My fellow trainers dismissed my edgy tone and busted me for it. I cut to the chase. “We’re under attack. We think it’s some kind of terrorist attack. Two airliners have flown into the World Trade Center. They think more are going to happen. Here’s what we’re going to do: Don’t brief the students—have them put their guns away. Don’t clear them, and I’ll brief them here—all at one time. I don’t want any rumors.”

  I directed our students to lock all their gun slides back, to “Check ’em, check ’em twice,” and to return their weapons to the instructors. They weren’t dumb. They knew something was seriously wrong. When professionals jettison protocol, that’s a giant red flag. Good. They were, at least, learning that. We assembled in the cleaning room.

  “Is anyone here heading to the New York field office?” I asked.

  Three hands shot up.

  “Do any of you have family members who work in the World Trade Center?” The same three raised their hands—although very nervously. I kept my own cool, but I wanted to throw up.

  “You three, stand by.”

  An instructor waved me over for another phone call. “Here we go,” I told myself.

  I picked up the phone. It was this trio’s class coordinator. Outside, in a parked and loaded Suburban, he wanted them now—pronto!

  “And by the way,” he added, “another plane crashed somewhere. We don’t know where yet.”

  We managed to rig up a projector to our television and assembled to watch events transpire. The Pentagon. The World Trade Center. A jetliner crash in Pennsylvania. Where it would all end we didn’t know. But we remained on high alert. Some of us talked tough. We were going to get “them”!

  Them!

  But most Americans didn’t even know who “them” was, where “them” were, or how we would get back at “them.” At least FDR and his radio audience knew who bombed Pearl Harbor. We could only guess who our attackers were—although our guesses weren’t far off target. Islamic terrorists had tried to obliterate the World Trade Center once before, in February 1993, when they’d planted a 1,200-pound truck bomb in its underground parking garage. Back then they’d killed “only” six people, but they’d injured over a thousand.

  But whoever our enemy was today, we at JJRTC stood ready to be part of a quickly summoned “send wave.” We’d be part of our belated War on Terror.

  We were tense. But at least we were alive. We saw other human beings plunging through the air from a hundred floors up, hurtling to their deaths on the pavement below. A nation watched that on TV. Some minds have blacked out that image, erased it from memory. I can’t forget. It seared itself indelibly into mine. Through explosion-polluted air, reporters kept broadcasting from lower Manhattan. They had to be more traumatized than we were. But they kept going. I’ve had my problems with the press but not with those reporters that horrible morning.

  We were all Americans.

  In a very great sense, however, everyone in the Secret Service and in the other federal law enforcement branches knew exactly what had happened. Some group—whether foreign, domestic, or some diabolic combination thereof—had declared war on the United States of America. We knew our leaders—and our media—had shrugged off a grave threat. They’d focused on some small, stupid matter or other (like an intern or an E! Network host)—and our enemies had slipped past our weakest link. Someone messed up.

  We packed two of our SUVs to the brim. Four officers volunteered to accompany the three students heading for New York. We feared civil unrest. This assault wasn’t on mere buildings. It was an attack on our entire nation by targeting its chain of command, its military capability, its economy, and its civilian population. It obviously resulted from the highest levels of coordination and—however evil—professionalism. It was the sort of atrocity we alwa
ys feared and always prepared for. Our forces couldn’t be everywhere, but they could be anywhere. And not only that, they were already there. Close enough to sit next to you on a plane. But you’d never know. Danger-close.

  We feared a second wave—more terror, more death. Maybe at the White House or the Capitol. And this September 11 morning, who even knew if there would be a third—or a fourth?

  I stayed behind, but our two SUVs raced north to Manhattan, transporting as many first aid supplies, IFAK (Individual First Aid) and FAT kits, 12-gauge shotguns, 5.56 and 9 mm rifles as they could carry, plus extra batteries, fire extinguishers, food, water, and everything else we could think of to assist civilians and first responders. The New York City Police Department stood ready to guard against any criminal activity, but this was war. Our recruits wanted blood. Our minds ran wild.

  I pondered how I’d carry off something like 9/11. Shit, at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport in 1995, I’d even gotten my firearm past airport metal detectors.

  We were furious and searching for answers to the smoking, twisted rubble that had once been sleek, twin 110-story steel-and-glass towers. Who was the weak link?

  President Bush did us proud at Ground Zero. We hadn’t even cleared the wreckage as safe, but he was there addressing emergency response workers and rallying a fearful nation. That’s real leadership. That’s actual character! But when all our United States senators peeked out of their fortresslike capitol to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” hands over their hearts, I wanted to scream. I was furious. For all their committees, subcommittees, and special boards and the previous administration, I knew damned well that they shared part of the blame. Bosnia hadn’t even been wrapped up. We had abandoned Somalia to become a hotbed of terrorism and fanaticism—a failed state. On television, the first person I watched on the news, alibi-ing that now was not the time for blame, was my old pal, now New York’s junior United States senator, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

  I was madder than hell.

  They “volun-told” us instructors into forced OT but with a new limit on OT pay. The Secret Service erected more Jersey barriers on Pennsylvania Avenue. Weekdays I continued as an instructor. Each weekend I manned a post around the White House. Working three weekends in a row doing nothing more than watching slowly moving traffic—while holding down my full-time instructor’s job during the week—exhausted and demoralized me.

  Beyond that, Secret Service higher-ups used 9/11 to create more GS 14/15 pay-grade positions for agents “overseeing” us. It was all just a racket designed to manufacture pay raises for soft-handed, tie-wearing agents and to further demean the UD. Question management’s moves and they said you lacked discipline and willpower. You lacked the “right stuff.” A new new normal was growing, and it wasn’t good.

  What did any of it do to safeguard our planes and skyscrapers—our nation?

  The Secret Service fosters an awful mentality. Everything is go-go-go. Fix every problem with more workload for bottom-rung guys after something goes bad. Before any disaster struck, however, we’d stand around with our thumbs up our asses. Afterward we said, “We told you so.”

  September 11 wasn’t unique. That’s why the Secret Service constantly hires so many people—you even see big posters for the Secret Service on Washington, D.C., Metro trains. Secret Service work became horrendous. People either left for the private sector or to take opportunities for less grueling work—and greater pay—at other federal agencies. Secret Service leadership just ran people into the ground. No human being could maintain a 24/7 alert for long. In the end, it was counterproductive. It was only an appearance of 24/7 vigilance, not a reality.

  Overwork can lead to trouble, to potential mess-ups. “The mission is never so important that you f—it up” became my new saying.

  While I was manning my post on Pennsylvania Avenue, a car pulled up on the curb and caught my attention. Big-time.

  “Sir, you can’t stop there!” I shouted.

  “Oh, it’s fine,” the guy responded.

  That pissed me off. No, it wasn’t fine.

  He exited his vehicle and moved toward his trunk. I grabbed my MP5 submachine gun, ready to go. This is it, I thought, calculating how many rounds it would take to put him down. He opened his trunk and put a box on the curb, then pulled out something else before walking up to me. I had my 9mm in ready possession. I didn’t need this. I was tired, really irritated, and pissed off that he ignored my warning. A split second later and my training in action in the reflexive fire drills would swing into action.

  He got closer still. Only then did he really notice my expression—and my poised firearm.

  “Whoa, fella,” he said and showed me what was in his hand.

  It was a Bible.

  I was mortified. I had almost wasted a man for trying to hand me a Bible.

  We introduced ourselves. He was a very sweet man, a minister, and we chatted. On his off days he handed out Bibles to every law enforcement officer he passed. I was blown away, thanking him profusely for the gift. It meant a lot to me. I advised him on how best to safely complete his task without running afoul of understandably nervous law enforcement officers like myself. The blood of martyrs may be the seed of Christians, but there was no need for us to accidentally martyr him.

  “Take it slow,” I told him. “And make sure to tell them who you are.”

  We laughed off the tension. If he ever reads this book, I want him to know what he accomplished that day. He changed my life. We were all on a hair trigger, so amped up, so edgy. We hadn’t enough sleep, food, and exercise for our tired, anxious, and overworked, undersexed bodies. We had zero time at home to balance and hack the small shit.

  I learned how to back off.

  I learned not to sweat the small stuff—and to remember that 99 percent of life is small stuff.

  That man saved my life by shaking me out of my complacency, my rut. I knew I had to escape the Secret Service. I had loved it once, but it was no longer the life for me. A once-great agency had lost sight of its mission. It needed to stop protecting itself at so many others’ expense.

  Leaving the agency in disgust, one fed-up officer sent a public telex (a bit like a “reply all” email) equating Secret Service treatment of its lower-level employees to how Cherokee warriors ran their horses to death because they could replace them with others. It was a perfect analogy. I wanted to see my kids and my wife. I wanted to spend some time at home. Hell, I hadn’t even had time to explain 9/11 to my own kids.

  But we had an out. A new escape hatch.

  Post-9/11, Congress elevated air security to a new level of strategic priority. Every U.S. flight, especially international ones, must be protected. The U.S. Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS) expanded to better accomplish that and staffed up accordingly. A group of fed-up JJRTC instructors assembled at the ass crack of dawn and hopped into an agency Suburban heading for Atlantic City, New Jersey, where FAMS maintained its training center. They arrived so early they had to wait in the parking lot for someone from FAMS to show up. But when that happened, FAMS hired them on the spot—that very day! FAMS gave them their transfer letters, completed their paperwork, and not insignificantly, gave them better pay.

  Word spread like wildfire. The Secret Service—particularly the UD—hemorrhaged personnel. But did Secret Service management learn anything from this? No. It kept a blind eye toward complaints. “You know what, if you’re going to bitch about it, leave or go join another agency. Go join the Air Marshals!” they sneered at us.

  By January 2003 the Secret Service had lost more than three hundred officers. At one point, three-quarters of all air marshals, from bottom and especially to the top, were former Secret Service personnel. The moral: Don’t bluff. Don’t arrogantly tell your men and women, “If you don’t like it, quit.” They insulted us and we did quit in droves. So many personnel went online to the FAMS employment application website while on duty at UD or at the training center, the Secret Service director had the IT guys for JJRT
C block both the Federal Aviation Administration’s and the Transportation Security Administration’s websites! Guys walked up to their bosses’ desks at SSHQ or the White House, dropped their equipment already folded and prepped, and said, “Uh, I’m transferring to the Air Marshals. Thanks for everything. Good-bye!”

  At first the higher-ups laughed it off. They thought it was funny. They were ridding themselves of people around the edges whom they didn’t value. Those who left, though, weren’t all malcontents or losers; some were people who finally had their fill of bullshit and political correctness.

  On January 12, 2003, I became one of them.

  17.

  NEW SKIES

  The agency didn’t want me to leave.

  They didn’t want anyone to leave. Not even me.

  They thought they owned us.

  I was pumping iron on a bench press. A special agent tracked me down.

  “You’re not going to be one of those [expletive-expletive-expletives] who ditch us and chase a bigger paycheck at FAMS? After all the money we spent on you, I’d be so pissed if you left!”

  I kept lifting.

  There was no way he knew about my application… but then again. I kept pumping. I told him straight out that management shouldn’t force us guys into mind-numbing, chickenshit nonvoluntary OT postings. Spending every weekend guarding Jersey barriers outside the White House wasn’t my cup of tea.

  I dropped my weights. “Didn’t you transfer to JJRTC from somewhere else?” I asked, toweling my neck. “Why didn’t you stay there?”

  He stormed off. I knew it would be bumpy when I gave my notice.

  A lieutenant started to rag on me for the same thing in the JJRTC Control Center the first thing the next morning.