Standing Next to History: An Agent's Life Inside the Secret Service

by Petro, Joseph

  In that sense, there are lessons to be learned from the public sector. One of America’s great naval heroes was Commodore Thomas Truxton—a contemporary of Stephen Decatur and John Paul Jones—who commanded the USS Constellation in the early years of the nineteenth century. I first heard about him in officer candidate school in 1967. We were discussing leadership, and Truxton’s definition was the most succinct I’ve ever heard. It was simply “Take care of your men.”

  Those five words have shaped my entire professional life. I believe that leadership can be just that simple, that caring about everyone from top to bottom—from the president of the United States to the young post stander—is what separates good leaders from bad leaders. I saw it in the navy and in combat, I saw it in the Secret Service, and I see it today in Citigroup. Truxton was right. Great organizations are no accident. They are created by and managed by great leaders.

  When I joined Primerica in June 1993—a great organization created and managed by an effective leader, Sandy Weill—the problem was that nobody could tell me exactly what it was they wanted to me do. I’d just spent twenty-three years in an agency where I knew what to do, where I’d been trained in what to do, and where, if I wasn’t sure, somebody would tell me. Suddenly I was in a place where none of those things existed. Chuck Prince was the one who told me, “You need to fill voids. Just keep moving until somebody tells you to stop.” He had two small signs on his desk. One said, “I’m responsible,” and the other, “No excuses.” Both sentiments were part of our culture in the Secret Service, so I knew I could work in this world.

  In July 1993, Sandy bought Shearson, which became Smith Barney Shearson. That fall he bought Traveler’s Insurance, and the name of the company changed to Travelers Group. Those were followed by Aetna Life Insurance, Salomon Brothers, and eventually Citibank. As director of security for Primerica, I had no direct responsibility for any staff. Ten years later I was responsible for 2,500 guards and 750 security managers and professional investigators, had a budget in excess of $160 million, and supervised a worldwide network of people in 105 countries. I was also overseeing executive protection for a number of senior people.

  And all the time I kept moving, filling voids, waiting for someone to tell me to stop.

  The glacial shift came in 1998 when we merged with Citibank. Except for a couple of Smith Barney offices in Hong Kong and London, Travelers Group had very few operations overseas. But Citibank was global and had a huge security operation and so much going on internationally. That gave me opportunity to take the template I’d made at Traveler’s—which combined investigations and security just as in the Secret Service—and apply it to Citibank, which had much more potential for this kind of operation.

  Sandy Weill and the Citigroup board of directors have since made Chuck Prince chief executive officer. I don’t think I’ve ever met two finer, more supportive men, particularly Sandy. He gave me a tremendous opportunity and was a terrific mentor. I will always be very grateful to him.

  Another opportunity to change my life presented itself at about this time. As fate would have it, I had not seen Susan Senderowitz for more than twenty-seven years. She was my high school and college sweetheart. In 1965, we went on to pursue separate lives and had our own families. We reconnected in 1992, and it was a remarkable reunion, both nostalgic and meaningful. Susan and I were married in 1994, and began sharing our life together. I inherited an additional family of her three children, Elizabeth, David, and Peter. As I started my new career, Susan continued her interior design business and we began our “commutes” between New York and Pennsylvania.

  I wish I could be as upbeat about the future of the Secret Service as I am about Citigroup. In the wake of 9/11, the Secret Service has been taken out of its traditional home at Treasury and moved into Homeland Security. The distinction between protection agents and investigative agents may soon be ended. I think that will be a sad day. Eleven years at the White House put the stamp “protective guy” on my forehead. Being at the White House that long is probably not a record, but it was almost half my career, and that is a lot. I think there are maybe only a handful of agents who spent that much time at the White House and supervised the president’s detail, the vice president’s detail, and the Dignitary Protective Division, too. So I was a protective guy. But I would gladly have gone back to investigations.

  I’ve always felt that the connection between investigations and protection is largely artificial and was based on a coincidence of history. There’s no logical reason why the two should be together. But there are plenty of reasons why the two should stay together in an agency that wants to attract a certain type of person. It’s the combination of those two missions that has made the Secret Service much more viable, attracted better candidates, and given it the ability to do things in the field that we wouldn’t ordinarily be able to do. Keeping the two functions together must be the main objective of any director. I don’t know enough of the thinking behind the decision and the workings of Homeland Security to say that moving the Secret Service there was a mistake, but I think it’s a shame it’s no longer a part of Treasury. The Secret Service has always maintained its own identity. Incorporating it into a collection of disparate agencies has got to be disruptive. It won’t put the President at risk, but it will definitely change the complexion of the Secret Service. My concern is that, as the Homeland Security Department matures, administrators will eventually move investigations out of the Secret Service into the Justice Department and limit the Secret Service to a protection function. That will be damaging.

  A few years ago an incident took place that, I believe, has even more serious repercussions for the Secret Service and could seriously effect its ability to protect. During the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Secret Service agents were subpoenaed to testify about things they saw or overheard while exercising their protective responsibilities. I have always considered private conversations that I overheard to be just that—private. And I have tried very hard in this book to respect that privacy. The incidents I’ve written about happened to me. But in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky subpoenas, I strongly believe there must be some legally established privilege between Secret Service agents and the people they are protecting, especially the president and the vice president.

  If Secret Service agents are required to testify about conversations they’ve overheard—which is very different from testifying about overtly illegal acts they may have witnessed—then protectees will pull away from protection, forcing agents into the untenable position of making a choice between being just close enough to protect someone and just far enough away not to overhear something. With lives at risk, no agent should ever have to guess, hope, or pray that the distance is right.

  Needless to say, I am extremely proud to have been a part of such a unique agency with so many unique people. Some of us got along, and some of us did not. We had weak links, and we had immovable objects. We had good managers, and we had bad managers. We had intellectuals, and we had blockheads. We had great athletes, and we had people who couldn’t tie their shoelaces. We had people who could quote Shakespeare, and we had people who couldn’t read without moving their lips. We agreed with each other more often than we disagreed, but when we disagreed, it sometimes got nasty. None of us was always right, and when we were wrong, some of us made bad decisions. But in spite of all that, there was a special spirit and a unique feeling of fraternity forged by a mission that, in the end, came down to questions of life and death. In spite of our differences, and in spite of individual conflicts, it was our mission that really mattered. It was a mission that had “no margin for error.”

  With all its imperfections and quirky personalities, the Secret Service never loses focus on the singular role it plays. Early on, we learned that the mystique of the Secret Service is intertwined with the mystique of the presidency, that the two are connected, not just as institutions but in very human ways. Early on, too, we learned to take orders, and later we learned to give them. W
e were instilled with the importance of dedication to the job, and were confronted by the high cost of the sacrifices we would all have to make. We learned to work long hours and learned to outwork everyone else. We learned to balance risks against the resources needed to reduce them. We learned to make decisions and face the real dangers of indecision. We learned how to use common sense as our best guide, how to pick our battles and make a stand, how to be diplomatic when diplomacy was called for, and how to be good negotiators when diplomacy didn’t work. We learned how to succeed at “the tip of the javelin.”

  The Secret Service taught us how to get everyone home safely.

  My pride in the Secret Service knows no bounds, for all sorts of reasons, not least of them being that the Secret Service gave me a very special gift. For one small moment, I was permitted to take an extraordinary journey. That said, it is not a unique gift. Every agent has tales to tell, especially agents who have been responsible for presidents and vice presidents. In that respect, the experiences I had in the Secret Service are representational of what other agents have gone through, of what other agents will go through. We all share that special gift.

  Every agent who sits in the right front seat of the president’s limousine, who stands in the Oval Office, who walks with the president along the porticos of the residence, who listens to him speak with other world leaders, who jokes with him, who watches him comfort the families of fallen American heroes, who feels his joys and his disappointments, and who waits off stage with him when “Ruffles and Flourishes” begins, is granted this special gift. It is the privilege of standing next to history.

  EPILOGUE

  The last time I saw him was in 1991.

  On Ronald Reagan’s eightieth birthday, there was a party for him at the Century Plaza in Los Angeles. Vice President Quayle was invited, so I took him there. The reception before dinner was crowded, and fifty people were milling about. President and Mrs. Reagan were chatting with friends in the far corner. He had his back to the room, but she was looking around and caught my eye. She smiled and nodded and, a minute later, crossed the room. She reached her hands out to me; I kissed her hello and told her how much we missed her and the president. She asked how I was, and how my daughter was doing, and how life was back in Washington. We talked for several minutes before she returned to the president’s side.

  As the reception ended, and the room was emptying out, I was standing next to the vice president near the door when the Reagans came toward us. He hadn’t yet seen me, and I was anxious to say hello. He was looking straight ahead, and then his face was three feet from me, and now he was looking right past me. My heart sank. There was no recognition. I thought to myself, It’s been so long since he’s seen me and it must be because I’m out of context.

  At that very moment, Mrs. Reagan grabbed his jacket sleeve, and said “Ronnie, it’s Joe.” And the instant she said that, he turned to me, and his whole face lit up, and he gave me one of those big famous “Oh, hello, Joe” greetings.

  I didn’t put two and two together that night. Maybe I just didn’t want to. It was easier to convince myself that it was because he wasn’t expecting to see me there. Two years later, when I read his handwritten letter to the American people announcing that he had Alzheimer’s disease, I recalled his birthday party. I wondered if that was part of what had happened that night. When she reminded him, he knew. Maybe Mrs. Reagan was doing that purposely, reminding him who everyone was. Maybe, by that time, she knew.

  The day after that party, Dan Quayle went to visit the president at his office in Century City. I took him upstairs, but purposely stayed outside the office suite. I didn’t think I belonged there and didn’t want to put myself in the middle of the visit. I sent one of the other supervisors in.

  I was waiting with the advance team near the elevators when, after about ten minutes, the president’s chief of staff, Fred Ryan, came out and said to me, “He wants you to come in.”

  I got another one of those big greetings. Then he said, “I want a picture with the three of us.”

  That was quintessential Ronald Reagan—ever gracious.

  His personality was so electric, so engaging. He always had great stories to tell and always loved to tell them. Often he would wind up being the object of his own jokes, like that day in July 1986 when he told a huge crowd in New York Harbor, “You know, I received an invitation that said please come to Ellis Island on July 4 for the hundredth birthday celebration of an American institution. Somebody goofed. My birthday is not until February.”

  His humor followed him into meetings, even serious meetings. It could be a cabinet meeting or a sit-down with the House leaders, and we’d be standing outside waiting for the meeting to end, and then we’d hear people laughing. He ended every meeting with some sort of joke. He’d say something funny, and that’s how we knew the meeting was over.

  He could dominate a table or a room. But when he stepped in front of an audience, the place was his.

  We would be standing offstage, waiting for him to be announced. He and I would be alone, or maybe Mrs. Reagan would be there with us. As an actor waiting to go on stage, he was naturally relaxed. But then “Ruffles and Flourishes” would start, and I could see him begin to get pumped up. He would get bigger. I mean that. He would get physically larger. As soon as the music started, something magical happened. He stopped being an actor waiting to walk on stage and became the president of the United States, about to make an appearance. As soon as the music started, he took on an air about him and inflated with pride. And when he stepped onstage, he was Ronald Reagan, President of the United States.

  As many times as I saw this happen, as soon as I hear that music, I always get a thrill. Even today, no matter who walks out on stage, be it George Bush, Bill Clinton, whoever, I think of Ronald Reagan. He was “Ruffles and Flourishes.”

  I miss my time with the Reagans.

  I saw Mrs. Reagan a few years ago when she came to Citigroup to have lunch with Sandy Weill. He asked me if I wanted to stop by to say hello to her. The president had been unwell for several years, and the strain on her was evident. But she was just as warm and just as gracious as ever.

  We talked for a few minutes and then I said, “I have been thinking a lot about the president.”

  She looked up at me with those big eyes of hers, and stared for a few seconds as tears welled up, and then she nodded.

  Nothing more needed to be said.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  None of this could have happened without my wife Susan, who not only conceived the title for the book, but ceaselessly provided encouragement and invaluable editorial guidance. Susan and I first met in high school and although our lives took us apart for a number of years, once we found each other again, she has been my source of uncensored advice, unequivocal support, and unconditional love. Her many contributions to this book and, more important, to my life, cannot be measured.

  The idea for this book began in 2003 while having lunch with my old college friend, Jeffrey Robinson. We had not seen each other for nearly thirty-seven years and were reunited through the efforts of Steve Young, my Citigroup colleague in London. I agreed to do the book with Jeffrey because I trusted his judgment and experience and valued our friendship.

  Two thoughts were uppermost in my mind right from the beginning. First, it was crucial that, at no point, would I compromise the protective procedures of the Secret Service or, in any way, betray the trust and unique personal access that agents have with the people that we protect. Second, while the stories in this book are mine, they are also representative of the professional and personal experiences that so many agents have had throughout their careers, especially during this period of our country’s history.

  For their hands-on help with this project, I would like to thank Bob Hast, Jim Huse, Eljay Bowron, Mark Weinberg, and Jinny Swope. They each read early drafts of the manuscript and made important suggestions.

  I wish to thank my New York agent Ed Breslin and my Lo
ndon agents Eddie Bell and Pat Lomax. It is thanks to their belief in this book and their efforts on my behalf that I am fortunate to be published by Tom Dunne and his wonderful team at St. Martin’s, and to have had the privilege of working with the superb editor Sean Desmond. Also, my thanks to Donald J. Davidson for his extraordinary copyediting.

  The United States Navy provided me with innumerable experiences, lessons, and friendships. I maintain a lifelong admiration for my river patrol shipmates, notably the late Lt. John Poe, Lt. Andy Arje, Lt. (j.g.) Bill Waters, and Lt. Jack Geraghty. These men, along with the other officers and enlisted men of the River Patrol Forces, demonstrated uncommon courage and played such an important role in my navy and Vietnam experiences.

  Throughout my twenty-three years in the Secret Service I was fortunate to meet and to know so many people whom I respect and for whom I will always be grateful. Those include Bob Hast, Earl Devaney, Phil Keifer, Tom Quinn, Dick Lefler, H. Stuart Knight, and Mike Weinstein.

  Then there are two men who unselfishly allowed me to share so many exceptional opportunities with the president of the United States. I can never thank them enough. They are Bob DeProspero and Ray Shaddick.

  And here I add thanks to a very special friend, Larry Buendorf, who introduced me to Sandy Weill and helped open the door to a second career.

  One of the significant benefits of the 1987 papal trip was meeting Bishop Robert Lynch. These many years I have valued both his friendship and his wise counsel.