In the President's Secret Service

by Ronald Kessler

  “If Johnson weren’t president, he’d be in an insane asylum,” former agent Richard Roth says he thought to himself when he was occasionally on Johnson’s detail.

  Johnson kept dozens of peacocks at his ranch.

  “One night at midnight, one of these peacocks was walking around,” says David Curtis, who was temporarily assigned to Johnson’s Secret Service detail at his ranch. “It was a moonlit night, and an agent picked up a rock just intending to scare the darn thing. He lobbed it over in the direction of the peacock and hit him right in the head. The peacock went down like a ton of bricks.”

  After an agent relieved him at his post, the agent told other agents, “Oh, my God, I’ve killed a peacock. What do you think we should do?”

  “The consensus was, there were so damn many of them around, no one would miss one,” Curtis says. “Just drag him down to the Pedernales River and throw him in. So that’s what they did.”

  At the break of dawn, the day shift relieved the midnight people. One of the day shift agents called the command post on the radio.

  “My God, you’ve got to get out here!” the agent said. “Looks like a drunken peacock. He’s all wet. He’s staggering from one foot to the other, feathers askew. He’s walking back up toward the house.”

  Somehow, the peacock had recovered and managed to drag itself out of the river. Johnson never found out about the incident.

  “Johnson was the grand thief,” Gulley his White House military aide, says. “He knew where the money was. He had us set up a fund code-named Green Ball. It was a Defense Department fund supposedly to assist the Secret Service to purchase weapons. They used it for whatever Johnson wanted to use it for. Fancy hunting guns were bought. Johnson and his friends kept them.”

  All the while, Johnson fostered the image of a penny-pincher who was saving taxpayer money. As part of an economy drive, Johnson announced he had ordered the lights turned off inside the ladies’ room in the press area.

  When Johnson left office, Gulley says he arranged for at least ten flights to fly government property to Johnson’s ranch. O’Donnell, the Air Force One flight engineer, says he flew three of the missions, shipping what he understood were White House items back to the Johnson ranch.

  “We flew White House furniture back,” O’Donnell says. “I was on some of the missions. The flights back were at seven-fifty or eight-fifty P.M. and early in the morning. … I think he even took the electric bed out of Walter Reed army hospital. That was a disgrace.”

  Johnson’s greatest achievement was overcoming Southern resistance to passage of civil rights legislation, yet in private, he regularly referred to blacks as “niggers.”

  After Johnson died, Secret Service agents guarding Lady Bird were amazed to find that even though their home was crammed with photos of Johnson with famous people, not one photo pictured him with JFK.

  4

  Threats

  EVERY DAY, THE Secret Service receives an average of ten threats against any of its protectees, usually the president. Ironically, until after the Kennedy assassination, murdering the president was not a federal crime. Yet in 1917, Congress made “knowingly and willfully” threatening the president—as opposed to killing him—a federal violation. As later amended, the law carries a penalty of up to five years in prison and a fine of $250,000, or both. The same penalty applies to threatening the president-elect, the vice president, the vice-president-elect, or any officer next in the line of succession.

  To ensure that an attack on a protectee—called an AOP—does not take place, the Secret Service uses a range of secret techniques, tools, strategies, and procedures. One of those tools is the extensive files the Secret Service Protective Intelligence and Assessment Division keeps on people who are potential threats to the president.

  To most potential assassins, killing the president would be like hitting the jackpot.

  “We want to know about those individuals,” a former agent who worked intelligence says. “Sooner or later, they will direct their attention to the president if they can’t get satisfaction with a senator or governor.”

  The Secret Service may detect threats anywhere, but those directed at the White House come in by email, regular mail, and telephone. Upon hearing a threatening call, White House operators are instructed to patch in a Secret Service agent at headquarters. Built in 1997, Secret Service headquarters is an anonymous nine-story tan brick building on H Street at Ninth Street NW in Washington. For security reasons, there are no trash cans in front of the building. An all-seeing security camera is attached below the overhang of the entrance.

  Just inside is a single metal detector. On the wall in big silver letters are the words “Worthy of Trust and Confidence.” No mention of the Secret Service, not even on the visitor’s badge that the security officer issues. It is just when you get into the inner sanctum that you see a wall announcing the United States Secret Service Memorial Building, a reference to the thirty-five agents, officers, and other personnel who have died in the line of duty.

  Inside, around a central atrium, catwalks link the rows of offices behind glass walls. For agents too pressed to wait for an elevator, open staircases within the atrium offer vertiginous looks down during the climb to another floor. The hallways are lined with candid photos of presidents being protected. A display commemorates those who have died in the line of duty, with spaces left for more.

  An exhibit hall features first chief William P. Wood’s 1865 letter of appointment from the solicitor of the treasury, a copy of Lee Harvey Oswald’s gun, and examples of counterfeit bills alongside real bills.

  The nerve center of the Secret Service is on the ninth floor. Here, in the Joint Operations Center, a handful of agents monitor the movements of protectees, whose code names and locations are displayed on light panels on the walls. When a protectee arrives at a new location, the agent who is assigned to intelligence and is traveling with him informs the Joint Operations Center. When protectees make unexpected trips, agents refer to the new assignment as a pop-up. Next to the Joint Ops Center, as agents refer to it, the Director’s Crisis Center is used to direct operations in emergencies such as the 9/11 attack.

  When a suspicious call comes in to the White House and an agent at headquarters listens in, the agent may pretend to be another operator helping out.

  “He is waiting for the magic word [that signifies a threat to the president],” a Secret Service agent explains. “He is tracing it.”

  The Forensic Services Division matches a recording of the call with voices in a database of other threat calls. No threat is ignored. If it can locate the individual, the Secret Service interviews him and evaluates how serious a threat he may be. Agents try to differentiate between real threats and speech that is a legitimate exercise of First Amendment rights.

  “If you don’t like the policies of the president, you can say it. That’s your right,” a Secret Service agent assigned to the vice president’s detail says. “We’re looking for those that cross the line and are threatening: ‘I’m going to get you. I’m going to kill you. You deserve to die. I know who can help kill you.’ Then his name is entered into the computer system.”

  Arrests for such threats are routine. For example, the Secret Service arrested Barry Clinton Eckstrom, fifty-one, who lives in Upper St. Clair, Pennsylvania, after a Secret Service agent, alerted that the man was sending threatening emails, saw him type the following into an email he was sending from a Pittsburgh area public library: “I hate and despise the scum President Bush! I am going to kill him in June on his father’s birthday.” Eckstrom was sentenced to two years in prison and two years of supervised release.

  If there is a problem at the White House, the Joint Ops Center can view the scene by remotely controlling surveillance cameras located outside and inside the complex. Any threatening letter or phone call to the White House is referred to the Secret Service. Most threats are in the form of letters addressed to the president, rather than emails or calls. Potential assa
ssins get a great sense of satisfaction by mailing a letter. They think that if they mail it, the president will personally read it.

  If a letter is anonymous, the Secret Service’s Forensic Services Division checks for fingerprints and analyzes the handwriting and the ink, matching it against the ninety-five hundred samples of ink in what is called the International Ink Library. To make the job easier, most ink manufacturers now add tags so the Secret Service can trace the ink. The characteristics of each specimen are in a digital database. Technicians try to match the ink with other threatening letters in an effort to trace its origin. They may scan the letter for DNA.

  The Secret Service’s Protective Intelligence and Assessment Division categorizes individuals according to how serious a threat they may pose.

  “There’s a formula that we go by,” says an agent. “It’s based on whether this person had prior military training, firearms training; a prior history of mental illness; and how effective he would be in carrying out a plan. You have to judge these things based on your interview with the subject, and then evaluate the seriousness of the threat.”

  Class III threats are the most serious. Close to a hundred people are on the list. These individuals are constantly checked on. Courts have given the Secret Service wide latitude in dealing with immediate threats to the president.

  “We will interview serious threats every three months and interview neighbors,” an agent says. “If we feel he is really dangerous, we monitor his movements almost on a daily basis. We monitor the mail. If he is in an institution, we put in stops so we will be notified if he is released.” If an individual is in an institution and has a home visit, “We are notified,” the agent says. “I guarantee there will be a car in his neighborhood to make sure he shows up at his house.”

  “If a call comes here, if you get a piece of correspondence, any form of communication, even a veiled threat, we run everything to the ground until we are certain that we either have to discontinue the investigation or we have to keep monitoring a subject for a prolonged period of time,” says Paula Reid, the special agent in charge of the Protective Intelligence and Assessment Division.

  If the president is traveling to a city where a Class III threat not confined to an institution lives, the Secret Service will show up at his door at some point before the visit. Intelligence advance agents will ask if the individual plans to go out and, if so, his destination. They will then conduct surveillance of the house and follow him if he leaves.

  Even if a Class III threat is locked up, an intelligence advance agent will visit him. Nothing is left to chance.

  “If they aren’t locked up, we go out and sit on them,” former agent William Albracht says. “You usually have a rapport with these guys because you’re interviewing them every quarter just to see how they’re doing, what they’re doing, if they are staying on their meds, or whatever. We knock on their door. We say, ‘How’re you doing, Freddy? President’s coming to town; what are your plans?’ What we always want to hear is, ‘I’m going to stay away’”

  “Well, guess what,” an agent will say. “We’re going to be sitting on you, so keep that in mind. Don’t even think about going to the event that the president will be at, because we’re going to be on you like a hip pocket. Where you go, we go. We’re going to be in constant contact with you and know where you are the entire time. Just be advised.”

  John W. Hinckley Jr., is still considered a Class III threat. In March 1981, he was found not guilty by reason of insanity in the shootings of President Reagan, Reagan press secretary James Brady, Secret Service Agent Timothy McCarthy, and D.C. police officer Thomas Delahanty. Since then, he has been confined to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington. But Hinckley is periodically allowed to leave the psychiatric hospital to visit his mother in Williamsburg, Virginia. If he visits Washington, his family notifies the Secret Service, and agents may conduct surveillance of him.

  In contrast to a Class III threat, a Class II individual has made a threat but does not appear to have the ability to carry it out.

  “He may be missing an element, like a guy who honestly thinks he can kill a president and has made the threat, but he’s a quadriplegic or can’t formulate a plan well enough to carry it out,” says an agent.

  Class II threats usually include people who are confined to a prison or mental hospital. According to a virulent rumor in state prisons, if a prisoner threatens the president and is convicted of the federal crime, he will be moved to a federal prison, where conditions are generally more favorable than in state prisons. For that reason, the Secret Service often encounters threats from prisoners. For example, in November 2008, Gordon L. Chadwick, age twenty-seven, threatened to kill President George W. Bush while serving a four-year state prison term in Houston for threatening a jail official. As happened in Chadwick’s case, a federal prison term for threatening the president is tacked on to the state prison term.

  After another state prisoner wrote a threatening letter to Bush, an agent arranged to meet with him. After driving three hours to the prison, the agent asked him if he knew why the agent was there.

  “Yep. When do I go to federal prison?” the man said.

  The prisoner added that he hoped to “see the country” and, since he was serving a life term, this would be his best opportunity. When the agent explained that he would be serving his state term first, the man said he had heard that threatening the president was the way to be transferred to a federal prison.

  “I could have strangled him,” the agent says.

  A Class I individual—the least serious threat—may have blurted out at a bar that he wants to kill the president.

  “You interview him, and he has absolutely no intention of carrying this threat out,” an agent says. “Agents will assess him and conclude, ‘Yeah, he said something stupid; yeah, he committed a federal crime. But we’re not going to charge him or pursue that guy’ You just have to use your discretion and your best judgment.”

  In most cases, a visit from Secret Service agents is enough to make anyone think twice about carrying out a plot. When Pope John Paul II visited Saint Louis in January 1999, the Secret Service, which was protecting him, received a report about a man seen driving a camper in the city. On the sides of the camper were inscriptions such as “The Pope Should Die” and “The Pope Is the Devil.”

  Through the reported license plate number, the Secret Service tracked the man to an address, which turned out to be his mother’s home not far from Saint Louis. When interviewed by Secret Service agents, the man’s mother said her son was driving to the mountains in western Montana near Kalispell to see his brother.

  Norm Jarvis, the resident agent in charge, drove to the Kalispell area where the brother was supposed to be living. The forested area is vast. Like many who live in the area, the brother did not have an address. Jarvis hoped local law enforcement would know where he could start looking.

  “I was driving down the road, and lo and behold, coming the other way down the street, is this camper,” Jarvis says. “The Pope Should Die” and “The Pope Is the Devil” were written on the sides of the vehicle. The man driving the camper fit the description of the suspect. Jarvis could not believe his luck.

  “I spun my car around and turned on my lights and siren,” Jarvis says. “I got up alongside him and waved him over.”

  With the man’s wife sitting beside him, Jarvis interviewed the man, who said he had been in mental institutions and was off his medication. The man had no firearms, and Jarvis decided he was not capable of harming the Pope. Thus, he was a Class II threat. Jarvis took his fingerprints and photographed him. He warned him to stay away from Saint Louis during the Pope’s visit, and he suggested the man get some help.

  Jarvis called headquarters to report his contact with the suspect and the results of his initial findings. Within a few days, he finished writing a report and called the duty desk to say he was going to be sending it.

  “They told me the guy had killed himself wit
h his brother’s pistol,” Jarvis says. “His brother reported that he was so shook up after talking to me that he decided to end his life. He felt that he couldn’t escape the devil; the devil was going to find him. And then he shot himself.”

  5

  Searchlight

  IF LYNDON JOHNSON was out of control, the Secret Service found Richard Nixon and his family to be the strangest protectees. Like Johnson, Nixon—code-named Searchlight—did not sleep in the same bedroom with his wife. But unlike Johnson, who consulted Lady Bird on issues he faced, Nixon seemed to have no relationship with his wife, Pat.

  “He [Nixon] never held hands with his wife,” a Secret Service agent says.

  An agent remembers accompanying Nixon, Pat, and their two daughters during a nine-hole golf game near their home at San Clemente, California. During the hour and a half, “He never said a word,” the former agent says. “Nixon could not make conversation unless it was to discuss an issue…. Nixon was always calculating, seeing what effect it would have.”

  Unknown to the public, Pat Nixon—code-named Starlight—was an alcoholic who tippled martinis. By the time Nixon left the White House to live at San Clemente, Pat “was in a pretty good stupor much of the time,” an agent on Nixon’s detail says. “She had trouble remembering things.”

  “One day out in San Clemente when I was out there, a friend of mine was on post, and he hears this rustling in the bushes,” says another agent who was on Nixon’s detail. “You had a lot of immigrants coming up on the beach, trying to get to the promised land. You never knew if anybody’s going to be coming around the compound.”

  At that point, the other agent “cranks one in the shotgun. He goes over to where the rustling is, and it’s Pat,” the former agent says. “She’s on her hands and knees. She’s trying to find the house.”