In the President's Secret Service

by Ronald Kessler

  Jarvis asked her to pinpoint where the limo was. She said it was at the air force base near Enid. He asked if she could take him to it; she agreed.

  As they drove to the base, Jarvis asked the woman a series of questions to see if she had learned the location of the vehicle through some other means besides her clairvoyance: Did she know anyone who worked at the base? Had anyone told her that they had seen a cargo plane unload a limousine at the base?

  As they drove toward the five hangars on the base, the woman gave Jarvis directions.

  “As we got close to this one hangar, she said to slow down,” Jarvis says.

  “Something is in that building right there,” the woman said.

  “What do you mean?” Jarvis asked.

  “Something important is in that building there.”

  “Okay, but not the limo?”

  “No,” the woman said.

  As they drove past another hangar, the woman said it contained the limo. She then identified another hangar as containing something important.

  Jarvis’s hunch was that the limo was in the firehouse bordering the runways. As it turned out, he was wrong and the psychic was right. Secret Service agents guard the president’s limo until he steps into it. Jarvis checked with them and learned that the hangar identified by the psychic as housing the limo did indeed contain two presidential limousines.

  Jarvis mentioned to the woman that the president usually sits on the right side. She insisted that he would be sitting behind the driver. As the woman walked back to Jarvis’s car, he asked the special officer in charge of security for the limos what was in the other two hangars she had identified as containing something important.

  “He said one contains Marine One, and the other contains other important assets for the president in case of emergencies,” Jarvis says.

  Jarvis immediately briefed supervisors at the Secret Service Intelligence Division duty desk in Washington.

  “You guys are going to think I’m crazy,” he said, and then related the information about the vision and how the woman had correctly led him to the president’s limo.

  As Jarvis saw it, “We deal in the bizarre all the time. Nothing’s too wacky that hasn’t come across the duty desk report sheet. You’re just straight up and lay it out the way you see it. And together you examine and turn the thing over and make a determination.”

  At one A.M., Jarvis called the head of the advance team and briefed him. However, since the psychic seemed to have been wrong about what clothes Bush would be wearing and about where he would be sitting, they dismissed their concerns. Still, that morning before Bush left for Oklahoma, the head of the advance team informed detail leaders based in W-16 at the White House about the bizarre tale.

  Jarvis then discussed the matter with the agent in charge of the motorcade. He asked if the motorcade route would take the president by an overpass. The agent said it would.

  “Do you have an alternate motorcade route?”

  “Sure. We always do,” the agent replied.

  That morning, Air Force One landed. Known by the Secret Service code name Angel, Air Force One got its name when Dwight D. Eisenhower—code-named Providence—was president. Prior to that, the aircraft used by Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman had been known by air force designations. Because a flight controller mistook the president’s plane for a commercial one, the pilot suggested calling the plane the president was using Air Force One.

  The current presidential plane is a Boeing 747-200B bubble top jumbo jet acquired in 1990 when George H. W. Bush was president. It has a range of 9,600 miles and a maximum cruising altitude of 45,100 feet. It cruises at six hundred miles per hour but can achieve speeds of seven hundred one miles per hour. In addition to two pilots, a navigator, and a flight engineer, the 231-foot-long plane carries Air Force One stewards and seventy-six passengers. The plane has eighty-seven telephones.

  While the average 747 has 485,000 feet of electrical wire, the presidential plane has 1.2 million feet, all shielded from the electromagnetic pulses that would be emitted during a nuclear blast. Near the front of the six-story-high plane, the president has an executive suite with a stateroom, dressing room, and bathroom with shower. The president also has a private office near the stateroom and a combination dining room and conference room. Toward the back are areas for the staff, Secret Service, guests, and the press.

  Under Federal Aviation Administration regulations, Air Force One takes precedence over all other aircraft. When approaching an airport, it bumps other planes that preceded it into the airspace. Before it lands, Secret Service agents on the ground check the runway for explosives or objects such as stray tires. Generally, other aircraft may not land on the same runway for fifteen or twenty minutes before Air Force One lands.

  As Bush walked out to the ramp, Jarvis stared at him in amazement. Bush was not wearing a suit. He had on an outdoor jacket and an open-collar shirt, just as the psychic had said he would. Jarvis exchanged glances with the advance leader, who had a shocked look on his face. Then Bush walked down the steps and got into the limousine’s right side, his usual position. Jarvis started to relax. But after giving a short speech in Enid, Bush invited some friends to sit with him in the limo for the drive back to the airport. They got in first—on the right side. So Bush walked around the limo and sat down on the left side behind the driver. Again, the psychic had been right.

  The advance leader decided the psychic could not be ignored. Never mind if anyone thought they were crazy. Better safe than sorry, he and Jarvis thought.

  The advance leader ordered the motorcade to take the alternate route, which did not go by the overpass. No harm befell Bush.

  The president was never told what had happened.

  19

  Eagle

  SECRET SERVICE AGENTS refer to what they call Clinton Standard Time. That is a reference to the fact that Bill Clinton—code-named Eagle—is often one to two hours late. To Clinton, an itinerary with scheduled appointments was merely a “suggestion,” former agent William Albracht says.

  Sometimes Clinton was late because he was playing a game of hearts with his staff. Other times he ignored his schedule because he wanted to chat with a janitor or hotel worker he happened to meet.

  Back in May 1993, Clinton ordered Air Force One to wait on the tarmac at Los Angeles International Airport while he got a haircut from Christophe Schatteman, a Beverly Hills hairdresser whose clients have included Nicole Kidman, Goldie Hawn, and Steven Spielberg.

  “We flew out of San Diego to L.A. to pick him up,” recalls James Saddler, a steward on the fateful trip. “Some guy came out and said he was supposed to cut the president’s hair. Christophe cut his hair, and we took off. We were on the ground for an hour.”

  While Clinton got his haircut on the plane, two LAX runways were closed. Because that meant all incoming and outgoing flights had to be halted, passengers were inconvenienced throughout the country.

  The press reported that the haircut cost two hundred dollars, Christophe’s fee at the time for a cut in his salon at 348 North Beverly Drive. But Howard Franklin, the chief Air Force One steward, tells me Schatteman told him on the plane that his charge for the cut was five hundred dollars, equal to seven hundred fifty dollars today, adjusted for inflation. Staffers informed Franklin that someone at a Democratic fund-raiser paid it.

  When he learned of the flight delays, Clinton expressed anger at his staff for arranging the haircut. But it was his hair that was being cut, and he had given the orders to delay takeoff. As president, he was aware that if Air Force One sat on a runway, air traffic would be halted.

  Clinton White House staffers ardently tried to turn the fiasco into a plus. “Is he still the president of the common man?” White House communications director George Stephanopoulos was asked at his daily White House briefing. “Absolutely” he responded. “I mean, the president has to get his hair cut. Everybody has to get their hair cut. … I think he does have the right to choose who he w
ants to cut his hair.”

  After Clinton’s inauguration, Franklin told Clinton’s advance people that “the key to being effective was planning.” That idea brought a vigorous retort. “They said, ‘We got here by being spontaneous, and we’re not going to change,’” Franklin recalls. Besides an aversion to planning, Clinton and his people brought with them the attitude that “the military were people who couldn’t get jobs,” Franklin says.

  If Clinton was often late, Hillary Clinton could make Richard Nixon look benign. Everyone on the residence staff recalled what happened when Christopher B. Emery, a White House usher, committed the sin of returning Barbara Bush’s call after she had left the White House. Emery had helped Barbara learn to use her laptop. Now she was having computer trouble. Twice Emery helped her out. For that, Hillary Clinton fired him.

  The father of four, Emery could not find another job for a year. According to W. David Watkins, a presidential assistant in charge of administration, Hillary was also behind the mass firings of White House travel office employees.

  When Hillary found a hapless White House electrician changing a lightbulb in the residence, she began yelling at him because she had ordered that all repair work was to be done when the first family was out.

  “She caught the guy on a ladder doing the lightbulb,” says Franette McCulloch, the assistant White House pastry chef. “He was a basket case.”

  “When she’s in front of the lights, she turns it on, and when the lights are off and she’s away from the lights, she’s a totally different person,” says an agent who was on her detail. “She’s very angry and sarcastic and is very hard on her staff. She yells at them and complains.”

  In her book Living History, Hillary Clinton wrote of her gratitude to the White House staff. The truth was, says a Secret Service agent, “Hillary did not speak to us. We spent years with her. She never said thank you.”

  Agents found that Clinton’s vice president, Al Gore—code-named Sundance—was cut from the same cloth. Every agent has heard that when Gore was bawling out his son, Al Gore III, over poor performance at school, he warned him, “If you don’t straighten up, you won’t get into the right schools, and if you don’t get into the right schools, you could end up like these guys.”

  Gore motioned toward the agents protecting him.

  “Sometimes Gore would come out of the residence, get into the car, and he wouldn’t even give the guys the coachman’s nod. Nothing,” former agent Albracht says. “It was like we didn’t exist. We were only there to facilitate him to get from point A to point B.” As professionals, Albracht says, “We do not have to like you to protect you, but it can make the long hours a bit more tolerable.”

  In contrast to Gore, his wife, Tipper, was so friendly with agents that she would play pranks, spraying them with water from a spritzer bottle she used after running. However, “She always insisted on male agents,” says former agent Chomicki, who was on Gore’s detail. “She didn’t want any female agents on the protection squad.”

  Like Clinton, Gore was often late. One time he showed up an hour late for a dinner with the mayor of Beijing. Another time a Secret Service helicopter that was to shadow him in Las Vegas almost ran out of fuel because Gore was so late coming out of his hotel.

  “The schedule would call for him to leave the vice president’s residence at seven-fifteen A.M.,” former agent Dave Saleeba says. “At seven-thirty A.M, we would check on him, and he would be eating a muffin at the pool.”

  Gore “wouldn’t come out of the vice president’s residence on time,” Chomicki says. “He’d have an appointment at the White House, he’d get into the car and say, ‘Could you speed it up, but don’t use the lights and sirens? Get me there as fast as you can.’”

  The Secret Service was not about to speed in traffic without lights and sirens. But agents quickly came up with a solution.

  “The special agent in charge would come on the radio and say, ‘Yeah, let’s move as quick as we can but safely’” Chomicki says. “He’d do it just for the entertainment of the vice president.” Without pressing the button to transmit, another agent would pretend to say into the radio, “Hey, let’s go, speed it up,” Chomicki says. “That would satisfy Gore in the backseat.”

  Gore never carried money with him and would borrow from Secret Service agents when he needed some. One of Gore’s daughters was graduating from high school, and Gore attended a reception with a cash bar at Old Ebbitt Grill for the families of the graduates.

  “So Gore goes up and tries to get a glass of wine, and they want money,” recalls Chomicki.

  “How much money you got?” Gore asked Chomicki.

  Jokingly, Chomicki said, “I do real good. I’m a special agent. I make a lot of money.”

  Gore explained that he had to pay for drinks.

  “What do you need, twenty dollars?” Chomicki asked.

  “That’ll work,” Gore said.

  Chomicki handed a twenty-dollar bill to Gore, who later paid him back.

  “I think he always thought, ‘I’m the vice president. I don’t have to pay for anything,’” Chomicki says.

  Gore would insist on low-calorie healthy food, but whenever he saw food, he would grab some. “We used to laugh at that,” Chomicki says. “Usually, when they have a holding room, it’s standard that wherever you go, the host is always going to put something out just to be courteous. Al Gore couldn’t pass on a cookie. There wasn’t a cookie he didn’t like. He’d work hard at trying to keep his weight down. You saw after he got out of office how he bulked up.”

  As part of his health kick, Gore arranged to have bottled water delivery and a refrigerated dispenser at the residence. As part of routine security precautions, the Secret Service would test the water at the vice president’s residence. “They’ve got this phenomenal water purification system in both the White House and the vice president’s residence,” says former agent Chomicki. “We would test the water once a month, and the technical security guys used to come up and take samples from all the sinks and taps.”

  But Chomicki, a Secret Service supervisor, noticed that the bottled water was not being tested. After he suggested that it be tested as well, the Secret Service sent samples of the water to the Environmental Protection Agency for testing. Two days later, EPA called Chomicki. A shocked technician told him the water at the vice president’s residence was laced with bacteria.

  “He said the EPA had to expand its graph to be able to count the number of bacteria,” Chomicki recalls. “The water could cause headaches, diarrhea, and stomachaches.”

  As a result of the test findings, the EPA confiscated huge batches of water from the bottled water company.

  20

  Cutting Corners

  AFTER 9/11, THE Secret Service faced a double whammy. On the one hand, in a reflexive effort to show that the government was doing something to improve security, President George W. Bush and Congress created the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), an amalgam of twenty-two agencies with 180,000 employees. On March 1, 2003, the Secret Service was transferred from the Treasury Department to the new agency. After being a star at the treasury, the Secret Service became a stepchild competing for funds with other agencies, which were often dysfunctional.

  On the other hand, demands on the Secret Service grew exponentially. As outlined in my book The Terrorist Watch: Inside the Desperate Race to Stop the Next Attack, al-Qaeda’s goal is to deal a devastating blow to America, preferably with nuclear weapons. After 9/11, that threat meant that protection of the president and vice president needed to be much more extensive and robust.

  In response to the attacks, President Bush roughly doubled the number of individuals given Secret Service protection to twenty-seven permanent protectees, plus ten family members. Another seven were protected when traveling abroad. By executive order, Bush provided protection to individuals such as his chief of staff and national security adviser. Others, such as the secretaries of the treasury and of homeland security re
ceived protection because they are in the line of succession to the presidency. As such, they are authorized to receive protection as decided by the secretary of homeland security. Some officials received only partial protection, such as when traveling to and from work.

  The Secret Service’s expanded protective duties came in addition to protecting visiting heads of state and their spouses and other official guests, an enlargement of Secret Service duties authorized by Congress in 1971. Under the Presidential Threat Protection Act of 2000, the Secret Service was also charged with planning and implementing security arrangements at “special events of national significance.”

  The winter Olympics in Salt Lake City in 2002 was the first such event under the act. Prior to that, under a directive issued by President Clinton in 1998, some events such as the president’s State of the Union address had a similar designation. Other so-called national special security events are the United Nations General Assembly, presidential inaugurals, the Democratic and Republican nominating conventions, the Super Bowl, G8 summits, and a major visit such as Pope Benedict XVI’s trip to the United States in 2008. The state funerals of Presidents Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford were also designated national special security events. At these events, the Secret Service is the lead law enforcement agency and coordinates all security arrangements.

  While the vice president’s protective detail now has a hundred fifty agents and the president’s detail has three hundred agents, the details are stretched thin. These same agents undertake advance work for trips that often take place every day. With the 2008 presidential campaign being the longest in history, demands on the Secret Service went through the roof.