In the President's Secret Service

by Ronald Kessler

  Before the Cheneys’ daughter Mary—code-named Alpine—had a child, the Secret Service provided full protection to only her older sister, Elizabeth, since she had kids. Mary received partial protection: Agents drove her to and from work. But Mary seemed to feel competitive.

  “She got all up in arms because we sat outside her sister’s house all night long. She said, ‘Well, I think I should have that, too,’” an agent says.

  Mary also complained about the Secret Service vehicle assigned to her.

  “She saw that her sister had a brand-new Suburban,” an agent who was on her detail says. “Mary had an older vehicle. She was like, why can’t I have one? Next thing you know, within a day or two, she has a brand-new Suburban from the Secret Service sitting out there in front of her house.”

  When her Suburban sustained some damage, the Secret Service chauffeured her in the older vehicle until the new one could be repaired.

  “When she saw her old vehicle was brought back to use as her limo, she threw a fit,” an agent says. “She called bosses demanding her Suburban be brought back immediately, not realizing that it takes time to make repairs on a damaged vehicle.”

  Mary objected to agents standing post overnight at the back of her home. She said they disturbed her dogs.

  “I don’t even know what the back side of her house looks like because she won’t let us walk around the back because of the dogs,” an agent who was on her detail says. “Her dogs start barking. It gets them all upset if we go back there. So [we had] some cameras angled back there. But your hands are tied. It’s a thankless job anyway but then you’ve got protectees who mandate how you’re going to do your job.”

  When Mary demanded that the Secret Service shuttle her friends out to restaurants, her detail leader objected. She had the agent removed from her detail.

  Asked for comment, Mary Cheney said, “These stories are simply not true, and I have nothing but the utmost respect for the men and women of the Secret Service. I am deeply appreciative of everything they have done to keep my family safe over the last eight years.”

  Often, protectees think of Secret Service agents as personal servants, there to act as gofers. When he was running for president, Edmund Muskie demanded that the Secret Service carry his golf bags.

  “He took vacations in Kennebunkport,” a veteran agent says. “He would play eighteen holes of golf every day. He would cheat and kick the ball into the hole with his foot and pick it up and put it in. An agent would not carry his golf bags [after Muskie asked him to]. It reduces our effectiveness.”

  But with a gracious woman like Lynne Cheney, agents happily offered to help with her bags. “To her credit, she shops a lot, and she’ll come out with all kinds of bags, and she’s never once that I know of ever asked us to help,” says an agent on her detail. “Probably because she doesn’t ask us, we go ahead and volunteer.”

  Like the Bushes, Dick and Lynne Cheney were always on time and were well-liked by the Secret Service. The Cheneys invited agents and their families to the Christmas party they gave every year and took photos with them.

  “I remember that I was probably the one hundred sixtieth click that afternoon, but when my kids walked up, Mrs. Cheney acted like we were the first picture of the day,” an agent who was on the vice president’s detail says. “She squatted down and reached out and hugged my little girl, and it really meant a lot to me.”

  As with the Cheneys, agents thought highly of most members of Bush’s staff and Cabinet.

  “Karl Rove loved the counterassault team,” says an agent. “He would always come by and talk to us. He took photos with us. Any time he saw us in the CAT truck, he would come over and say hello. Always smiling, always joking, a real nice man.”

  “Karl Rove has a phenomenal reputation within the service, taking care of the guys,” another agent says. “Andy Card, same thing.”

  In general, agents found the Bush administration to be much more friendly and appreciative of what agents do than most other administrations. In the Bush administration, there were two exceptions: Treasury Secretary John Snow and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. Agents considered Ridge the cheapest protectee they had ever known. On weekends, he would return to his home in Erie, Pennsylvania. So he would not have to pay for his own plane ticket, he would insist that agents drive him—a trip of more than six hours, one way.

  “The guy would make them motorcade to Erie, Pennsylvania, almost every other weekend, or every weekend, because he didn’t want to pay for a plane ticket,” an agent who was on his detail says. “If the guy found a free meal, he was there. His reputation in the service was he was the biggest cheapskate ever.”

  Instead of buying a newspaper at hotels, Ridge would ask agents for their copy of the paper.

  “If somebody said, ‘Hey Mr. Secretary, appreciate it. Meal’s on us,’ Ridge would go back there the next night to the same restaurant and see how long he could milk a free meal from this place,” an agent says.

  Agents liked John Snow because he loved to chat and joke with them.

  “John Snow was kind of a pretty cool protectee, in that he knew every guy on the detail,” an agent says. “He’d sit in the back of his limo, and he’d talk with you. It was like a group of guys hanging out.”

  But Snow, a former chairman and chief executive officer of CSX Corporation, had what agents on his detail believed was a mistress in Richmond where he and his wife lived. While Snow rented and later bought an apartment in Washington, he would travel back to his hometown almost every weekend, incurring huge expenses for taxpayers because the Secret Service had to drive him the two hours to Richmond and stay in hotels.

  The Secret Service gave the woman the unofficial code name Area 51, after the supersecret air force testing ground that gives rise to conspiracy theories.

  Now chairman of Cerberus Capital Management, which owns 80.1 percent of Chrysler Corp., Snow commented through his Richmond lawyer Richard Cullen, a former Virginia state attorney general and personal friend of the Snows for more than twenty-five years:

  “John Snow did not have an affair…. The agents who refuse to identify themselves in making this accusation are simply and sadly very wrong.”

  Agents who were on Snow’s detail say otherwise. Snow “was messing around quite a bit, and it was pretty disturbing to the guys on the detail, because we knew we were away from home for the express purpose of him to meet up with his mistress,” says a former agent who was on his detail.

  When the woman’s husband was out at church on Sunday mornings, “The secretary [Snow] would say, ‘Oh, I’ve got to drop a book at their house,’” an agent recalls. Or Snow would say he had just found an article in the Richmond paper he would like to give them.

  “That was grating on us, because we had to spend every weekend in Richmond, and during the week he was traveling pushing Social Security reform, so we were on the road all week,” a current agent says. “We were never home. And it pissed us off no end to realize that the only reason we were in Richmond was for the secretary to mess around.”

  One morning, another agent was walking by the front window of Snow’s house in Richmond and saw Snow and the alleged mistress kissing. She would also fly to Washington to see Snow at his rented apartment near what agents refer to as the Hinckley Hilton, the Washington Hilton.

  “She knew all of us by name,” the former agent says. “She’d just come out of the woodwork out of nowhere and say, ‘Hey guys!’ We’d go on hikes, and they’d be there. She was always around.”

  “He really thought he had us fooled on that one,” another agent says. “She would show up at like a hotel in New York, and he would act like, ‘Oh, look who it is!’”

  Early on, after Snow was appointed treasury secretary in February 2003, he would travel to Richmond with his Secret Service detail on Saturdays and return on Sundays.

  “It didn’t take long for him to realize that he could leave fairly early on Friday, come back late Sunday,” an agent who w
as on his detail says. “And then it didn’t take long much past that to realize that he could get there early Friday, leave Monday morning, and make it to work on time. So it became Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday.”

  Snow resigned in June 2006. By then, “He would leave on Thursdays, come back on Monday,” an agent remembers. “So that makes five days in Richmond. And he was going every weekend.”

  “I think he legitimately liked Richmond,” says an agent. “He had a nice place on the river with a nice big pool. But you’ve got six or seven guys on the detail, he’s spending four or five days a week in Richmond. You do the numbers, and you’re running out of bodies pretty quick to cover that.”

  Snow’s wife rarely came to Washington and seemed to despise the agents.

  When Snow was in town, she expected agents to bring in the mail and the newspaper. The mail was not screened, and agents are not supposed to perform personal errands. While some agents did so as favors, most did not.

  One Sunday, Snow’s wife came out in her bathrobe and asked an agent, “Why don’t you deliver the paper?”

  “It’s not my job to deliver your paper; you can get your own paper,” the agent responded.

  “That didn’t go over too well,” the former agent says. “I was there to keep the secretary unharmed—as well as her, if possible—but I most certainly was not her paper boy.”

  “Nothing amazes me anymore, but apparently she [Snow’s wife] didn’t suspect anything,” an agent says. “It was going on the entire time he was under our protection, and it was obviously going on prior to that. It was just more convenient with us around.”

  The agents say there was one close call. One Sunday when Snow was with his alleged mistress, her husband came home from church early.

  “One of our agents saw what was happening,” says an agent. “To his credit, he got out of his vehicle and started making as much noise as he could.” Loudly, the agent called out the husband’s name and said to him, “Hey, great to see you.” The agent slammed the doors of his Suburban. As the husband was walking into his house, Snow came out, his hair messed up.

  What infuriated the agents was the way Snow seemed to think he was pulling the wool over their eyes. On one occasion, Snow said he wanted to go for a walk.

  “He gets into the car, and we take off, and he says, ‘Go down this road down here,’ which was a dead end with a museum at the end. Well, we get down there, and she’s [the alleged mistress] down there with the hood of her car up.”

  Snow said, “Oh, looky here! What’s happened here?”

  Saying her car had broken down, the woman asked for jumper cables to help charge the battery. Sensing a ruse, one of the agents suggested they try starting the car first. Snow insisted that would not work. After the jumper cables were attached, the car started without any hesitation.

  “We better follow her home, just to make sure the car doesn’t cut off again,” Snow said.

  “So we get her home, and he’s there for about an hour, hour and a half,” an agent says.

  “He thought we weren’t smart enough to realize what was going on,” another agent says. “That’s what really drove a lot of guys crazy.”

  In denying that Snow had an affair with Area 51, Snow’s lawyer Cullen put the author in touch with Tom Greenaway the leader of Snow’s detail for the first half of his term. Greenaway said that the woman in question was not Snow’s mistress.

  “I was with him fifteen hours a day, sometimes twenty-five days a month,” Greenaway said.

  As it turns out, Greenaway became a golfing buddy of Snow’s while he was protecting him. That is considered a no-no in the Secret Service because a personal friendship could lead an agent to do favors beyond his duties or to back down on security issues. In addition, agents who become friends with top protectees may start trying to push their weight around with their bosses.

  In response to a question, Greenaway acknowledged that the Secret Service tried to give him what he called a “punitive” transfer after he had a disagreement with management. He confirmed that Snow intervened with the Secret Service director to delay any transfer off Snow’s detail for several months until after the 2004 election. Greenaway said he then retired.

  Cullen said neither Snow nor his family “improperly used the services of the U.S. Secret Service detail assigned to him. The Secret Service is required to protect the secretary of the treasury” Cullen said. “Protection is mandatory. It is not discretionary. Nor is it assigned on the basis of a threat assessment for a particular event or trip.”

  Cullen said that Snow considers Secret Service agents “professional, brave, and extremely hard-working.” While Snow is “surprised and saddened that a former Secret Service agent would be a source of any information—particularly anonymous, erroneous information—going into a book, he believes that the honor and historic tradition of the Secret Service will remain intact, and he recalls with great fondness and affection the brave members of his detail,” the lawyer said.

  In view of that, the lawyer said, Snow is “surprised that you would imply in your book that he had asked or demanded that his detail ever deviate from their proper role.”

  Snow’s lawyer is correct in saying that the treasury secretary, along with others in the line of succession to the presidency, is required to have Secret Service protection when the secretary of homeland security authorizes it. But he is wrong in saying that the book suggests that Snow asked that his detail deviate from their proper role.

  If a government official under protection decides to travel from Washington every weekend to see his mistress or his wife or to take in a movie, the Secret Service is required to provide protection. The question is whether the protectee should be taking such trips knowing that taxpayers are footing the bill.

  27

  Renegade

  THE SECRET SERVICE began protecting Barack Obama on May 3, 2007, eighteen months before votes for president were to be cast. It was the earliest point at which the Secret Service had ever protected a presidential candidate. In contrast, in the 2004 election, John Kerry and John Edwards began receiving protection in February of that year, eight months before the general election. Michelle Obama began receiving protection on February 2, 2008. It would turn out to be the longest and most demanding presidential campaign in history.

  Strapped for agents and facing rising attrition rates, the Secret Service began planning for the campaign in January 2005. In February of that year, the service asked most of its 3,404 agents for their preferences on types of candidate protection assignments. For example, agents can ask to join a general protection shift, operations and logistics, or transportation details. Agents were given special training at the Rowley center so that members of each detail to be assigned to a future candidate would get used to working together. Agents who would drive candidates were given refresher courses. The campaign also would require the support of twelve hundred Uniformed Division officers.

  By law, the Secret Service provides protection of major presidential and vice presidential candidates and their spouses. The secretary of homeland security determines who the major candidates are after consulting with an advisory committee consisting of the speaker and minority leader of the House, the majority and minority leaders of the Senate, and one additional member selected by the other members of the committee.

  The secretary of homeland security also decides when protection begins. Protection of spouses starts a hundred twenty days before the general election, unless authorized before that by DHS or by executive order. To protect a presidential candidate, the Secret Service spends an extra thirty-eight thousand dollars a day beyond agents’ existing salaries. That includes airline tickets for agents and for advance personnel, rental cars, meals, and overtime.

  At one point, based on the public record, the Secret Service counted fifteen potential presidential candidates. As it turned out, three presidential candidates received protection. As a former first lady, Hillary Clinton already had Secret Se
rvice protection.

  While Obama never received a specific threat before his protection started, agents on the Secret Service’s Internet Threat Desk picked up a number of vaguely threatening and nasty comments, mostly directed at the fact that he is African American. Many of the comments appeared on white supremacist websites and said Obama would be assassinated if he took office. Even before Obama decided to run, Michelle Obama expressed concerns to her husband that a black candidate for president could be in jeopardy because of his race.

  In the end, says Steven Hughes, deputy special agent in charge of the dignitary protection division, “We really picked him up because he asked for the protection, and then it goes through a whole process of whether we will protect him or not, and it’s really not driven by the Secret Service. It’s something that he asked for, and the secretary of homeland security and the president ultimately said he is a viable candidate, and it’s a go for protection.”

  As Hughes speaks, he checks a text message on his BlackBerry It’s a report from the Protective Intelligence and Assessment Division of a threat against a candidate.

  “I’m getting them all day long, updates on whether someone on the Internet says something or someone that’s drunk says something,” Hughes says. “Whether it’s very minor or very major, they’re going to send it to me, so I can’t say I didn’t know that was happening.”

  Asked if he ever gets any sleep, Hughes says, “With the U.N. coming up next week, where we have an incredible amount of protectees, yeah, we don’t have time to sleep now.”

  By August 2008, the Secret Service had arrested Raymond H. Geisel in Miami after he made a threat against candidate Obama in a training class for bail bondsmen. Two members of the class heard Geisel say, “If he gets elected, I’ll assassinate him myself.” When arrested, Geisel had a loaded nine-millimeter handgun, knives, dozens of rounds of ammunition, body armor, a machete, and military-style fatigues in his hotel room. He was charged with threatening a presidential candidate.