by Dan Emmett
Soon after returning to Charlotte in August 1983, I received orders to report to the final phase of agent training at the JJRTC for SATC 84. Our class was to run from September through October 1983, and it would be here that I would learn the part of being a Secret Service agent that interested me the most: protection.
Our new home would be the General Scott Hotel, in a very bad neighborhood of Washington, DC, on Rhode Island Avenue, not far from our main classroom building, which was located during those days at 1310 L Street. Over the years, this area has been cleaned up, and it is scarcely recognizable today as the same place. In those days, if you walked out of the hotel and turned left you would live to see another day, but if you turned right you could be murdered in seconds. This was during a time when new agents reported for training with the issued revolver, so at least we had protection.
Unlike at FLETC, where two agents shared a small room, at the Scott we had no roommate. The rooms at General Scott were old but comfortable, and quite large, with two double beds. There was also a parking garage below the hotel where you could park at no cost.
The Scott was a three-dollar cab ride to Georgetown, which had the richest social environment for young men to be found anywhere in the United States, as far as we were concerned. Everyone could see that this was going to be a great deal more enjoyable than the spartan digs we had endured at FLETC. And we were given a stipend to pay for our hotel and living expenses, unlike at FLETC, where we lived on base, with everything provided.
Most of our instructors were fresh from the field or a protective detail. They all had a laid-back demeanor, and few, if any, were in any kind of decent physical shape. There were one or two instructors who conducted fitness classes, and they were it as far as PT instructors went. My two special agent class coordinators were both new from the detail and never worked out with us. We saw one of them in the morning, then again in the evening before we swooped out of the building and into Georgetown, usually to a bar known as The Sign of the Whale, where we would relax from a long day of training.
Still, management let it be known that any of us could be sent home at any time with absolutely no warning or explanation, and that we were under constant evaluation. Given the amount of rope reeled out by the service, some students did come dangerously close to hanging themselves at times, and that was part of the plan. An agent frequently works alone as well as with a team, and each must be trustworthy enough to work within the lines of conduct established by the Secret Service. In many cases there is no one to monitor agents on the road, and they are simply expected to do their work in a professional, unobtrusive manner. Hence the philosophy of laissez-faire training. If a man tripped up in training, he would most certainly trip up in the world. If he did foul up conduct-wise in training, he would be dismissed, and some in other classes were.
The most intense part of our training, mandatory for employment, was firearms. Almost every day we fired hundreds of rounds of ammunition so that by the end of the week, each man could scarcely hold a gun. Shoulders grew sore and faces swollen from the recoil of 12-gauge shotguns with sharp metal folding stocks. But as a result of this training we were all becoming very proficient with these lethal tools of our trade. All in my class were super-competitive alpha males, and there was no such thing as a relaxed day of shooting. In any course of fire, whether it was with the revolver, submachine gun, or shotgun, we all tried our best to outdo each other, with the loser buying the beer at our next social outing, which usually occurred that evening.
Secret Service Uniformed Division firearms instructors provide this firearms training. They are arguably the finest firearms instructors in the world. Each is an expert in the use of all weapons utilized by the Secret Service, as well as possessing the ability to convey this expertise to others. In some cases, this is no small feat, as some new trainees have never fired a weapon, while others possess so many bad traits and habits that they almost have to be trained from scratch.
As training progressed we all came to know and understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses and became like a family that worked, played, and occasionally fought together, but we were a family nonetheless. We might argue among ourselves, but woe to the poor soul who trifled with any man from my class. To push one of us was to push all.
I recall one late Saturday evening in a Georgetown bar when a young, somewhat intoxicated professional of some sort tried to start an altercation with a classmate. Had our classmate obliged, it would have been certain catastrophe for the drunken hero. This young man, emboldened from too much alcohol, was unhappy with the fact that his female companion was paying more attention to one of my friends than to him. He had apparently spent a great deal of time and money on this young woman, and he became a bit annoyed when she elected to leave with my friend instead of him. There were several of us sprinkled about the establishment. After making the unwise decision to push my friend to prove his bravery in front of this woman, the pseudo-tough guy found himself opening the door to the bar with his head while carried in a horizontal position by several perfectly attired Secret Service agents. It was all in good fun with nothing bruised other than perhaps the offender’s head and deflated ego. Although the bouncer found the situation amusing, he suggested we find another place to finish out the evening, but he invited us to come back soon. We gladly complied with both of his requests.
INSTRUCTORS MADE OF IRON AND INSTRUCTORS WHO THREW IRON
A number of instructors were tasked with shaping us into agents, and each had his own area of expertise and approach to teaching. Our primary hand-to-hand combat instructor was into competitive martial arts, and he was a very unusual guy. During competitions and training sessions he had broken most of his fingers. Two or three digits still pointed at odd angles, and he delighted in being the object of a demonstration. He seemed to love pain.
One such demonstration included having another instructor kick him full force in the groin; he would display zero emotion and no change in facial expression. As a result of his unique talent for ignoring pain, we referred to him as “Iron Balls,” but of course never where he could hear us.
Most, but not all, of these instructors were fun people who enjoyed their work, including the somewhat seemingly demented hand-to-hand instructor. One instructor, who did not seem to fall into the category of even approachable, did, however, seem to enjoy throwing cast-iron training handguns at the head of any student he did not feel was paying attention to the lesson. These dummy weapons were designed for official training purposes, although they could also be used unofficially to deliver a point, as a classmate discovered.
One day, a student was not paying attention, and this instructor let fly with the training weapon, striking the student squarely in the head drawing considerable blood and nearly knocking him unconscious. The instructor looked at my bleeding classmate, who was beginning to resemble a case from the ER, and spelled his name for the student in case he wanted to file a complaint. We looked at each other and looked down at our colleague, each of us with an “oh, shit” look on our faces, and then helped him to the emergency medicine office, where he was tended to and promptly returned to class. Even if my friend had required stitches and hospitalization, which, fortunately, he did not, there would have been no complaint filed.
This particular instructor became one of our best friends after graduation. He was from the old school, and simply believed that hard lessons were the ones best remembered. Being a graduate of the Marine Corps school of pain presided over by Staff Sergeant McLean, I had no problem with this sort of thing and understood his methods. Then again, I was never struck in the head by a flying cast-iron handgun.
ELEVATORS AND DISLOCATED JOINTS
As with most who serve in the military and law enforcement, everyone in my class enjoyed life a great deal, and there was always something fun going on, usually at someone’s expense. One morning, that someone was me.
On this day, the class was sitting around the mat room and practicing
various holds on each other while waiting for our sadomasochistic instructor to arrive. Without warning, I was seized by three of my classmates, who handcuffed my ankles together and my hands behind me. We had been practicing handcuffing, and I was duped into believing it was practice until I was carried like a freshly slain deer toward the elevator banks. Upon reaching the elevator, my classmates lowered my PT shorts to my knees and threw me into the elevator after pushing the buttons for all floors. Keep in mind that this was a main Secret Service building, where many people worked and rode the elevators each morning. Just before the door closed, my pals picked me up again, and this time delivered me to the women’s locker room, where I was unceremoniously deposited on the floor amid several female Secret Service employees in various stages of undress. Hearing screams of disapproval, my classmates returned to retrieve me, at which time I was delivered to the mat room and then released in time for class as if nothing had occurred. If this type of incident occurred today it would probably trigger a congressional investigation. In those days, this was considered good, clean fun, and as usual, no complaints were lodged.
During the same session, while practicing a counter to a rear chokehold, I dislocated the elbow of my partner and good friend, who happened to have been one of my morning assailants. There was an audible pop heard by all in the mat room, he went pale, and his elbow was not in the place where it should have been. He was taken to George Washington Hospital, where his elbow was relocated to its normal place, and then he returned to training. Even today controversy about the issue still swirls, and I am asked whether or not I intentionally popped my friend’s elbow.
THE FORMAL FOLLOW-UP
A great deal of our training was both practical and fun. An example of this was training in how to operate out of the formal follow-up.
The vehicle behind the presidential limousine is called the follow-up, and each agent in the Secret Service is a virtuoso at jumping in and out of it while the vehicle is moving. In today’s super-modern Secret Service, this vehicle is an armored Chevrolet Suburban and does a fantastic job in its role of carrying the working shift and all of their equipment. In the 1980s, before the advent of giant all-wheel-drive SUVs, the Secret Service employed what were known as formal follow-ups. These were Cadillac sedans heavily modified with running boards, handrails, and convertible tops. Up until about 1990, almost all formal follow-ups were a version of this, and the shift usually rode with the top down if weather permitted. Upon slowing down and preparing for arrival, the shift would climb out onto the running boards while holding onto the handrails for a fast jump to the ground, where they could quickly surround the limo. It was the most impressive-looking thing the Presidential Protective Division did publicly, and new agents could not wait to try it.
Prior to the state-of-the-art drivers’ training now done at Rowley, all vehicle training was conducted at a nearby abandoned airstrip used by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), predecessor to the CIA during World War II. This was the setting for our formal follow-up training. The strip was a paved runway about thirty-five hundred feet long. It had not been used in decades for the intended purpose but provided a perfect place to run cars at full speed for thirty seconds or so.
Richard was our instructor for the day, had recently come to training from PPD, and was a bit of a wild man, a fact we were about to discover. The exercise began with Richard demonstrating to the class on a stationary follow-up how to mount the running boards, which foot went up first, and how to hold onto the handrails. He then demonstrated how to get off the boards safely while the vehicle was moving. After a few more demonstrations, it was time for us to give it a try.
We assumed that Richard was going to simply drive up and down the old runway at a slow speed a few times just to give us an idea of what the whole experience was like and to provide a basic familiarization. This was not the case.
With Richard behind the wheel, the car first moved out slowly, with four agents walking next to the follow-up and some inside for the ride. As the car gained speed, the agents walking alongside jumped on the boards in the prescribed manner and held on as Richard put the accelerator to the floor until he easily hit sixty miles per hour.
Approaching the end of the landing strip, Richard began to slow down in order to make a 180-degree turn and speed to the other end. As he turned left with tires squealing, the agents on the right-hand side were holding onto the rails with all their strength as Richard accelerated and the centrifugal force pushed to the outside of the turn. Then Richard sped flat-out to the other end of the runway, where he decelerated and turned, this time to the other side, nearly flinging off the students on the left side of the car, who were holding on white-knuckled, hoping not to lose their grip. Richard gave each car full of students several runs up and down the strip until he was convinced every agent knew how to work the formal follow-up. Like most of SATC, the exercise was a tremendous amount of fun, but we were all glad to be alive at the end of the day. We felt confident that we could certainly work the formal if called upon.
After eight weeks, graduation day finally arrived. The ceremony was held in a small room at 1310 L Street, Washington, DC, which barely accommodated the class of twenty-four and the small audience. Graduations from SATC are now gigantic productions accommodating over two hundred people and go on for an hour or so. In 1983 the proceedings lasted about fifteen minutes. I recall that the deputy director of the Secret Service made the commencement speech, but I do not recall anything more, as our class, much like FLETC, had enjoyed a vigorous graduation party the night before. With the presenting of diplomas, it was time to bid farewell to my friends and think about heading back to Charlotte, where I would begin my career in earnest.
CHAPTER 6
Back to Charlotte
On Halloween night, 1983, I returned from Washington, DC, to my apartment in Charlotte, North Carolina, having completed all required training to be a full-fledged agent. I was both exhausted and thrilled. During the six-hour drive home, I reflected on all that had happened in the six short months since I had been offered the job of Secret Service agent. In spite of the fact that training had been highly enjoyable, I was looking forward to some time alone to reflect a bit and sleep, which I did for most of the weekend. I was also looking forward to whatever assignments might come my way, even check investigations.
The following Monday, I reported to the office ready to go to work. One of the first things that happened upon my return was that my friend Mike and I, along with another agent, Ron, all of us rookies, were sent to Atlanta, Georgia, to work at an event for President Reagan. Atlanta was always a good town to visit, and with this being our first protective assignment since graduation, we were very enthusiastic. Even though we knew it would only be standing post at some obscure location in the general vicinity of President Reagan, it was still protection.
We arrived in Atlanta and checked into our hotel, where all out-of-district agents were staying, and immediately began to run into old friends from SATC. The first official activity was to attend the agent briefing. This is a gathering, usually in a hotel ballroom or conference room, at which the advance team from the presidential detail briefs all agents assigned to help with the visit. Each member of the advance team is introduced, and the itinerary of POTUS (the president of the United States) is read. Each agent is given general instructions regarding the event, including where and when to report the next day.
After the agent briefing, which lasted about an hour, most of the new agents on this trip proceeded to the hotel bar, where we began to mentally prepare for our next day’s assignments and compare stories about our respective field offices. Mr. Coates, the SAIC of Atlanta, was there, and I said hello to him, careful not to thank him for hiring me. I fondly remembered the verbal beating I had received a year earlier for my thank-you note. He asked me how the job was going, and I told him that it was going very well. It was also on this trip to Atlanta that I saw what would change my immediate career goal from getting t
o PPD as soon as possible to another assignment instead.
My assignment for the visit was standing post at the motorcade arrival and departure area to ensure that no one placed an explosive charge. While there, I saw five very fit-looking agents sitting in a Mercury station wagon with M16 rifles and semiautomatic pistols. This was a Secret Service Counter Assault Team (CAT).
CAT is one of the special, or tactical, teams of the Secret Service, and it is comprised of agents whose mission it is to respond with speed, surprise, and violence of action against organized attacks against the president. I had heard about CAT but knew little about the program, as it was fairly new and was practically classified at the time.
I walked over to the Mercury for a better look and started a conversation with the agent in the rear of the station wagon. He was also a former marine, and after I talked to him for a few minutes, I was so impressed I decided that CAT was where I wanted to go next in my career after my assignment in Charlotte ended. The CAT agent handed me a piece of paper that was like an application, of sorts, for the program, and told me to fill it out when I got back to Charlotte and send it back to him.
While talking to the CAT agent in Atlanta, it did not come up in conversation that an agent had to be at least a civil service grade GS-9 before applying to the program. I was a GS-5 and would not attain the grade of GS-9 for two more years. CAT would have to wait for the time being, but it was without doubt the next thing on my career scope.
CAMPAIGN 1984 AND TEMPORARY PROTECTION ASSIGNMENTS: SENATOR TED KENNEDY
The president of the United States may assign Secret Service protection to anyone he wishes. An example of someone who did not rate protection by law but received it by presidential directive was Senator Ted Kennedy. This type of detail is comprised of agents from various field offices like Charlotte. These small details that last for a few days to a few weeks are where junior agents learn the protection business. It is also where, for each young, idealistic agent, the reality hits that, contrary to popular belief, protection is anything but glamorous. Instead, it is very demanding work that requires a great deal of stamina and vigilance.
