Within Arm's Length: A Secret Service Agent's Definitive Inside Account of Protecting the President

by Dan Emmett

  The Service has traditionally had a low attrition rate other than through retirement. Many of the agents who do leave prior to retirement leave within the first three years on the job. They leave because they discover that protection is not what they want to do, and if they stay with the service they will always be pulled away from their investigations to protect someone. They want to chase bad guys all the time and be full-time investigators, not part-time. People have to do what makes them happy, but I never understood why these types even bothered applying to begin with.

  Secret Service investigations generally center around financial crimes—there is no physical victim, although perhaps someone’s credit card has been stolen and used, or a person is stuck with the loss of receiving a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill. The case can, therefore, be put into a drawer and left unattended for twenty-one days, which is the usual maximum time a field agent will spend on the road doing temporary protection, let’s say on a presidential candidate. For example, an agent could be working the biggest credit card fraud case in the history of his office but is also on a presidential candidate detail that requires him to go out on a twenty-one-day rotation. What happens to the big caper for those twenty-one days? In many cases it goes into a drawer, where it sits until the agent returns and picks it up again. For obvious reasons, this could not be done with murder cases, kidnappings, extortion, bank robberies, and such.

  Much to the annoyance of the agents who would rather chase counterfeiters, credit card thieves, and check forgers than protect politicians, protection—not investigations—is king and always trumps investigations in importance in the Secret Service. The New York office lived in a world of its own, however, in that many agents there believed the primary job of the Service was investigation, not protection. This myth was regularly shattered when POTUS visited New York, or when it was UN General Assembly time, which occurred every fall.

  During UN General Assembly time, virtually all investigative work in New York came to a halt due to the huge number of visiting foreign heads of state who by law are protected by the Secret Service. Every agent from the office was used in some way to support the protective mission, and during such times, it became glaringly obvious that protection was the number-one priority. The investigative-oriented agents, however, continued to insist that they were real cops, that investigations were the main purpose of the Secret Service, and that agents who liked protection were mindless pretty boys.

  Some of these agents liked to dress à la Don Johnson from the Miami Vice TV show, which was popular at the time, complete with no socks in warm weather. Having a scruffy beard, longer than normal hair, and a complete wardrobe of go-to-hell clothes was considered by these men one way of thumbing their noses at protection. Although they did this under the guise of blending in with the people on the street, another reason was that the grungier they became, the less likely it was that they would be pulled for a protective assignment. As far as blending in, most looked like what they were: Secret Service agents dressed in messy clothes trying to look like the man on the street.

  Still, an agent in New York had to produce investigative results, and as long as an agent did, no one bothered him. The bosses realized we all worked very hard, as well as enduring the unendurable beast that was the five boroughs of New York, so our taking a little personal time every now and then, including coming into work a bit late on occasion, did not bother them. In such a pressure-filled environment as New York, it had to be that way. If the bosses cracked down too hard, there would be a quiet mutiny. No arrests would be made, so a balance had to be struck between work and relaxation. Most of the bosses in New York had started there and had a solid understanding of what it meant to be a manager in such a challenging place.

  Not much in New York was standard-issue, including the regular investigations engaged in by the Secret Service. In addition to counterfeit and credit card investigations, somehow the NYFO had also received jurisdiction over a form of telephone service theft known as “blue boxes.”

  Blue boxes were Texas Instrument calculators that had been reconfigured to produce telephone tones. A person attached the instrument to his or her phone line, and then, using the tones that emitted the same sound as regular telephone buttons being pushed, made long-distance calls anywhere in the world for no charge—in effect, stealing service from the phone company. This was in the day when few had cell phones, and most of these criminals who were blue-box artists were from other countries. This was in some way a federal violation, and we only investigated them for the easy arrest and conviction stats they generated.

  We did a lot of these cases, and they were relatively simple. A warrant was not required, since a federal officer may make an arrest without a warrant for a felony in progress. The telephone company monitored the line, and when it became active, they contacted the waiting search team, and in they went, seizing the blue box and placing the owner under arrest. Again, the offense in and of itself was not one of the biggest, but the entry into areas where blue boxes flourished was dangerous. In 1984, going to a corner deli in New York could be dangerous.

  Criminals involved in stolen credit cards or counterfeit money and even blue boxes were usually involved in other things a lot more serious. While a person might not be willing to go to war over phony money, he might over drugs or a lot of genuine cash he had from ill-gotten gains. You never took anything for granted on any execution of a warrant, and we served a lot of warrants in New York.

  A warrant execution team is broken down into sections, the first being the entry team. The entry team is usually comprised of the strongest agent, with a battering ram made of a large-diameter piece of storm pipe with handles welded on, and an agent armed with a short shotgun. The remainder of the team, approximately six agents, then follows.

  Upon entry, the shotgun agent and the agent with the battering ram clear the rooms one by one, searching for anyone who might pose a threat. Upon finding anyone, they pass him or her back to the rest of the team, where he or she is handcuffed and detained in a central area, such as the living room. After the premises have been secured, the people taken into custody are sorted out as to who needs to be kept and who can be released. Anyone on the premises is thoroughly searched, for agent safety, and an agent is posted at the door to ensure that no newcomers show up while a search is in progress. After the scene has been secured, the entry team helps the search team look for the items to be seized. The fun of the entry is usually over in less than two minutes, but it is pure adrenaline. You never know what potential threat is waiting on the other side of the door.

  The Supreme Court had ruled that before knocking down a door when executing a search warrant, the police had to announce their identity and purpose, and then wait a reasonable amount of time for the person residing at the residence to answer the door. The law could have been a hindrance to law enforcement were it not for the fact that the Supreme Court never defined what constituted a reasonable amount of time. As a result, we knocked and yelled, “Police, search warrant,” and before the “t” in warrant was enunciated, the door was down and we were in. To wait any longer gave the bad guys time to get rid of any evidence they might have or, more importantly, grab a gun and kill you.

  The execution of warrants in New York never seemed to end, and the process was dangerous not only to the agents serving the warrants but to the people on the other side of the door. Whenever law enforcement executes any type of warrant, there is usually a lot of confusion at the target location, depending on how many persons are there. Sometimes events can come close to spinning out of control even with the most highly disciplined teams. On one occasion, an innocent was almost killed.

  The entry of the day was another blue-box case. Over time I had come to dislike these cases immensely—the violation didn’t amount to anything, and people could get hurt. The target this day was, as had come to be the norm, a bad section of the Bronx.

  The team formed up close to the target location, but not close enough to
be detected by any possible countersurveillance, and waited for the phone company to call, telling us the line was up. Finally the call came, and we moved out to the target location. We stacked outside the door, and on the signal from the team leader, the door was breached and in we went.

  I was on point with the shotgun, as had become the norm. Being one of the few single agents in New York, I usually volunteered for the shotgun assignment because of the hazards associated with being among the first two agents through the door. My volunteering had nothing to do with bravery but rather logic and expendability. Single agents were considered more expendable than married agents with children, and many of the husbands and dads were more than happy to let me have the assignment. If I got blown away there would be no widow or orphans, just two grieving parents who wished that their son had played it safe and become a banker.

  We had become pretty smooth with these entries, as we had done so many; we were quickly moving from room to room, clearing the area and finding surprised people who were totally taken off guard by our presence. We had almost finished clearing the small apartment when we came to a room with a locked door.

  The battering-ram agent and I smashed the lock and made our entry. A boy of about sixteen lay in bed with his right hand under a pillow. I pointed my Remington 12-gauge shotgun at his head and chambered a round, safety off, while I shouted the standard command “police, don’t move,” followed by “show me your hands.” He did not look the least bit frightened, but just stared with a blank expression. As I repeated the command for the young man to show me his hands, he began to move his right hand as if edging it toward something, but he did not bring it out from under the pillow. As I held the most dangerous weapon in the world for close combat at this boy’s head, I could feel my right index finger move inside the trigger guard. Action is quicker than reaction, and if this boy came out with a gun—which at this point I had to assume he was about to—there would be no time to do anything other than kill him.

  Maintaining my scan to avoid tunnel vision while simultaneously watching the boy, I was now conscious of my breaching partner next to me, pointing his revolver at this young man who seemed determined to die on this particular day. Propped up on his left elbow, the boy began to slowly move his hand out from under the pillow. I pulled the stock tighter into my shoulder and prepared to fire. I remember moving my point of aim from his head down to his chest. For some reason, I thought that there would be less gore if I hit him center of mass rather than in the head.

  Then the hand came out. There was nothing in it and nothing under the pillow. As I lowered my shotgun, I exclaimed an expletive and let out a heavy sigh of relief. The young man had been asleep when we entered, with his hand under the pillow. When we breached the door, he was frozen stiff with fear, he later said to one of our Spanish-speaking agents. As it turned out, the kid was from a South American slum and spoke no English. He had no idea what I was saying, only that two Americans were pointing large guns at him, and he was too terrified to move.

  We finished securing the apartment and began the search, where we found two blue boxes—one that was up and running and another one hidden. This incident reminded me of what I already knew: these chicken shit blue-box seizures were not worth a person’s life, including that of the boy I had come within a delicate trigger pull of killing. My breaching partner said to me later that he nearly pulled the trigger on his revolver, which he had cocked into single-action mode. I don’t know what became of this kid. I just know that he came within a gnat’s ass of dying that day.

  I went home and had a few beers, thinking of how I had come as close as a person can come to killing another human being without its having happened, and then I put it behind me and moved on. It was just another day in New York, where anything could happen at any time; and in the world of law enforcement, this incident was nothing special. What made it unique was that while uniformed street cops run into this type of thing almost daily, Secret Service agents run into such situations just frequently enough to scare the total hell out of them.

  Other than the drive to and from work, not every day in NYFO was full of stress. It was actually quite the opposite. NYFO was in all probability the mecca of Secret Service practical jokers, and, like all things in New York, these jokes were huge, some on such a grand scale they would rival anything concocted by the best comedy writers in Hollywood. These practical jokes were viewed as a necessity given the environment of the city and of the office. They could be benign and subtle, carried out by one person, or in some cases grand productions that required a cast of many.

  For example, years earlier the NYFO had an SAIC who always wore a hat. In the mornings after arriving, he would remove it and hang it on a hat rack just outside his office door. One day an agent replaced the SAIC’s hat on the rack with an identical yet smaller-sized hat. The following day this bold agent who obviously cared nothing about his evaluation, replaced that hat with one too large. The next day he would replace it with the original hat. For quite some time the SAIC could not understand why his hat never fit the same two days in a row. This type of subtle humor was designed to help break the stress that was always present in New York, and although the boss may have been aware of the harmless prank, he never let on.

  One day I became the object of such a joke, and at the end of it I stood in awe of the pranksters. Not long after arriving in New York I was assigned a case that involved an arrest warrant for a man named Juan Ferrer. I decided that I would try to find and arrest Mr. Ferrer with the help of the rest of the forgery squad. I dutifully prepared briefing sheets that provided all known information on him, including all known residences or other likely places he might be. I divided the squad up into two-man teams and assigned each an address.

  At 6:00 a.m. the following morning we all hit our locations searching for Ferrer. No Juan. We all left our business cards with telephone numbers at the various locations and instructed the recipients, all of whom we had awakened, that it would be better for Ferrer to turn himself in than for us to have to keep looking for him. We always said that at search locations, but seldom did anyone call or turn himself or herself in.

  One day not long after, I had just returned from lunch when I noticed on the message board under my name a note that said that Ferrer had called and wanted to talk to me. Juan had left a number, and I dutifully performed a cross-check linking it to an address in midtown Manhattan. Once again I gathered the boys together and briefed them.

  Everyone in the squad came along, including the boss. It was all by the book as we parked the cars away from Ferrer’s apartment and then moved to the building and up the steps. Another agent and I banged on the door while I identified myself in my best Fernando Lamas accent as “Servicio de Secreto and open el puerto.” From the other side there came Spanish gibberish that sounded something like Bill Dana doing his José Jiménez routine. “Sorry, señor, no hablo ingles.” I banged on the door again and it opened just enough for a face to appear. The face belonged not to Juan Ferrer but to an agent and friend, who slammed the door. It took at least three seconds for me to realize that the whole thing had been a setup and that the apartment belonged to several agents in the office who lived together. Behind me were about ten agents, my boss included, laughing so hard some were rolling in the hallway. One produced an SS-issued Polaroid camera to record the event and my expression. The door opened again with my friend on the other side beet-red from laughing and from oxygen starvation, gasping, “Servicio de Secreto??????!!!!!.” He was laughing so hard he could not breathe.

  This was a practical joke, New York–style and it was done with such planning, preparation, and precision one could not help be impressed. I often thought that if only we had spent as much time devoted to our actual jobs as we did with practical jokes, we could have cleaned the entire city of New York of all crime, even those cases not assigned to us.

  In spite of the working conditions in New York, we always managed to make the best of things. One very hot su
mmer day I was relegated to the surveillance of a residence in the Bronx from the inside of a surveillance van. This van was essentially the responsibility of the office support technician (OST) who was in charge of all electronic and vehicular surveillance equipment assigned to the office. Joe, our OST, was in his fifties and a native of China but had been a US citizen and a native of New York for many decades. Joe was compact in stature, and, while one of the nicest men I had ever known, he was a genuine badass, with about a million black belts in various martial arts. If he so wished, Joe could kill a man in seconds using nothing but his hands and feet. In addition to working for the Secret Service, Joe was also part owner of the best Chinese restaurant in New York.

  With Joe driving the van and me in the back and the curtain behind Joe drawn, he skillfully parked the van across the street from the target location. He exited the van, locked the doors, and walked down the street so as not to draw attention to himself or the van while I watched the house in question through a side porthole. As the time passed and I continued my vigil, the temperature in the van climbed well past 100 degrees. I was now shirtless and soaked, wearing nothing but jeans and a shoulder holster that housed an unauthorized Beretta 9 mm pistol. Every ten minutes or so Joe would call me on the radio to check on my status. I casually mentioned to him that it was getting rather hot in the van, and he promised he would bring me something to drink. Another ten minutes passed, and the driver’s door unlocked and Joe appeared with a paper bag containing what I assumed was water. As I thanked him, I looked into the bag to find not water but a six-pack of Heineken. I respectfully reminded Joe that we were on duty and that as good as the beer looked I probably should not have one. With one look and no words Joe reminded me that, in his culture, refusing such an offer was an insult. Realizing my error, I thanked Joe, opened a beer, and drank deeply from the green can, enjoying the best-tasting beer in my life.