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

by Dan Emmett

  MY CAT TOUR BEGINS

  I checked into CAT from New York in August 1989 and officially began protecting the president of the United States, George Herbert Walker Bush.

  On my first day, Randy Wood, the boss, called me into his office, where he welcomed me to CAT, congratulated me on my performance in CAT school, and then said essentially that I was a new guy and that he did not want to even hear my voice for one full year. I was just happy to finally be in CAT and had no problem playing a silent role.

  Randy was a combat-decorated army officer and paratrooper who had served in Vietnam and had been an interrogator of Vietcong and North Vietnamese captures. He could be hard and demanding in many ways, but he also gave us a great deal of freedom to do the job as we saw fit. He loved his CAT boys and would go to the wall for us with upper management whenever any heat came our way, but he would chew us out if we were wrong about something. He was a firm believer in handling discipline internally, not putting our CAT business out for the world to see, and any of us would rather have taken a major beating than to draw his ire. He was a hard-to-know and complex man, but once he accepted you, he would never let you down. Above all, he was a great leader, and his men always came first, even at the expense of his own career, if necessary. During my Secret Service career he was the best leader and manager I knew.

  I began my CAT career as all new arrivals do, spending the first year in the rear of the CAT truck watching the world while facing backward and learning how things worked in the program. My tactical duty was to provide a base of fire for the team in the event of an attack. My team leader was Phil Hyde, and unofficially my largest duty included always having Phil’s personal bag available for him and stacking the gear bags of the remainder of the team in a neat and accessible manner. On days when I was not scheduled to work with my team, I was at our training facility at Beltsville, honing my weapons skills and working out to maintain CAT-level fitness.

  By my second year in CAT, I had moved up to team driver and then was selected as assistant team leader. In 1992, Randy appointed me as the team leader in command of team one, the team I had started with as a new guy three years earlier. It now consisted of a new group of agents, the original agents having moved on to other assignments, either within CAT or elsewhere in the Secret Service.

  Team leaders were usually chosen from the pool of assistant team leaders. I had been an assistant team leader for a year. There was no real leadership training per se. Teams went to guys who were considered technically and tactically proficient as well as those who had displayed some leadership. My philosophy of leadership was what I had learned as a marine officer and Randy had learned as an army officer: A leader is responsible for everything his people do or fail to do. When your men do well it is to their credit. When your men fail it is your failure. On more than one occasion I stood, not sat, in Randy’s office, explaining failures of mine that would seem trivial to most. But to men such as Randy, no detail was considered too small.

  Having been moved from Special Services Division to Special Programs Division, CAT was being assigned new leaders. Randy was now promoted to special agent in charge.

  We had enjoyed our new designation as a division for about two years when rumors began to circulate that CAT was going to be placed under PPD. All in CAT had hoped it would not happen. We enjoyed our autonomy as a small elite unit and were not willing to give it up. Then, without warning, in the spring of 1992, the entire division was summoned to a large conference room in the New Executive Office Building, where the CAT office was located. The person ordering us to attend this meeting was the director of the United States Secret Service himself.

  This individual, while highly respected, was the last of the authoritarian directors from the old school. He was not use to, and did not appreciate, being questioned by subordinates. He had vast government experience at the upper managerial level that included dealing with almost any situation a manager could encounter; all except situations concerning unconventional entities such as CAT.

  All CAT agents appeared in the conference room of the New Executive Office Building, at Seventeenth and H streets, as ordered—dressed in suits and looking pretty. As we all sat awaiting our fate, the director entered, along with the deputy, and moved around the room, shaking hands with each CAT agent. We were respectful but resentful; we knew the purpose of the meeting: to abolish CAT as a division and place it under PPD.

  The director began his remarks by stating, “CAT, as you all know it is over.” He continued by stating that CAT was now a section of PPD. It had lost, its divisional status. The news was not well received. The director had assumed that most of us would approve of being placed under PPD, and he had never expected anyone to challenge him over the issue or voice any displeasure. He was somewhat agitated—I guess that would be the best way to describe it—when more than one agent spoke up. Each one made it clear that he did not want to go to PPD but would instead rather go to other assignments. The director forcefully responded that he could make that happen. Of that fact none had any doubt.

  With our divisional status now gone, agent Alan Whicher was assigned as our new boss. After settling into his new role, he did a very good job leading the program. He had replaced a man who was loved by the troops and had been a near-impossible act to follow.

  Alan was heavily praised for his good work at CAT and as a reward was given the ASAIC slot in Oklahoma City. He was doing his usual efficient job there when, on the morning of April 19, 1995, a disgruntled army veteran named Timothy McVeigh parked a truck filled with explosives in front of the federal building where the Secret Service office was located. When the truck detonated, Alan was killed, along with five other Secret Service employees.

  KOREA

  The Korean War began in June 1950, when forces from Communist North Korea invaded the south in an attempt to unify the Korean peninsula under the Communist regime, and it ended with a cease-fire, not an actual surrender or peace agreement, in June 1953. Technically, a state of war still exists to this day between North and South Korea. As anyone who watches the news knows, North Korea is extremely unpredictable and capable of both aggressive rhetoric and unprovoked deadly aggression. It is best not to unnecessarily provoke them.

  President Bill Clinton visited South Korea in 1993, and in spite of this potential volatility, the president, or perhaps someone on his staff, decided that he should do a photo op on the Bridge of No Return.

  This bridge runs perpendicularly through the 38th parallel of latitude separating the two countries of North and South Korea, and all American POWs that North Korea chose to release walked across the bridge to freedom in 1953. Since the cease-fire agreement in June 1953, the North Koreans have controlled the northern end of the bridge and the South Koreans the southern end. On the Communist northern side of the bridge, there is an observation post occupying high ground, which overlooks the south and provides a perfect view of any activities on the bridge. The area just south of the bridge is a UN observation post and was the site of past unprovoked violence by the always unpredictable forces of North Korea. This was the exact location where, one day in 1976, ax-wielding North Korean soldiers murdered two US Army officers, Captain Art Bonifas and First Lieutenant Mark Barrett. This deliberate killing of two US Army officers by North Korea, while a blatant act of war that should have resulted in an immediate military response by the Ford administration, produced only the usual verbal outrage, with no action to follow. Seventeen years later, this area where the murders occurred would be the arrival point for President Clinton’s motorcade.

  As part of the cease-fire, no rifles were allowed in this area, and the closest significant American forces were one mile away. Even with this agreement, CAT was directed by PPD to go to the bridge and get into position. Armed with pistols, only we could monitor POTUS, the bridge, and the North Korean observation post. I took the word “monitor” and applied my own definition to it.

  North Korea was briefed ahead of time that POTUS woul
d be making the stop on the bridge. This was a diplomatic as well as an intelligent maneuver. The Communists would have gone ballistic over the sight of President Clinton and company on the bridge had they not known of it before the fact.

  The night before the president’s visit to the bridge, the commanding officer of Camp Bonifas (named for the deceased officer), a colonel, held a dinner for all Secret Service personnel on the trip. Over drinks in a secluded corner of the officers’ club, the colonel, a veteran of both Vietnam and Desert Storm, described our situation in black-and-white terms, characteristic of military men. He stated to the team, “If attacked and you survive the assault, and chances are you will not, you will be acting as a speed bump for the North Korean regulars. We have a squad of shock troops waiting just outside the DMZ who will ride to battle, but they are ten minutes away. In any case, it will be the longest ten minutes of your life…” All on the team appreciated his honesty as we accepted this warrior’s offer of another round of drinks and his toast to our success and to the survival of the team and the president.

  The following day, my team—consisting of agents Mike Carbone, Charlie White, Lee Fields, and Jim Cobb—finished gearing up and mounted our Humvee for the move to the bridge. We had just rolled a few yards when the voice of command post agent and CAT school classmate Joe Clancy jolted me with its urgency. Joe’s voice was usually calmer than calm, but on this occasion, the calm was accented with strain. I was aware from the tone in Joe’s voice that something was wrong and already knew what it was before Joe announced it.

  “Hawkeye from command post,” Joe forcefully broadcasted over our encrypted frequency.

  “Damn Joe,” I said to myself while lowering the volume on my radio. “CP from Hawkeye, go ahead,” I answered.

  “Hawkeye from CP,” Joe responded, “be advised that numerous North Korean soldiers have been observed moving into their sector of the bridge armed with AK-47 rifles.”

  As I turned and gave my team the “I told you so” look, I keyed my microphone and simply replied back to Joe, “CP from Hawkeye, roger that.”

  I had anticipated this entirely predictable event well in advance and had never had any intention of letting my team go to the bridge armed only with pistols. Before we left Camp Bonifas, I had given the order to carry our full complement of arms and ammunition—pistols, M16s, and a combined total of over a thousand rounds of ammunition—and I was prepared to assume full responsibility for that decision should the fact be discovered. In addition, I had given the order for each of my team members to carry their rifles with a round in the chamber, violating a major Secret Service regulation for long guns. Since we were not supposed to have our M16s to begin with, violating the round-in-the-chamber regulation was minor. Given how outnumbered we were, the extra second it would take to chamber a round under fire could mean the difference whether we or POTUS survived an ambush.

  I felt the situation was serious—damned serious, in fact—and I was not risking my team or the life of the president based on a forty-year-old agreement I had correctly predicted would be broken by the Communists. Because North Korea had come to expect over the years that America is always naïve enough to play by the rules, the Communists likely expected us not to have rifles, and this incorrect assumption on their part tilted the odds in our favor a bit more.

  Now knowing what we were up against, we moved out to the bridge, where we found the Communists in and around their observation post arrogantly brandishing their Kalashnikov AK-47 rifles, as reported by my good friend Joe Clancy. To our Secret Service way of thinking, the only reason they would commit such a violation of the no-rifle agreement was because shooting the president of the United States is much easier with rifles than with their Russian-provided Makarov pistols.

  The terrain around the bridge, while somewhat improved since 1953, was probably much as it had been at that time. The area was a combination of dirt and asphalt road surrounded by fields and forests. The area was also mined, and it would only take driving off the beaten path a little bit to produce a big, flaming kaboom, so we moved carefully. After settling into the best position from which to deploy in case of attack, which in this case was not directly at the arrival point yet near enough to respond by fire and maneuver, we saw quite clearly the Koreans eyeing us with binoculars and trying to shake us up a bit by pointing rifle scopes in our direction. We counter-eyed them with our own binoculars, and although our M16s were scoped, we kept our rifles low and out of sight. Unlike our North Korean nemesis, we at least had concealed our rifles, giving no indication that we were possibly in violation of the meaningless clause in the 1953 cease-fire agreement.

  The North Koreans we now traded game-face looks with were not members of just any foreign military. All were the sons or grandsons of the same men who had helped kill over fifty thousand Americans from 1950 until 1953. Each from birth was indoctrinated to hate America, its form of government, and its leaders, and had been taught that resuming the war with the United States was both inevitable and desirable. The shooting part of the Korean War had ended in 1953 with a truce, and we were technically still at war with North Korea. If they wanted to resume the shooting war again, today would be the perfect day.

  As irrational as the North Koreans could be, we hoped that they had manned the towers with officers under strict orders not to provoke a situation but rather to present a threatening appearance. We also knew that because North Korea was a fanatical Communist state, the possibility existed that one of these young officers might just decide that taking out an American president would be the thing to do. Even an accidental discharge could set off a gunfight, and those can happen at any time on either side. When dealing with North Korea, anything was possible.

  By fate and necessity, our mission of fighting a delaying action while POTUS escaped was not much less than certain death should things break bad, and the colonel in charge of the area had as much as said so. None of us had any doubt that, in addition to the North Koreans in the observation post armed with AK-47s just yards from where the president of the United States would be standing, there were in all likelihood more soldiers in the tall grass on their side of the bridge.

  This scenario was the quintessential example of why CAT existed and why we trained with such intensity. With a command from me that consisted of only one word, the team would be out of the vehicle and directing a heavy volume of pinpoint, accurate fire on the objective in less than four seconds. Regardless of our own fate in the seconds that would follow, the hope in such a situation was that we would accomplish our mission and that the president of the United States would live another day. Everyone on my team knew this. We accepted it as our job, and there were no complaints. We had no intentions of being mere sacrificial lambs or dying a glorious death, but we were confident that the five of us would produce many, many dead Communists if they decided to do something as ill-advised as killing an American president.

  The mood in the CAT vehicle was serious, quiet, and confident as I announced our plan of action in the event of attack. The men indicated with grim smiles that they understood their assignments. I had total confidence that each would do his duty and respond per his training if called upon. We were brothers in arms who worked together, trained together, and traveled the world together. Now, if necessary, we would meet our fates together. We all shook hands and waited for the arrival of the president of the United States into what amounted to nothing less than a made-to-order kill zone. It was time to earn our pay.

  As we waited for POTUS, we played eye screw with the Communists while scanning the area. Then, with no warning, everyone in the Humvee began to laugh hysterically, as if the funniest joke in the world had just been told. For one brief moment, we could have been anywhere other than where we were. All mirth died as quickly as it had begun as we saw the approach of the president’s motorcade.

  At the designated time, President Clinton and his shift arrived at the bridge. As POTUS emerged from the right rear seat, he was immediatel
y surrounded by the shift. From our position, we could see a noticeable increase in activity and movement from the North Korean observation post. If a gunfight were going to happen, it was going to happen within the next few seconds.

  The shift then began doing a constant series of radio checks with us. It was both ridiculous and irritating, but they wanted to be sure we had radio contact with them in the event an attack occurred. We didn’t bother pointing out that, while there would be a lot of activity in such an event, no one would be talking on the radio. Any survivors from the shift would be covering POTUS and trying to evacuate him across the expanse of the bridge, while CAT did its best to turn the Communist observation post into a sieve by killing as many North Korean soldiers as possible.

  I felt calm yet hyper-alert as the adrenaline took effect. I could feel my heart rate increase as my grip tightened on the hand guard of my rifle, concealed beneath the instrument panel of the Humvee. As we sat in our vehicle, we stared at the North Koreans and scanned the surrounding area while the Communists stared back. Meanwhile, President Clinton leisurely strolled along the bridge as if he were at Camp David, with the satisfied, relaxed look of a man with no concerns.

  After walking a little farther onto the bridge than he probably should have, practically into North Korea, President Clinton looked around the area for a few minutes and then returned to his vehicle, and we got the hell out of the zone.

  TRAINING FOR THE WORST

  In order to maintain our high level of readiness, we trained constantly. If we were not protecting POTUS, we were running immediate action drills, or working on the firing range or in the gym. As good at our work as we were, we were about to become much better: An agent newly placed in charge of CAT training was poised to take our training to new heights and set a new standard for CAT training that continues to this day.