Within Arm's Length: A Secret Service Agent's Definitive Inside Account of Protecting the President
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Secret Service agents are trained to cover and evacuate a protectee during an attack, not necessarily to dive in front of a bullet like Clint Eastwood’s character in the movie In the Line of Fire. In an attack on POTUS the idea is to get him out of the kill zone and for everyone to survive if at all possible. If even one agent is taken out of action during an attempt on the president’s life, the odds of POTUS surviving decrease exponentially. It is therefore more beneficial to POTUS for as many of his agents to survive as possible.
In order to ensure that its agents will respond correctly in situations that are life-threatening to the president, the Secret Service subjects its agents to repetitious training until certain responses become automatic.
Assassinations and attempted assassinations are usually over in less than three or four seconds. In such events, no one has time to think about what to do. Rather, one reacts according to training. The training that all agents initially receive and then continue to receive throughout their careers is a form of operant conditioning, whereby a person reacts automatically based on exposure to certain stimuli and events.
Agents, for example, are trained in how to disarm assailants who are armed with knives and handguns. The exercise is done so many times in training that if an agent faces a real gun or knife, he or she should automatically attempt to disarm the person without thinking. This super-repetitive training removes any thought process associated with the reaction, and responses become totally automatic, whether the situation is real or training. This response must be instantaneous if such situations are to end successfully.
While it takes years of training to produce such flawless response, Secret Service agents are anything but Pavlov’s dogs responding to a bell. And, contrary to assertions by some very shallow, uninformed people, Secret Service agents are not brainwashed. Agents receive the best executive protective training in the world, and the success of this training has been proven on many occasions.
It was this training that saved the life of Ronald Reagan on March 30, 1981. On that day, John Hinckley, who had embedded himself inside the press pen with the media outside the Washington Hilton, fired six rounds from a .22-caliber revolver at President Reagan. Of the six shots fired, four found a human target.
One slug hit Washington, DC, policeman Thomas Delahanty, one hit the presidential press secretary, James Brady, and one hit the president after ricocheting off the limo. The other struck Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy. Of the four persons shot during this attack, it was McCarthy who was hit because he responded in a controlled fashion, while others were largely accidental victims, in the wrong place at the wrong time, as it were. McCarthy, who was standing in his assigned position next to the limo door, moved at the sound of the first round into a cover position blocking POTUS from the attack and, due to his training, became a 200-pound human bullet trap.
The entire episode was over in less than three seconds. Even so, the sound of the sixth and last round had not finished echoing off the buildings surrounding the Washington Hilton when SAIC Jerry Parr had pushed President Reagan into the backseat of the limo. These responses were the quintessential examples of operant conditioning produced by years of training, and while Pavlov’s dogs might have been interested in the tires of the limo, they would have had trouble opening and closing the doors.
Another example of the effectiveness of Secret Service training occurred on September 4, 1975, when agent Larry Buendorf, while assigned to PPD, disarmed Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme as she pointed a loaded Colt .45 semiautomatic pistol at President Gerald Ford in Sacramento, California.
While escorting President Ford on a walk to the capital, Buendorf saw a hand come up holding a gun. Per training, he sounded off, “Gun!” Ripping the loaded Colt out of Fromme’s hand in the prescribed manner, he pulled it to his chest while the remainder of the detail evacuated President Ford to a safe location. He had practiced this hundreds of times with a dummy weapon held by an instructor. This time it was a live weapon in the hand of a person intent on killing the president. Mr. Buendorf’s response to the potentially lethal situation was perfect.
Presidents are, of course, not the only persons protected by the Secret Service. As we have seen, beginning in 1968, after the assassination of Robert Kennedy, the Secret Service began protecting major presidential candidates. Protecting a presidential candidate can be more dangerous than protecting the president, as the Secret Service discovered on May 15, 1972. At a shopping center in Laurel, Maryland, a man named Arthur Bremer shot presidential candidate and former Alabama governor George Wallace five times. Also wounded in the attempted assassination of Wallace was Secret Service agent Nick Zarvos, who was hit in the throat by a .38 Special bullet.
Due to the continuous training received throughout their careers, agents do not differentiate during an attack between the president and anyone of lesser office. The process is designed to work regardless of who the protectee is.
CHAPTER 11
The Boldness of the Presidency
A SECRET SERVICE CHALLENGE
At times both sitting and former presidents voluntarily engage in optional activities that could result in death or serious injury. Frequently, the Secret Service watches these exhibitions knowing full well it has no control over the outcome. Since it is the mission of the Secret Service to protect these men from all harm, certain activities can be of grave concern to the Service. The Secret Service will usually voice quiet concern over such activities, yet in most cases the will of the president overcomes that of the Secret Service.
In these delicate situations, the Secret Service does its best to protect a man who does not always wish to be protected. There are times when presidents are very happy to have the Secret Service by their side. At other times, the president pushes back and strives for a small degree of independence from the necessary yet burdensome presence of his full-time protectors.
Many of our presidents, including John F. Kennedy and George H. W. Bush, have documented histories of physical courage exhibited during military service. It is unfortunate that such men’s deeds of heroism seem to have a finite shelf life with voters. As such, a president and his advisors many times will take risks to remind voters that the man they have elected or who wishes to be elected by them is strong and brave enough to hold the office he holds or seeks.
Not to be left out, former presidents who were forced to control their impulse for adventure while in office often present great security challenges by engaging in acts they could have never gotten away with while in office.
Politics aside, there are other reasons these men engage in sometimes unnecessarily dangerous behavior. Eight of the last ten presidents were military officers. Five served in combat. As commander in chief of the armed forces, the president of the United States presides over the boldest group of men and women in the world, our men and women in uniform. Because they are constantly around such high-speed individuals, some presidents occasionally seem to feel a need to be seen, in the eyes of these warriors, as “real men”—not just politicians in Brooks Brothers suits wearing expensive watches but rather equals in nerve and boldness.
And, part of this behavior is simply in a president’s DNA. Men who become president of the United States tend to be super-competitive risk takers. While this trait of personality may mellow with the years, it seldom goes dormant and is never extinguished.
Neither Democrats nor Republicans seemed immune. This is true of those who possess a history of tangible physical courage, such as Presidents George H. W. Bush and John F. Kennedy, and of those with a background strictly in academia and politics.
PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY
One example of the type of man who becomes president is John F. Kennedy, who, as a naval officer during World War II, commanded a PT boat. A mere eighty feet in length, these boats built for speed and maneuverability were constructed primarily of wood. Propelled by two enormous General Motors engines that dined on highly flammable 100 octane aviation fuel, they made
a huge explosion when hit by enemy gunners from the Japanese destroyers they were sent up against.
After losing his first boat, PT-109, and recovering from the experience, he rejected going home to Hyannis Port to the safety and celebrity of a returning war hero on survivor’s leave. Instead, he requested and was granted command of another PT boat and continued to do battle with Japanese forces.
JFK’s exploits were driven by his desire to serve America and by his love of adventure. Prior to the war, Kennedy had no political aspirations. His political career was formulated and moved into action by his father, Joseph Kennedy Sr., who was grooming JFK’s older brother, Joe Jr., for politics. When Joe was killed as a naval aviator, JFK moved up to take his place in the future Kennedy political machine. After becoming president, JFK was known to take inordinate risks from time to time, most notably immersing himself in large crowds of people where anyone could have killed him.
Some believed JFK had a death wish or that he could see his future. Part of this belief is based upon President Kennedy’s favorite poem, “I Have a Rendezvous with Death,” by Alan Seeger.
I HAVE A RENDEZVOUS WITH DEATH
I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air—
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.
It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land,
And close my eyes and quench my breath—
It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear.
God knows ’twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where Love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear …
But I’ve a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.
Perhaps President Kennedy also felt because of his World War II adventures at the age of twenty-six commanding a PT boat, combined with being the youngest president in America’s history, he was invincible. He was not.
True to the words of Seeger, he did not fail that rendezvous.
PRESIDENT GEORGE H. W. BUSH
Another president who was no stranger to risk taking was President George H. W. Bush.
A naval aviator during the same war JFK served in, he flew low-level bombing missions against the Japanese in his Grumman Avenger from the deck of a small carrier. Awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his skill and courage under fire, he parachuted into the Pacific Ocean after his torpedo bomber was fatally struck by ground fire. The life raft in which he floated while awaiting a rescue that might never come drifted very close to the Japanese-occupied island of Chichi-jima, which he had just bombed. Japanese officers who were known to cut out and eat the livers from their still living captives inhabited this island. Fortunately, the American submarine Finback plucked the future forty-first president of the United States from the ocean, saving him from such a cruel fate. Lieutenant Bush then became an accidental submariner until the Finback could deliver him back to his ship.
President Bush never quite got over his love of physical danger, as demonstrated by his numerous parachute jumps since leaving office. Even though he is a former president, he is still a protectee of the Secret Service. During these jumps the Secret Service could do little more than wait on the ground hoping the parachute of their charge would not fail.
WHO IS RESPONSIBLE, POTUS OR THE SECRET SERVICE?
If things should go wrong during these elective adventures, the president or former president would in all likelihood accept responsibility should he live. Officially, however, the Secret Service will take full responsibility, not POTUS. In other words, if a president should be killed or seriously injured in an incident of his own making, the first question asked would be: Why did the Secret Service allow this to happen? The director of the Secret Service would in all liklihood go to Congress and accept full responsibility for the accident. Careers would suffer accordingly.
I am frequently asked the question, Who has the final say regarding the president’s activities, the president or the Secret Service? The answer is both, with the president by far having the most control.
For example, the Secret Service may discourage but will not openly defy the president or former president if he wishes to engage in a dangerous act such as shaking hands with a group of people who have not been screened for weapons, or landing on an aircraft carrier in a jet. The Service should, however, remove—by force, if necessary—a president who wishes to shake hands with a group of people known to harbor a hostile gunman. In other words, barring specific knowledge of tangible, imminent danger, the president usually does what he wishes to do while the Secret Service does its best to protect him.
The bottom line is that many who have occupied the Oval Office are bold, aggressive men who, at a young age, tasted danger and liked it a great deal. Once the opiate of danger has been ingested, it can become as addictive as any drug, no matter how well-educated, old, or intelligent the user may be. There is no cure for this addiction but only temporary fixes.
CHAPTER 12
Presidential Protective Division
The Presidential Protective Division is the most important and prestigious division in the Secret Service. When an American president is assassinated, it is a catastrophic event not only for the United States but the entire world. An attack on the president of the United States is an attack on the United States itself. Consequently, PPD is a place where failure can never be an option and little short of perfection is tolerated. The PPD agent standing next to the president is the last line of defense against anyone or anything that might attempt to harm the chief executive.
When I was selected to become a part of PPD, the fact was not lost on me that I had just become a member of one of the most elite groups of men and women in the world belonging to the most highly regarded protection organization in the world. And, while some were selected based upon politics, most of us were there because we were very good at our profession and had distinguished ourselves over several years of service performing well at everything asked of us.
For me, being selected as a member of the PPD working shift in 1993 was as euphoric an experience as was my initial selection as an agent ten years earlier. Just as there is a long selection process to become an agent, so too there is one to become an agent on PPD. For me, the process lasted ten years.
After the initial buzz wears off from having made the first team, a feeling of overwhelming responsibility takes over. The realization that the life of the president of the United States will rest in your hands for the next several years is indeed awesome and invites reflection. The next reality that sets in is the harsh nature of the assignment, known only to those who have been members of this select club.
While a member of PPD, an agent’s life completely ceases to be his or her own and becomes sole property of the Secret Service and the office of the presidency. The term “family-friendly,” which has become so popular in today’s more warm and fuzzy federal government, will never apply to those entrusted with the life of the president. Single agents fare much better in this assignment than those with spouses. While an agent may be married with children, for the duration of an assignment to PPD there really is no family outside the Secret Service family. An agent may have a house in which his spouse and children live, but his true home is the White House.
The PPD agent is free to plan all of the family outings, vacations, dinners he wishes but s
hould never be disappointed or surprised when such plans have to be canceled, sometimes at the last possible moment. In some cases, such plans have been scrapped as an agent and family were heading for the airport to enjoy a long-overdue vacation together. For the agent it is all a part of the job; for the spouses and children of these agents these occurrences are all but impossible to understand. There is a question that married PPD agents hear at home more than any other: “Why can’t they find someone else?” This is usually accompanied by the sounds of crying children who cannot fathom why their trip to the beach or ballgame is not going to happen.
On one occasion, my CAT team was flying to an assignment out of the Baltimore/Washington International Airport. As the team gathered in front of the terminal, one of my agents pulled up curbside along with his wife and infant son. As the CAT agent got out of the car and kissed his wife good-bye, his son promptly threw up on the wife and began crying. The little guy had been running a fever all morning and was now pretty ill, as was his wife. “Sorry, honey, gotta go,” he said, and disappeared into the terminal, leaving behind a sick wife and child.
In December 1992, President George H. W. Bush, who had just lost the general election to Bill Clinton, was scheduled to travel to Russia and France on January 2 and 3, 1993. This trip had been planned for quite some time. The advance teams had already deployed, and those not involved were looking forward to at least one or two days with their families for Christmas. At the last possible moment, President Bush unexpectedly made the decision to begin his trip with stops in Saudi Arabia and Somalia on December 31.
In order to cover advances for these new stops and to man the required CAT teams and working shifts, scores of PPD agents with approved leave for Christmas were about to get a hard shot of PPD reality. This trip was going to require all agents on the detail. Many agents who had already arrived at their holiday destinations were called and told to pack for a foreign trip.