by Dan Emmett
Each invited agent is allowed to bring one guest to the party. Few date invitations can equal being invited to accompany a Secret Service agent to the White House for cocktails, dancing, and a photo op with the president and First Lady. Bringing a parent to this special event will usually even the ledger for any misdeeds of youth not yet forgiven. In my own case, the complete absolution of youthful transgressions came when I arranged a meeting between my parents and President George Herbert Walker Bush in 1992 as he passed through my hometown of Gainesville, Georgia. While the White House photographer’s equipment malfunctioned and no record exists of the meeting, it was a moment my parents cherished for the rest of their lives.
In order to accommodate as many of the presidents’ best friends as possible, there is not one White House Christmas party but several—in fact two almost every night during December, leading up to Christmas. In all, there are approximately fifty parties.
The evening begins with entry into the White House via the East entrance, where all guests must show invitations to a representative of the social secretary’s office and pass through security screening prior to being admitted into the mansion. Secret Service agents are of course exempted from this screening because as agents we were all armed to begin with and were expected to have our weapons.
The guests then move through the East Wing of the White House until entering the lower level of the main mansion, where they are met by an impeccably dressed, physically fit commissioned officer of one of the armed forces. The officer directs the guests up a well-worn set of marble stairs that has been trod upon by millions since it was installed in 1953. Guests proceed to the state floor of the mansion, where the festivities take place. I recall at one party that this post was manned by a Navy SEAL lieutenant who was preparing to leave the navy due to numerous disabilities. At the age of twenty-six he had sustained so many broken bones and torn ligaments as a SEAL that he was no longer medically qualified to perform his occupational specialty. Being around such men has always humbled me, and I felt he should have been the president’s guest instead of me.
On the state floor, everyone is treated to the sight of magnificent Christmas decorations and several live Christmas trees towering twelve feet or more. Each tree is heavy with ornaments and bursting with the aroma of fresh pine. Prior to moving about at will on the state floor of the White House—including the East Room, Red Room, Green Room, Blue Room, and the State Dining Room—guests are invited to indulge in the open bar, manned by a white-jacketed bartender. In the State Dining Room, guests will find an enormous table that runs almost the length of the room adorned with a white linen cloth that supports what is without doubt the mother of all hors d’oeuvres settings. The main attraction at this stop is the shrimp, practically the size of small lobsters, resting in silver bowls of ice.
A variety of music is provided in the East Room by a military orchestra made up of musicians whose talents rival that of any orchestra in the world. Here couples may elect to just enjoy the music, or if so trained may waltz, tango, foxtrot, or just sway to and fro. This is where mine and Donnelle’s Arthur Murray training always paid off.
It is generally around this time that the president and First Lady descend the main stairs leading from the second-floor residence to the state floor, where they mingle with their guests. There is never any doubt as to when this occurs, as almost everyone, except the agents, begin to move in that direction at once, hoping to have a few seconds of private time with POTUS. From there POTUS and FLOTUS move to the photo op area, where they graciously stand for an hour or more as each guest is announced by a permanent member of the White House staff prior to having their photo taken with the president and First Lady.
The photo op is generally the grand finale of the event and after the last guest has posed, things start to thin out as the Uniformed Division begins herding people out of the building through the North doors and the portico of the White House. Being lucky enough to attend even one of these events provides a very special lifetime memory, and Donnelle and I were privileged to have attended six such evenings during our careers.
PRESIDENTS AND THEIR SECRET SERVICE AGENTS: A UNIQUE RELATIONSHIP
I have been asked so frequently about the relationship between president and agents that I felt the need to include some information about this topic, as the answer is both multifaceted and, at times, complicated.
Presidents exist in a world in which many of the people who surround them are there strictly for personal gain, and loyalties can be bought with promises of power. Given their constant association with these kinds of individuals, I believe presidents find it refreshing when they realize that their agents have a pure commitment and dedication to something greater than themselves. Perhaps another thing that some presidents have realized and admire about their agents is that, although they themselves may be president, more than a few could not have met the qualifications to become a Secret Service agent.
One of the most misunderstood relationships in the world is that of an American president and the Secret Service agents who surround him. In spite of the mutual respect between agents and a president, the relationship is not one of friendship and can be misinterpreted at times by all but the most professional of agents.
This is a relationship so complex at times that it is a bit enigmatic even to agents who, over the years, have seen more than one president come and go. More than complex, it can also be extremely awkward for both new president and new PPD agent alike. Rookie PPD agents, when spoken to by POTUS for the first time, can be a bit starstruck and tend to talk a bit too much. This trait needs to be recognized by the new agent and avoided. In no case does POTUS’s reaching out to speak to an agent constitute a wish to be friends with that agent. Any agent who mistakenly believes that such a gesture is one of friendship will not last long on the detail.
This unique relationship of protector and protected is based on the premise that the president goes about his business of being president and the Secret Service goes about its business of doing all within its power to keep him from harm while he performs his duties both official and unofficial. This simplistic explanation, however, is just that, and the reality is a great deal more complex.
Secret Service agents occupy a unique position in the dynamics of a presidential administration. Agents are so physically close to the president on a daily basis that they hear and see almost everything the president sees and hears. Yet, unlike the presidential staff that interacts with POTUS and monitors his activities, Secret Service agents stand silently and seldom offer input into situations other than those that are security-related. If asked by POTUS about a situation, especially political, the agent should be brief and friendly yet noncommittal.
Secret Service agents do not initiate conversation with a president other than to perhaps offer an initial greeting, and then only when the situation merits. Should the president wish to engage the agent in conversation, the agent is certainly obligated to respond out of respect for the office of the presidency. The agent must not become too chatty. In many cases, POTUS is merely being cordial and does not wish to engage in long conversations. In order for the agent to appear engaged and approachable, he must exercise care. In most cases any conversation between POTUS and agent should be over within seconds after its beginning. Over time, every agent should get the feel of when to speak and when to remain silent. This is a very delicate balance, and mastering it can be critical to career survival.
On one occasion, a First Lady asked an agent a superfluous question as she escorted a group of women through the rose garden. The agent went well beyond the required response to the point of practically becoming part of the tour group. One week later the agent was promptly reassigned to a post other than PPD. The best policy for a rank-and-file agent on PPD, especially a new one, is to speak as little as possible to POTUS or FLOTUS while appearing approachable.
The relationship between a PPD supervisor and POTUS is entirely different from that of the worker
agent. The agent who rides in the right front seat of the limousine occupies a completely unique place in the universe than that of his subordinates. The PPD supervisor is a senior agent who, in addition to being in charge of the detail, is the main contact between POTUS and the Secret Service. Cordial conversations between this agent and POTUS frequently occur, usually in the limo, although I have seen this relationship stretched on occasion. Just as the shift agent must know his place in the hierarchy of things at the White House, so must the senior supervisory agent in charge know his place. This relationship by its very nature draws POTUS and his senior agents closer than that of the working shift, but it still should not be misconstrued as friendship.
Familiarity between POTUS and FLOTUS and their agents can become a detriment to security and should be avoided. While presidents and First Ladies are well aware of what their agents’ jobs are in terms of security, and each has paid staff that attends to their personal needs, agents can sometimes be placed in difficult positions requiring tact and diplomacy. For example, I am aware of a situation in which a First Lady asked her agent in charge to have an agent retrieve her makeup bag from the limousine. This, of course, is a staff function, but for whatever reason, the staffer was not as close at hand as the agent. Rather than the agent saying, “Sorry, that is not a Secret Service function,” which would undoubtedly have caused unnecessary friction, he nodded, then sent out a radio call to his detail to locate the First Lady’s staffer and pass along the request.
Contrary to popular belief, the Secret Service does not work for the president and is, at least in theory, the most apolitical of all government agencies. This detachment serves a purpose. If an agent becomes too close to a president, closeness may cloud the professional judgment of the agent during crisis. Also, as law enforcement officers, it should not appear as if the Secret Service is the president’s personal police force. Unlike staff who do work for POTUS, although paid with taxpayer dollars, Secret Service agents work for the director of the Secret Service and the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. While a POTUS staff member’s job is tied directly to POTUS, an agent’s career will eventually move from PPD to other parts of the Secret Service.
An agent is assigned to PPD, not to the man who is president. When a president leaves office, the agents who have protected him do not then move on to his former presidential detail but rather remain on PPD, where they protect the new president. I saw this firsthand in 1992 as a PPD agent in the George H. W. Bush administration. When President Bush lost the general election to President Clinton, he picked up an entirely new group of agents, while his old protectors, including me, watched over President Clinton.
Some agents on PPD protect people other than the president. In spite of these smaller details within the main presidential detail, all have one thing in common: Each protectee has a direct line to the president, and some are not hesitant to use it.
In this regard, agents who watch over the president and First Lady’s children have a particularly difficult task at times. Historically, children of POTUS have represented a wide range of ages and temperaments, from the very young, such as Caroline Kennedy, John Kennedy Jr., and Amy Carter, to adults, such as the Reagan, Ford, Johnson, Nixon, and Bush children. In between are teenage and college-age children such as Jenna and Barbara Bush and Natasha and Malia Obama. Each one of these famous children of presidents has his or her own distinct personality. They may not wish to be controlled by the Secret Service in any manner. While POTUS may not always enjoy the restrictions placed upon his activities by the Secret Service, he understands the necessity for it. Children of POTUS sometimes do not.
Most of these individuals have Secret Service protection not through their own wishes but rather because their father, the president of the United States, has directed it. As such, some are resentful of the sometimes imposing always felt presence of the Secret Service in their lives, a presence that makes a normal existence all but impossible. The threat against these children of POTUS is not so much assassination as kidnapping. One can imagine the impossible situation a POTUS would be placed in should his child be abducted and held in return for demands that could never be met. In this sense agents assigned to the seemingly more benign children’s details must be as vigilant as those assigned to POTUS. It can be difficult when a child calls his or her father—the president—to complain that the Secret Service is ruining his personal life, and the president, in turn, asks the Secret Service to give his child more space. Too much space can be the same as no protection at all, and the agents will bear the responsibility should something happen to his charge.
A PPD agent must be a hybrid of bodyguard and diplomat and must be prepared to handle any crisis that might arise, be it a gunshot or a complaining adolescent.
AROUND THE WORLD WITH POTUS
Most think of traveling to locations such as Europe with the president while staying in the finest hotels as being glamorous and exciting. If you are an agent on PPD, however, traveling to exotic, faraway places means working long hours while experiencing jet lag and sleep deprivation and trying to keep your nutrition level to a point where you can function. Biorhythms get totally out of phase, and regularity habits kick in at the worst possible times.
On one such trip to Europe, I had been preposted by my shift leader in a large ballroom of a hotel where POTUS was to have a private, off-the-record meeting, meaning no press. It was a grand room and hotel, very old and ornate, with enormously high ceilings and priceless artwork—all very European.
As I waited in the empty room for POTUS, my internal mechanisms began to rumble. This was trouble on a large scale. I knew I had to find a men’s room, or even a ladies’ room. For the first and only time in my Secret Service career, I abandoned my post and fled to the men’s room across the hall from the room POTUS was due to arrive at any minute. The odds that an assassin would appear in the next two minutes were probably zero, while the certainty that I had to find a men’s room during that time was 100 percent.
I rushed into the ornate men’s room and found a beautiful stall. Two minutes later, back in phase, I quickly reassembled equipment and myself and then ran to the door of the men’s room to return to my post. I flung open the door and literally ran into the president of the United States, William Jefferson Clinton, almost knocking him down. It seems his internal clock was still on Washington time, the same as mine. As I moved aside to allow him into the men’s room, I quickly thought of a cover for action and blurted out in my most professional voice, “All clear, sir.” He said, “Thanks, Dan,” and entered to tend to his presidential business. My shift leader nodded to me, and we left the leader of the free world alone in his now-private bathroom.
As I moved back to my post across the hall, it occurred to me that my shift leader thought I was checking out the men’s room for POTUS. It was too perfect, and I let him continue to think that forever.
* * *
I quickly learned that foreign trips on PPD were seldom exotic or exciting. On some trips, we could be in one of the most beautiful cities in the world and never really see the place, depending on what shift we were working. On one such trip to Budapest, I was working the shift from 4:00 p.m. to midnight. It was already dark when we arrived, and we never left the hotel during my shift. We could just as easily have been in Cleveland and not known the difference.
After the anticipation of looking forward to a foreign trip to a nice part of the world, I frequently found that, after the flight and working twelve or more hours, in some cases all I wanted to do was sleep in the too-small beds in the too-small European hotel rooms. Once I had to store my bags in the hallway of the hotel, as there was not enough space in the Barbie doll–sized room.
The saying in the Service was that no matter where you go, once you arrive, there you are. Generally speaking, that summed it up for me as far as foreign travel went.
SKORPIONS AND SYRIANS
All Secret Service agents constantly live with the reality that the
ir lives are expendable and can be exchanged at any time for that of the president. That reality permanently resides in the back of an agent’s mind, where it is not dwelled upon yet is always there.
In every Secret Service agent’s career, however, there are incidents that bring this reality home. One such incident occurred on a trip to Switzerland in 1993. President Clinton was meeting with various heads of state, including the Syrian president and dictator Hafez al-Assad.
While the president of the United States traveled with just the number of agents needed to efficiently protect him, Assad, it seemed, traveled with every armed agent in Syria, most of whom were probably related to him.
Dictators such as Assad also traveled overseas with almost all of their military leaders. These men dressed in uniforms resembling something out of a cartoon, with more medals and awards than Audie Murphy, although not as well deserved. The idea was that if all his military leaders were with him, there would be no one to overthrow the government in his absence, although I saw this happen once while protecting the president of Sudan in 1983.
With regard to the meeting between President Clinton and Assad, the Secret Service was concerned about having so many armed Syrians in a relatively small room just feet from POTUS. Because of this concern, an agreement had been reached with the head of Syrian security that Assad’s detail would not be armed during the meeting. The thought behind this request was twofold. One, we did not trust the Syrians in general. Two, in any situation where gunfire might erupt, Syrian protocol was to empty magazines indiscriminately in all directions. With the Syrians unarmed, neither of these things would be an issue.
