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

by Dan Emmett

  Whether President Clinton intended to run on a given morning was always a matter of speculation. It seemed that no one on his staff ever had courage enough to ask him prior to his turning in for the evening if he planned to run the following morning or not. I never understood the reluctance to ask. The worst thing that could have happened was that President Clinton would have said he didn’t know, or don’t bother me now. By the end of each day most senior staff had gone home, leaving only young staffers still at the White House, and they were not going to ask the president if he intended to run the following day.

  This lack of assertiveness by the staff made our work on PPD unnecessarily complicated, and we had to assume that each morning the president would run. Each morning we staged a motorcade on the south grounds of the White House outside the diplomatic entrance that led to the area where FDR once gave his “fireside chats” and were prepared to drive to one of President Clinton’s designated running sites. This required the designated agent runners each morning to show up for shift change in running gear. That, in turn, required the runners to bring their business suits in a hanging bag along with everything else they would need to wear for the day: suit, shirt, belt, socks, shoes, tie, towel, toiletries, and so forth.

  While the motorcade required for transporting President Clinton to his running sites was scaled down from the normal cavalcade, it was still large. In addition to Secret Service limo and follow-up, this motorcade required two marked units—one from Metro DC police and the other from Secret Service Uniformed Division—to serve as a lead car and tail car, respectively. Many mornings these officers and their vehicles sat and waited for hours not knowing whether they would be needed or not. Other vehicles needed for the procession were vehicles for the press, guest runners, and staff.

  The usual running procedure was for the day shift, running outfits and all, to assume the posts in the White House. One post was on the main floor next to the front door of the White House. This was pre-9/11, when there were public tours most mornings. There the puzzled tourist would stare at some of the best agents in the Secret Service, wondering why each was dressed in workout attire. One particularly curious middle-aged woman asked me, as she leaned over the velvet rope barrier, why we were dressed in gym clothes? Not wanting to engage in conversation, I answered, “Sorry, the answer to that is classified.” This seemed to satisfy her as her husband prodded her toward the North Portico and out of the building.

  As the morning wore on, speculation would always begin as to whether President Clinton was going to run or not. Supervisors were put in a bind because they had to make the call after a certain point whether to keep agents in running gear or have them change into business attire for an upcoming move out of the White House.

  When the elevator outside the family residence lit up, everyone knew that the president was on his way down. Upon the door opening the agent standing post there would immediately call out, “Eagle,” the president was headed for the Oval Office or for the cars. If the call was to move to the Oval Office, we knew he was not running and we would sprint to our command post area, known as W-16, where we would change from running gear into our suits faster than supermodels changing outfits between runs down the catwalk. Running shorts and T-shirts flew as we tried to get into our work attire as quickly as possible. If the president emerged from the elevator in running gear, we all abandoned our posts and ran toward the motorcade, where we would get into the follow-up vehicle behind the limo and drive to the running site. Making the decision when to have the runners change into business suits was a matter of timing and luck, and on some occasions both were bad.

  On one such morning, we were, as usual, standing our posts in running gear. It was getting late, almost nine o’clock, and still no President Clinton. The shift leader, feeling it was safe to do so, made the call for all runners to go ahead and change into our suits for a regular workday. We changed and had no sooner assumed our posts than the elevator delivered President Clinton, attired in running gear. He walked to the cars, as usual, but there was a problem: There were no cars. The motorcade cars had been cut loose and had returned to their off-site location and could not be recalled in a timely manner. Also, those of us who were runners were in the process of changing from business attire back into running gear. This time there were suit coats, pants, belts, and other masculine wardrobe items flying around the command post as if we were caught in a windstorm.

  The president was not happy to find there were no cars waiting for him. He told the shift leader that he wanted to run off-site, and right now. The flustered agent suggested to the president that he run on the seldom-used track until we could put together some sort of motorcade package. With a look of frustration and without speaking, Clinton began running on the track. Using the emergency motorcade cars staged on the grounds and setting a record for changing outfits, we had cars and agents ready to go before Clinton had run two laps around the quarter-mile track. We proceeded to the reflecting pool, which was less than a quarter mile from the White House, and President Clinton got in his run.

  After returning from a run, the running agents had but a few minutes to grab their suits and bags and get over to the showers, located in the Old Executive Office Building.

  After running three and sometimes four miles in 90-degree heat and 100 percent Washington, DC, humidity, the body does not stop sweating immediately. Rather, it takes an hour or more. We would take cold showers, jump into our suits, and double-time back to the White House, where we would stand post still sweating, as if we had run the three miles in our suits. We were soaked and literally sweating through our clothes. It was miserable, but it was for the leader of the free world and we were getting paid, so what the hell. The rub was that the agents who did not run had to double up on their time on post while we runners were out of the rotation showering and getting dressed, so they received no downtime until we returned.

  In the beginning we showered and got back on post as quickly as possible. After the nonrunners starting complaining that we were taking too long getting back to post, I began taking even longer to return. It became my personal policy and habit following a run to proceed into the White House, get a cup of ice water, and stand in the air-conditioned security room until I had cooled off enough to shower and get back on duty. This caused even more complaints from some of the shift members. I reminded some that while we were running our asses off with no complaints, they were merely standing around or sitting, and that they should stop bitching. Following this exchange, most of the complaining stopped.

  President Clinton always enjoyed an end-of-the-summer trip to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, where, for a couple of weeks, he played golf and hung out with friends and wealthy supporters,—such as Vernon Jordan, James Taylor, Carly Simon, and the beautiful people of show business. It was a nice place to visit and far more expensive than most agents could ever afford if they were to have gone on their own. I went on two occasions and enjoyed it. Clinton was relaxed and easy work at the Vineyard. He also loved to run while there.

  I was on the afternoon shift, 4:00 p.m. to midnight, at Martha’s Vineyard. On the afternoon shift it was always safe to run in the morning, because President Clinton seldom ran in the afternoon. The morning guys always handled it. Most days—not all, as it turned out.

  One morning I had risen around nine o’clock after staying up a bit too late the night before. I got up, pounded back a lot of water to relieve my state of dehydration, and then went for a five-mile run. In the afternoon, I walked out of the hotel and into the waiting shift change van that would take us to POTUS’s location to begin our shift. Inside, the shift leader was visibly upset. “What’s wrong?” I asked. He nearly shouted, “POTUS did not run this morning; he is going to run this afternoon! Someone needs to go get running gear!” After an awkward moment of silence with no volunteers, I said, “Okay, what the hell. I’ll go.”

  I had already run that morning, but if the president of the United States needed an agent
to run with, I estimated that in my current condition I would still do as well as anyone else who might be available. As I spilled out of the van to go back to my room for the right gear, another agent followed. He was also a former CAT agent. CAT once again mans up and saves the day while others whimper. We had fun with that one.

  WAITING TO KILL THE PRESIDENT

  Aside from not having enough running agents at times, the biggest problem with President Clinton’s fitness program was that he liked to run in areas where any assassin could lurk, as could a random demented person with a gun. We ran through crowds, crossed city streets, and stood in the open for minutes at a time by the limo while Clinton stretched before and after the run, all of this with normal traffic flowing by. We also violated the most non-negotiable rules for security in such matters. We usually left the White House at the same time each day, using the same gate, and seldom varied our running sites or routes. We had four running venues and did not mix them up very well. We were an assassination waiting to happen. Were it not for an overseas trip, an attempted assassination in all probability would have happened.

  During December 1993, President Clinton left Washington for two weeks and traveled to Russia. This was the trip from which I flew home on the backup plane after shaking hands with Lurch, the Russian security officer. Meanwhile, in Florida a man was threatening to kill the president. His basic plan was to drive from Orlando to Washington, where he would wait along one of our running routes and kill President Clinton as he ran by. There was speculation that he wished to die during the attack in a hail of Secret Service pistol lead.

  One of the things the Secret Service has always benefited from is that potential assassins are largely unable to formulate and implement effective plans. Fortunately this man’s plans were no different. The place where this man, having arrived in DC from Florida, is said to have sat day after day for over a week was indeed on a route we used regularly. The would-be assassin failed to realize, however, that POTUS was out of the country and would not be by anytime soon. Eventually he grew tired of waiting in the cold and returned to Florida, where he confided what he had done to a friend, who contacted authorities. The suspect was arrested, and in May 1994 he was convicted, in US District Court, of 18 USC 871, threatening the life of the president. He served four years in federal prison.

  As a result of this incident and others not publicly revealed, the Service was finally successful in persuading President Clinton to stop the unwise practice of running in public. The president had pushed his luck long enough and had gotten away with it, but everyone knew that his luck would not hold out forever.

  Not long after the threat from Orlando, the running issues were all resolved overnight when, at professional golfer Greg Norman’s house in Florida, President Clinton caught his heel on a step and fell, tearing his knee. His running days were all but over, and he confined his fitness efforts to the White House, where he used a treadmill and stair-climber.

  The next president, George W. Bush, was not a jogger but an honest-to-God runner. He ran at a six-minute-per-mile pace normally for three miles, and there were even fewer agents who could run with him than with President Clinton. Fortunately, President Bush never ran in public but rather at Camp David or the Secret Service training center in Beltsville, where it was much easier to protect him. There is, however, no such thing as a completely safe site, and although the use of more secure running sites meant that fewer agents were needed, the ones who accompanied President Bush still had to keep up with his six-minute pace. Most of those men were current or former CAT agents.

  DRIVING THE PRESIDENT

  In December 1993, President Clinton was vacationing for a few days in Hilton Head, South Carolina, where he spent most days playing golf and running on the beach. I had volunteered to do the advance because I was familiar with the layout of the island. My wife and I had spent our honeymoon at Hilton Head three years earlier, and I had vacationed there many times as a boy with my family. I had always loved the place, but it was strange how now all at once everything looked different from a security perspective. I discovered on this trip that work is work no matter where you are. Unlike all other visits to Hilton Head, this one did not afford me the opportunity to enjoy the island or its amenities.

  I was doing the advance for the rented house on the beach where the president was staying and also managing the command post located at another rented house next door to his. These houses were located in a very affluent neighborhood on a short street with only one way in and one way out, making things easy to secure. The weather was beautiful and everything went according to plan, with the biggest nuisance being the people who lived on the street where the president’s rental house was. Each seemed to feel he should have access to the president and First Lady since they were staying at a home on their street. Most were left disappointed.

  On the final day of the assignment, I was sitting in the command post reading the following week’s work schedule when my shift leader pulled me aside and said he wanted to talk to me in private. This type of thing was seldom good. We met in an empty room at the command post. Coming directly to the point, he asked which of the other sections of PPD I would like to go to, referring to the First Lady detail or the transportation section. Since CAT had been a section of PPD since 1992, I pointed out the obvious: that I had recently come from CAT and my section time had therefore been satisfied. He agreed with my logic but said that shift leaders had no say-so or control as to when someone on their shift came or went. It was simply their job to run the shift and call the formations around POTUS. He continued that the immediate directive was coming from the boss of manpower on PPD who was a GS-15, practically the highest level of Federal civil service professionals. A bit perplexed I told my shift leader to assign me wherever I could be best utilized.

  After Hilton Head I had the weekend off and I reported for work at the White House on Monday. It was a normal day, and I was standing post in the main mansion when the supervisor of manpower approached. He informed me that, as a graduate of the Secret Service Protective Operations Driving Course (PODC), I was being moved from the shift to the transportation section the following Monday. There I would become one of a select few who would drive the president of the United States in an armored limousine, drive the working shift in the follow-up vehicle, and plan presidential motorcades.

  The mission was twofold: One, of course, was to safely drive the president from point A to point B. The other was to do whatever was necessary, using skills perfected in PODC, to move the president out of a kill zone should the motorcade be attacked. We who drove the president were anything but chauffeurs. We were all highly trained agents, shifting our protective skills from walking and running alongside the president to a new dimension that included safely transporting him in a vehicle specifically designed to increase the chances of his survival in an attack.

  The limousines we drove were very large and very heavy. In spite of their 450-cubic-inch engines, there was lag time between depressing the accelerator and the moment the car began to move. Conversely, one had to begin braking well before the car was expected to stop. Some of the ballistic glass of that era caused visual distortion, and it was hard to judge distance, even for a driver with perfect depth perception. Because President Clinton seldom wore a seat belt, a driver had to constantly think ahead of the car and the situation in order to avoid disaster.

  Valentine’s Day 1994 was a miserably cold, rain-soaked day in Washington. It was one of my first days in the transportation section, and I was assigned the 2:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. shift, along with agent Mike Wilson, who had several months’ experience in the transportation section. There was nothing on POTUS’s schedule for the night, and it looked like it would be a quiet evening of paperwork and making telephone calls. It did not turn out that way.

  At around eight o’clock, the phone rang in the transportation section office. On the other end was the shift leader of the president’s detail. He announced that POTUS wanted to g
o to Andrews Air Force Base and surprise Hillary, whose airplane was scheduled to arrive in two hours. I was to drive the limo.

  This should have been an easy assignment, only I would be driving a car as big as a medium-size boat with POTUS as my passenger. Because Mike Wilson was the senior agent, he did the advance work of making the notifications to the support authorities, such as Metro Police; I went downstairs to where the POTUS’s operational vehicles were kept and prepped the limo, making sure it was ready.

  Mike had driven this particular car on a number of occasions and offered some welcome advice prior to our departure for the White House. When we arrived at the White House, Mike disappeared to meet with his police counterpart. I was alone in the dark, sitting in the belly of the beast, which smelled like it had just come from the car wash, as all protective vehicles do.

  As I sat, I pondered the fact that I was about to drive the president of the United States at night in some of the worst rain imaginable in an off-the-record motorcade with no intersection control—all so he could surprise his wife on Valentine’s Day. He obviously had a great deal of confidence in us all.

  The sound and movement of the right rear door being opened broke my trance. In stepped the president’s daughter, Chelsea, and the president, who both greeted me by saying, simply, “Hi.” President Clinton was familiar with me from our runs over the past year and my working with him for the past six months. He actually knew most of his agents by name, having a nearly if not totally photographic memory for faces. “Good evening, Mr. President,” I said, and nodded at Chelsea. The thought now occurred to me that on the way back from Andrews, should we actually make it that far without me rear-ending the lead car, the First Lady would also be in the backseat.