Secrets of the Secret Service

by Gary J. Byrne

  President Roosevelt, not to be held back by the challenges of his paralysis or the obvious risks to his life during wartime, scheduled four major international trips. All were fraught with near catastrophes. After he returned safely from Mexico, one of the Mexican president’s guards, who had protected him on the trip, made an attempt on the life of the Mexican president, Manuel Ávila Camacho, revealing himself to be a Nazi operative. In Casablanca, General George Patton frantically tried to get the president to leave when intelligence showed that the Nazis knew he was there.

  On trips to the Middle East and the Soviet Union, Reilly and the president dodged Nazi magnetically guided torpedoes, German submarines (two were destroyed on one presidential trip), and sea mines, as well as one incident of friendly fire, when an escort ship accidentally fired a torpedo at the president’s ship. It barely missed.

  But the success of those trips only encouraged Roosevelt, who announced that he wanted to personally visit American troops fighting in Italy. At that point, Reilly drew the line and exercised his override authority, refusing to allow the president to place himself in such danger. He knew that the president was sure to demand that he be fired, but Reilly, seeing zero chance of success in keeping the president alive if he went to oversee the landings, was finally the first operative to exert the “override authority.” Amazingly, the president backed down.

  Roosevelt’s declining health in the later years of World War II created an increased focus on his vice president, Harry Truman. Vice presidents had not historically been protected by the Secret Service, but Morgenthau eventually assigned three men to Truman, who initially assumed that the strangers in his office were visitors. That simple effort, which very nearly didn’t happen, helped ensure continuity of government when Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage on April 12, 1945, while staying in Georgia of his mistress and having his portrait painted.

  In just a few years, the Secret Service had gone from failing to winning. It was all due to Henry “The Morgue” Morgenthau, Frank “The Untouchable” Wilson, and Mike “The Irish Cop” Reilly. SSD evolved from a gentleman bodyguard to effective protectors of a wartime leader, as well as winning another war on counterfeiting—which was won through transparency. But with World War II’s end, fatigue calling in its debts, and the death of President Roosevelt, who had continually requested the postponement of agent retirements, the job and its stresses finally took their toll. Protection is a marathon, not a sprint, and those three leaders, though incredible, had failed to ensure that their efforts would be maintained. They failed to adequately pass the torch to the next generation of leaders. That was the beginning of the service’s degeneration.

  On President Truman’s first full day as president, he strode right past his exhausted White House detail and out the front door and headed for Pennsylvania Avenue. He had always enjoyed a long, fast walk before breakfast. Sunrise walks were the hallmark of his style. Foolishly, the SSD failed to see that he would not be able to hold the schedule his predecessor had over four terms. Only one agent noticed Truman leaving and caught up with him on the lawn. The Southeast Gate White House Police officer urgently phoned the detail, who, panicking, caught up to the new president a half mile away on 15th Street. The president said, “Well, now, it’s very nice of you to join me.”

  Why had the first agent not exercised his override authority? The agent believed that if the detail had not known Truman was walking the streets unprotected, approachers and stalkers would not have known either. It was a gamble, a protection style yet again based more on hope and chance than on procedure.

  Throughout World War II, the Secret Service employed only about three hundred agents in total. On Starling’s White House detail, there were about twenty-five permanent agents rotating in three shifts. Under Reilly, that number had immediately increased to seventy. But the additional forty-five-plus were not new hires; they were transfers from field offices across the nation serving temporarily. Field agents were shipped in to guard the president as he traveled or stayed at the White House, an imperfect practice at best.

  Meanwhile, the biggest threat to the president was the White House itself. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt had not been comfortable utilizing any of the $50,000 annual federal allocation for upkeep of the executive mansion while the government rationed food and called upon Americans to scrounge scrap metals, and grow “victory gardens” in parks and their yards to aid the war effort. During the war, therefore, the White House had fallen into disrepair. Even the allocation was little match for the now structurally unsound building.

  In 1948, as First Daughter Margaret Truman played the piano in the sitting room, a leg of the piano suddenly crashed through the floor and into the rotting support beam directly below. It was the last straw for President Truman. Through embarrassing meetings with congressmen and visiting dignitaries, he shamed Congress into funding an extensive renovation.

  In 1950, the White House received congressional support for its long reconstruction. With strong input from the military, Secret Service, and security professionals, the entire structure was rebuilt from the inside. Steel beams were added, along with air-conditioning, a basement and subbasement, and a nuclear fallout shelter, ready for the Cold War.

  The president had to move his family to Blair House, across the street from the White House at the corner of Jackson Place and Pennsylvania Avenue. They would stay there for most of the duration of the four-year project.

  From Blair House, President Truman continued his morning walks, which had become increasingly popular. There was even a walking club set up, where unofficial tickets were handed out to those seeking to join the pack. His Secret Service protectors, of course, were terrified. Chief Urbanus Baughman later reflected that the walks “represented the kind of ‘habit’ that was hand-picked for the assassin.… [The daily walks] made Mr. Truman a slow moving target, the delight of a sharpshooter.” Anxious agents walked close to the president and his entourage; Baughman implemented a follow car brimming with agents with submachine guns to follow the president, which they did in secret, in case of a drive-by attack or car ramming but admittedly useless in case of a sniper attack.

  Only seven Secret Service men, a mixture of agents and White House Police, ensured Truman’s protection day and night during his stay at Blair House during the renovation. When the president departed and arrived at Blair House, the detail would be bolstered by additional agents and White House Police.

  Chief Baughman’s much-needed and well-conceived presidential security plan, called “defense in depth,” was hard to implement at Blair House. Pennsylvania Avenue in those years was open to both pedestrians and vehicles. The chief’s three layers (inner, middle, outer) intertwined like chain mail with each man an interconnected link. Agents with agents and officers with officers, they worked in pairs and maintained line of sight with each other. Doors could be unlocked but were always manned, ideally from both sides, in case of a bomb threat, fire, firefight, or a combination of the three. Secret Service men at the outer layer, carrying sidearms only, would identify and engage approachers, gate-crashers, or any other kind of potential threat, while the inner circle evacuated the president. Agents or officers near those engaged would then communicate with the rear layers, aid in stopping the threat, and, equally important, aim to prevent any gaps. The philosophy behind “defense in depth” did not fit well with Blair House’s physical shallowness. An attacker needed only to burst in from the public street and then race up two flights of stairs to arrive in the president’s bedroom. Unlike today, pedestrians, cars, and buses rushed by all day long. Unscreened crowds often formed just outside the building. There was only a knee-high fence that guarded the bushes under the windows. All the protective measures considered “needs” at the White House, such as the fence, were disregarded as “wants” at Blair House.

  On November 1, 1950, aside from the occasional construction noise, all was quiet at the White House western front. Local newspapers had published the presi
dent’s provided schedule, just as they always did. President Truman arrived with his detail at the back entrance of Blair House so crowds could not close in. All upper-floor windows were open so air could circulate throughout the house. The Secret Service often worried about the street-level entrances and the ushers, chefs, and housemen going in and out. The main doors were open, their screen doors closed and manned by Secret Service employees.

  President Truman had lunch with Mrs. Truman, and just before 2 p.m. he lay down to take a nap prior to a 2:30 cemetery commemoration with British officials.

  The outer ring of perimeter security consisted of four Secret Service White House Police officers. Officer Leslie Coffelt manned the west side security booth. Officer Joseph Downs manned the west entrance. The east security booth was covered by Officer Joseph Davidson. Officer Donald Birdzell was covering the stone staircase to the east side front door. Agent Floyd Boring made his rounds to everyone at their posts. Agent Vincent Mroz, the new guy on the White House detail, hovered around Blair House’s interior. Agent Stewart Stout guarded the president’s bedroom on the second floor’s east side. At the intersection of Pennsylvania Avenue and Jackson Place, Metro Police officer Marion Preston directed traffic.

  Two men had been driven by Blair House in a taxicab earlier that morning. After canvassing the neighborhood, they returned to their hotel and inquired about a late checkout, confident that they would return. After lunch, dapperly dressed for the occasion, they took a bus filled with sightseers to the Treasury, east down Pennsylvania Avenue. They walked past Blair House again, made a final survey, and split up. At 2:20 p.m., the novice gunman, Oscar Collazo, approached from the east, as the trained gunfighter, Griselio Torresola, moved in from the west.

  Collazo stood unnoticed at the east entrance steps, between Officer Birdzell, stationed atop the steps into Blair House, and the security booth, where Agent Boring and Officer Davidson conversed. Seeing Officer Birdzell, who was facing the door, he drew a Luger pistol from concealment and pulled his trigger on him. The officer heard a sharp quiet metallic click and turned to see Collazo slapping the back of his Walther P38 semiautomatic 9 mm pistol, which had failed to fire. Agent Boring and Officer Davidson took notice just as the assassin’s gun discharged, sending the first bullet into Officer Birdzell’s knee.

  President Truman awoke. Mrs. Truman went to the president to confirm her suspicion that the noise had been a car’s exhaust backfiring. Chief Baughman had just left his barbershop and was walking back to the Treasury Building. He, too, thought he heard the sound of a car backfiring. But the trained officers knew what the sound really was and turned to see Officer Birdzell descend and hobble into the street.

  Reporters, photographers, and tourists wandering by dived over fences and hedges, fleeing in all directions. Metro Police officer Marion Preston ran toward the shooting, gun drawn, and a bullet passed through his jacket. Officer Birdzell, thinking fast and remembering his training, continued to shoot and move. That forced one of the assassins further from the protectee, and reduced the chance that the three officers’ return fire would hit one another or any civilians.

  After the first shot, Officer Coffelt, at the west security booth, turned east. Officer Downs was entering Blair House through the open west basement entrance. Downs climbed back up the stairs to address the first shot. That’s when Torresola, utilizing his compatriot’s shot as a distraction, stepped to Officer Coffelt’s booth and fired three shots into Coffelt’s back. Torresola then rapidly pivoted and turned his Luger toward Officer Downs, shooting him three times. One shot almost severed Downs’s neck. Downs backed into the Blair House kitchen, drew, and fired one shot at Torresola but missed; then, clutching his neck, he collapsed, unconscious. The door into Blair House was now wide open for the second assassin to enter.

  Agent Vincent Mroz headed to a second-story window to take aim at one of the assassins below. His first carefully aimed shot missed; a tree blocked his second. Agent Stewart Stout instructed the first lady and president to stay where they were and lie low. He grabbed a Thompson submachine gun and stood at the top of the staircase. For an assassin to reach the president, he would have to somehow make it past Stout’s .45-caliber, fully automatic defense. Stout followed protocol exactly, but the housemen yelled at him, called him a coward, and urged him to join the fight. Agent Stout held fast, and the inner layer held.

  At that moment, Torresola had a choice to make: he could either enter the building over Officer Downs’s body and head upstairs to the president or aid his fallen compatriot, who was on the east side facing down four police guns. Had Torresola chosen to enter through the basement door; had Agent Mroz taken a different route than the assassin; and had Agent Stout buckled under the accusations of cowardice and likewise run outside to aide in the gunfight, he would have had an unfettered path to the president and first lady. Agent Stout kept his post. Agent Mroz decided to take the fight to the enemy outside and ran down the interior steps to the west doorway entrance. If he could rush out, he would outflank the two assassins.

  The two White House officers fired five quick shots each. Agent Boring was calmer. His first shot missed. His second hit one of the assassins square in the chest, knocking him flat on his face.

  President Truman, unattended, leaned out his window and stared bewilderedly at the gunfight below. A Metro officer in the street yelled at the president, “Get back!”

  Had Torresola looked up, he might have seen the president and had a clear shot, but instead he fired his last round at the agents and officers at the east end, then moved to a new fighting position. The sidewalk trees, bushes, and knee-high fence offered him intermittent cover. The new position disrupted the clear line of sight and fire between him and the Secret Service trio, who turned their fire on Torresola, who knelt, reloaded, and returned fire.

  At one point during my employment with the Secret Service, a colleague had the opportunity to take a look at some of the old evidence files describing that incident. One uncorroborated witness taking cover reported to authorities that a plainclothes man on the (then) State Department Building side of the street had drawn his own handgun from concealment, taken careful aim, and fired one shot before walking off, but no such mystery shooter was ever reported publicly.

  At the exact moment that the “plainclothes man” took a shot at Torresola, a few feet away from Torresola, Officer Coffelt, bleeding to death and slouched in his booth, took careful aim with his .38 special Colt revolver, just as he had been drilled in all his years of White House Police marksmanship training. He fired one shot before falling unconsciousness. The shot struck its mark.

  Torresola was dead, a clean hole on the right side of his head and a gaping mess on the left from the single bullet that had passed through it. Officer Preston sprinted to a nearby drug store and phoned police. The Battle of Blair House was over.

  The president’s limo arrived soon afterward, and President Truman decided to keep his 2:30 appointment. His detail was glad to have him leave so they could get things under control.

  Due to the brave work of so many agents and officers, the president had lived and the nation had been spared an enormous trauma. But it had come at the cost of the life of Officer Leslie Coffelt. In his honor, President Truman wrote a letter to the chief of the Uniformed Division, establishing the White House Police Benefit Fund. With it, the Secret Service White House Police would hold the exclusive rights to sell White House memorabilia carrying the White House and presidential seal. The fund was to be used for scholarships and to boost the morale of the workforce and champion their values, marksmanship, and sacrifice. None of those values was more worthy of honor than those of Officer Coffelt, who, with his last breath and final shot, had saved the president’s life.

  Not long afterward, the White House Police Force used the fund to accomplish all of those goals. The fund started a scholarship for officers’ children, helped officers’ families in desperate need, and assisted families of officers who had died. The fun
d also aided the White House Police pistol, rifle, and shotgun teams, which competed in and won championships worldwide. It boosted morale and kept the Secret Service operating at the forefront of combat marksmanship. The teams also hosted their own national and international competition as a way of honoring Coffelt’s memory and giving back to police units nationwide that so often aided in presidential protection when the president traveled.

  As an emergency measure, President Truman’s detail was bolstered with even more agents transferring in from field offices. The Battle of Blair House was the most violent and lethal in the history of the Secret Service’s PPD. As of late 2017, Officer Leslie Coffelt remains the only employee of the Secret Service to have sacrificed his life in direct protection of the president.

  The incident, for a time at least, curtailed President Truman’s walks. Agents drove him to fenced areas whose area and perimeters were secured. That way he could enjoy his walks and be protected. His protectors and their families appreciated the change.

  Truman’s successor, President Dwight Eisenhower, had one of the most amiable relationships with his Secret Service protectors that a president has ever had. But that brought its own challenges. Throughout his two terms of office, the Secret Service’s experience in protecting the overly agreeable Eisenhower lulled them into complacency. Chief Baughman and the White House detail summarized their troubles as “Three G’s—Golf, Gettysburg, and Grandchildren.” Agents had to clear golf courses—easy open ground for snipers—before the president could play through, requiring the creation of the agency’s first countersniper program. As for the grandchildren, some agents even became “honorary Camp Fire Girls” while escorting the first granddaughters to summer camp. After a great debate with the president, SSD finally closed a visitors’ observation tower at the Gettysburg battlefield site to secure the president’s nearby farm from snipers.