Secrets of the Secret Service

by Gary J. Byrne

  Kessler revealed how President Obama was in danger as the Secret Service’s management was supposedly “lax.” However, the book didn’t reveal why, and so, of course, nothing changed. Each revelation was swept under the rug as anecdotal.

  But 2009 marked a turning point. It was the year when the consequences of terrible leadership began to seep out.

  Ten months after President Obama’s inauguration, on November 24, two wannabe reality TV stars and one audacious local businessman penetrated every Secret Service protective layer at a White House state dinner. The guests of honor were Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh and his wife. The reality TV couple had not colluded with the other man, but all three of them made it into one of the (supposedly) most secure sites in the world, simply by dressing nicely and insisting that they should have been included on the list.

  In 1901, the same thing had happened when a tuxedo-wearing deranged gate-crasher pressured his way into a meeting with President Theodore Roosevelt. One hundred and eight years later, with $1.6 billion a year being spent on the Secret Service, what had changed? This time not one but three uninvited guests entered a White House state dinner simply by pretending to have been invited.

  The lone gate-crasher, Carlos Allen, had been turned away twice, but, undeterred, he had gone to the Willard Hotel nearby and meandered onto a bus of invited guests from India. Once at the White House, he had simply walked in behind them.

  The wannabe TV star couple, Tareq and Michaele Salahi, simply walked in and insisted that the Secret Service was wrong, that they had been invited, and it worked.

  After the event, the Secret Service brazenly blamed its failure on the State Department, saying that it had been its lack of a checkpoint at the Willard Hotel that had allowed the one breach to occur. As for the gate-crashing couple, they were subpoenaed to testify before Congress but pled the Fifth Amendment. The Secret Service habitually downplays incidents or neglects to press charges so that its methodologies—and screw-ups—are not made public through court trials.

  That marked the moment when the American public, the DHS, and Congress wanted to know how a $1.6 billion agency with 6,732 employees could not carry out such a simple task as making sure only invited guests got into an event. Worse still, the Secret Service had promised Prime Minister Singh, his wife, his security detail, and the nation of India that the prime minister’s security was guaranteed under its watch. The only thing that protected any of the actual guests and the president from the three gate-crashers was that their motivation for crashing happened to be self-promotion rather than violence. The couple wanted to be featured on The Real Housewives of D.C., and the other gate-crasher just wanted to “party.” Those motivations were the only thing that kept the president, the prime minister, and the other guests safe from an attempt on their lives.

  That was the first scandal in an increasing series of scandals that brought major scrutiny by the DHS, Congress, the public, and the media—most notably the Washington Post’s investigative journalists.

  In 2006, Secret Service director Mark Sullivan took the helm of the agency. Sullivan believed he was untouchable, and that sense of arrogance led him to preside over one of the most bizarre episodes involving the agency during President Obama’s tenure.

  “Prowler” was the code name of a team of Secret Service agents specifically tasked with perimeter security around the White House. Prowler agents are supposed to be especially watchful when the president enters and exits helicopters on the White House lawn, a situation when the president is exposed and thus demands the utmost care on the part of all Secret Service personnel on duty. But suddenly, in 2011, the Prowler agents found themselves reassigned to an unlikely post: a long dirt road in the heavily wooded suburb of La Plata, Maryland, an hour away from the White House. What could be so important as to abandon the president as he was most vulnerable entering the White House?

  In the first place, Prowler had been another Master Plan addition and redundancy. For a century, the White House’s perimeter defense had been the responsibility of the Uniformed Division and the White House Police officers who had come before. The UD had already had a vehicle patrol for decades, and it had been part of the 1960s expansion of the UD to assist the Metro Police in fighting DC crime. UD officers saw Prowler for what it was: a Master Plan takeover designed to steal the UD vehicle patrol and part of the reckless plan to dismantle the entire UD.

  Prowler agents were not only trying to horn in on UD duties, they couldn’t even provide much help to the UD once they got there. Prowler agents were not even empowered to make arrests in areas where officers were, such as the enforcement of traffic laws. Prowler agents and the UD patrol were even on separate frequencies and communicated with two separate radio rooms. Whenever the Prowler team did catch someone, they had to call UD, the Park Police, or the Metro Police to make the arrest anyway. In the 1990s, one director had thought it would be efficient to merge Prowler and the UD vehicle patrol. But the UD officers had retaliated against the encroachment by embarrassing the agents for not being able to make arrests. Numerous suspects were caught in the argument as agents tried to find a nearby officer who could actually write so much as a ticket. When the Metro Police got involved as well, things became even more complicated.

  The tensions between the UD and Prowler patrols got so heated that the two patrols were split again—just another example of the long-standing rift between them and how the agency’s culture jeopardized the mission.

  But Prowler remained in place—until Director Sullivan assigned them to some unique duties down a dirt road in Maryland, a mission called “Operation Moonlight.” He ordered them to survey and intimidate his old secretary’s neighbor for months, day and night, with at least two agents in two separate vehicles. Not only was that a wanton abuse of power, it came during the worst manpower shortage in Secret Service history, which threatened to collapse the agency. After a neighborly dispute resulting in a restraining order, somehow the Secret Service felt it had to get involved. Prowler’s victim happened to be a retired FBI secretary of twenty-two years. Her neighbor, the one the Prowler agents were supposed to be “protecting,” was the secretary to the Secret Service director. For the duration of Prowler’s secret policelike intimidation tactics targeting a private citizen, the president and White House were without Prowler—which prompted the question: Why did Prowler exist anyway?

  The Prowler agents knew their activities were wrong and illegal. Instead of refusing the orders, they contacted DHS acting inspector general Charles K. Edwards, the head of the “watchdog office” that was supposed to rout out corruption. Instead, he did nothing. Three days before Edwards was to testify before a Senate Subcommittee about his alleged derelictions of duty, he resigned from the service.

  While Operation Moonlight was going on, it was known to many in the Secret Service. It was yet another blow to the agency’s morale to learn that agents had stooped so low and jeopardized their mission, and that the director had eventually gotten away with it in exchange for leaving his post. It also cemented what everyone in UD had known from the beginning—that Prowler agents were a needless redundancy. That explained why the director had chosen them to leave and harass a civilian in what would at most have amounted to a local police issue.

  It stands to reason that if the director of the Secret Service was involved in something so petty, the agency still had some serious problems. But the worst of the scandals were about to cascade like an avalanche.

  Aside from the usual confrontational crazies that UD Officers dealt with on a daily basis, Friday, November 11, 2012, at the White House perimeter was quiet. The day was cold, with zero wind. By 8:50 p.m., it seemed as though another day might pass with the only ones at war being the groundskeepers fighting the leaves that fell and were swept up each day. President Obama and the first lady were not at home, but inside the executive residence, the younger first daughter and the first lady’s mother were cozy, believing the Secret Service leadership and prote
ctors on site had them as their first priority.

  Inside were agents on the first daughter detail and officers standing their fixed posts. Outside were many Uniformed Division officers on the fence line, at entry control points, at security booths, at the perimeter of the White House, and on patrol in a vehicle around the area. The officers outside kept their bodies moving to keep their blood pumping in the chill. Uniformed Division officer Carrie Johnson was on post under the Truman Balcony, which overlooks the South Lawn. This was UD domain.

  A taxicab passed the Ellipse, the long circular roundabout in front of the South Lawn of the White House. It stopped at a stoplight. A car at the intersection in front of it stopped abruptly, oddly. The cab driver and passenger looked suspiciously at the mysterious stopped vehicle. Inside the car was a madman with a rifle, full of conviction. He’d driven more than 2,400 miles from Idaho for the slimmest chance of success. His motivations were bizarre. His intent was to kill or scare the president. In his hands was a Romanian state-manufactured Cugir Arms Factory AK-47, chambered in 7.62 × 39, the same cartridge and family of rifle that was used in the 1994 attack on the White House. That’s when the cab driver and passenger witnessed the unexpected. The man in front of them began shooting at the White House, firing five times.

  Officer Carrie Johnson was on the receiving end of the bullets. As the Truman Balcony took fire and debris hit the ground around her, she drew her handgun and took cover. The attack was on. Officers hearing the shots went into action. Officers at booths, entry control points, and fixed posts drew out their keys, popped their gun boxes, and brought out the long guns. The officers closest to the shooter drew their handguns and flashlights and pushed toward the gunfire as other officers closed ranks to prevent additional gaps. The UD vehicle patrol raced to the site of the reported gunfire as Park Police and Metro police converged on radio calls of “possible shots fired.”

  The madman threw the rifle into the passenger seat, sped off, and abandoned his car nearby. Meanwhile, as the cab drove away from the shooter, the passenger in the back seat began tweeting frantically at the Huffington Post and New York Times as he wondered why the police were taking so long to respond. In a nearby office was the special agent in charge of the Secret Service’s governmental and public affairs, Ed Donovan, who was immediately alerted by his team to the witness’s tweets. He immediately forwarded the tweets to the Protective Operations Intelligence Center and began tweeting back to the witness for more information as to the shooter’s location. The witness responded that the shooter was at Constitution Avenue at the Ellipse, some seven hundred yards in front of the White House and not directly in front of the fence.

  Five minutes after the shots were fired, officers converged on the Ellipse lawn. As soon as two UD patrol officers disembarked their patrol car to follow the sound of the gunfire on foot, they recognized the familiar smell of gunpowder. They noticed that the attacker’s muzzle had blasted the leaves to each side. They moved on the nearby abandoned car and discovered the rifle in the passenger seat and several shell casings in the car, several loaded magazines, and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. The shooter had been ready for a serious attack but had run like the coward he was. Another UD patrol officer caught a glimpse of a man in dark clothing heading in the direction of the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge, less than a mile away, and notified Arlington PD.

  But the cover-up had already begun.

  Soon after the shots struck the White House, someone from the comfort and ignorance of the Joint Operations Control Center inside the Old Executive Office Building notified all agents and officers that “No shots have been fired… stand down” and said that it had all been the result of a car backfiring. That order and claim had zero substantiation, but because of it, the officers’ response was seriously hampered. The shooter got away, fleeing into Arlington, Virginia, because Secret Service middle managers refused to put out a lookout—why put out a lookout for a man’s description if it was just a backfire?

  The Secret Service then got its wires crossed. The Park Police officers who had assisted the UD officers’ response to the shooting issued a warrant for the owner of the vehicle—not because of the shooting but because the rifle was illegal in Washington, DC. Based on that search warrant, other Secret Service agents interviewed the man’s family and friends and learned that he had intended to kill the president. Only then, five days later, did the service finally issue a BOLO (be on the lookout) to hotels and other businesses, and one hotel clerk in Pittsburgh made the connection. Pennsylvania state troopers made the arrest, and the man was tried and prosecuted for attempting to assassinate the president.

  The day after, officers were told to ignore what they had seen, smelled, and experienced as they were under fire. Because of the Secret Service culture, none of them spoke up to correct management’s side of the story.

  The subsequent investigations were all set up for failure as the service did everything it could to cover up or make excuses for its lack of response, including omitting what the officers had seen, smelled, and knew to be true. Within the service, the incident was disputed and set to be swept under the rug, despite two witnesses having seen the shooting and reporting it to authorities and newspapers. Four days after the shooting, a White House cleaner reported to the usher the discovery of three bullet impacts in the glass and one hole in the concrete around the window on the Truman Balcony. Only then did the Secret Service open an “spot report,” acknowledging an incident, but the event was not formally investigated until after the Washington Post reported on the fumbled response and cover-up three years later. The formal investigation by the Inspection Division did not open a case file until October 2014.

  Then came two major scandals that gave some hope that finally, after decades of failing in secret, the Secret Service might finally be forced to turn the corner.

  President Obama was eager to attend the 2012 Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia, to meet with more than thirty heads of state from various countries from South, Central, and North America. As was standard protocol, the Secret Service sent an advance detail of agents to the meeting site. It would be their job to follow the president’s schedule and plan for every contingency, such as ground or air attacks, NBCR (nuclear/biological/chemical/radiological) attacks, explosives, fires, and even natural disasters. Then the findings of the Secret Service, the five branches of the military, and the State Department would be coordinated to make sure that security and diplomacy worked in tandem. The president’s security rested on that advance work, but, as the Secret Service demonstrated, far more was at stake.

  “FFNs” is an espionage term meaning “female foreign nationals,” and agents are supposed to avoid them when traveling abroad. Spy, terrorist, drug cartel, and petty criminal networks use FFNs to take advantage of male federal agents away from home and destroy their common sense—and they’ve been very effective at doing so. Their goal is to compromise federal agents. They can use blackmail, drugs, pickpocketing, bribes, burglary, vehicle theft, bugging with tracking or listening devices, kidnapping, or even murder—and it usually involves a potent mix of more than one of these. But being compromised can occur far more easily. Even a federal agent honestly answering the friendly question “So what brings you here?” can lead to disaster. Though agents’ travel is not clandestine, they are on the clock 24/7, expected to be quiet professionals doing their job and otherwise rest up.

  Even if they behave just as they’re supposed to, the risk of identity theft of federal employees abroad is very real. The public has no idea how bad this is—and it affects every federal agency. Government-issued credit cards—which are considered government-issued property and equipment—are routinely targeted. Terrorists and criminals bug, infiltrate, and even run hotels, bars, cafés, and restaurants in a several-mile radius of tourist traps, beach fronts, and chain hotels used by governments, anywhere with Wi-Fi hotspots or credit card machines. They infiltrate those venues via bartenders, servers, and other staff to
steal equipment, financial information, and even identities. Networks inside hotels learn and report on the coming and going of agents, making the practice very effective. Once identities, credit cards, equipment, phones, radios, badges, and other materials are stolen, unlike locals, who can go to the police, agents have to return to their home country. That makes it more difficult to investigate the criminals. Who is tasked with tackling this plague of identity and credit card theft in foreign countries? The Secret Service. This makes its culture of partying hard and pursuing FFNs above and beyond gross negligence—it’s a serious security risk.

  Yet meeting women had always been standard protocol during travel. If senior agents couldn’t be reprimanded for having affairs with Clinton staffers, how could junior agents be held accountable for cavorting with FFNs, even sex workers—especially as their supervisors doing it, too? The culture of “Hear no evil, see no evil” was rampant. Even the most professional Secret Service operatives would have trouble reconciling the behavior set by Presidents Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Clinton—and even as early as Andrew Johnson. It was the “Secret” Service after all, right?

  For the 2012 Cartagena advance detail, the State Department made the arrangements at the Hotel Caribe, a luxury beachfront resort, which also provides rooms by the hour and is prostitution-friendly. Two weeks before the president was set to arrive, the hotel managers took notice of how the advance agents were especially hard partiers and drinkers. It was hard to miss. Then more agents and PPD arrived two days ahead of the president’s arrival.

  One agent on that particular detail was quite the player, having already “scored” on presidential trips to Italy, Ireland, Russia, New York City, and Colombia—and those were just the FFNs. He had even hooked up with an American in the Republic of Korea on another taxpayer-funded vacation, a Secret Service advance presidential detail. Another agent preferred the convenience of sex workers, having twice solicited them in El Salvador and Panama. Most people in law enforcement call that “sex tourism.”