by Dan Bongino
This constant battering by the White House staff in the back-and-forth battle between presidential security demands and presidential “approachability” optics had a powerful psychological effect on the agents of the PPD when I was there, as they learned to succumb to an informal hierarchy in the White House where the PPD agents, unfortunately, are near the bottom. After years on the PPD, some of the agents learn to fight back and win many of these approachability-versus-security fights, but most of them do not. Also, many of the winners are unfairly labeled “troublemakers.” This tone is set early in a PPD agent’s tenure on the detail, and it is always set by the staff. With such a heavy responsibility for setting the tone for how the presidential “bubble” (the White House staff, the White House Military Office, the White House Communications Agency, and the Secret Service) should conduct itself and represent the White House when the president is traveling, a reasonable person would expect that the White House staff would act as an example for the other members of the “bubble,” the Secret Service included.
When I left Barack Obama’s presidential detail in December 2010, it was a poorly kept secret that people within his closest of inner circles had not only failed to set the proper tone for the behavior of the personnel within the presidential bubble, but had acted inappropriately on a number of foreign trips themselves. The behavior that the White House staff were engaging in during the Obama administration could have easily jeopardized our national security by putting sensitive information in the hands of suspicious foreign actors who may have been targeting these Obama staff insiders. But rather than stopping this behavior by confronting the protectee, or the White House staff, members of the “bubble” accommodated it, and Secret Service management ignored it, to avoid conflict with the staff, as if these people are earthly gods to be worshipped and never questioned. The election of Donald Trump was a loud message to the Washington, DC, elites that the American people were tired of this two-tiered system, but the power of the “bubble” is strong, and it reinforces this double standard of behavior.
Many of the Secret Service lead advance agents on overseas presidential trips quietly knew to have a late-night access plan ready in case these Obama administration staff insiders returned back to the presidential hotel late in the night, and in the early morning, with people unfamiliar to the advance team. I’ve never spoken publicly of this before, but I, along with a number of PPD agents I worked with, found it deeply troubling that many of the same Obama administration staff insiders who knew about the worst behavioral offenders within the Obama inner circle and spent time with them overseas, were quick to attack the nascent Donald Trump administration in its early days for suspicious ties to the Russian government, with little evidence backing up those claims. These former Obama insiders exhibited the worst kind of hypocrisy on Twitter, calling out the Trump administration, and putting them under an artificial cloud of suspicion, when many of these Obama acolytes knew about the recklessness and carelessness that happened overseas when their friends were occupying the White House.
I suspect many of the PPD agents who served during this same time period know exactly what I’m referring to regarding the reckless overseas behavior of many of President Obama’s closest staff members, and many of them were bothered by it at the time. After the fence-jumping incidents and the Secret Service scandal in Colombia, it’s public knowledge that the Secret Service has had its own share of problems overseas, and I’m in no way suggesting that the special agents of the Secret Service are free from sin, me included. Human beings make human mistakes, and the agents and officers involved in the fence-jumping incidents and the overseas scandals were punished severely (two of the officers involved in the 2017 fence-jumping incident were fired by the Secret Service not long after the incident) for their mistakes, along with being publicly, and privately, humiliated within the Secret Service. Their careers and their lives were never the same after their mistakes.
But what happened to the Obama insiders who engaged in equally troubling behavior? Nothing happened to them. Their reckless behavior, the kind that would have cost lower-level White House staff members their positions, was ignored. They continue to be the “go-to” talking heads for the former Obama administration, hell-bent on destroying the current Trump administration, and they’re taking the country down in the process.
The Secret Service fears confrontation with the White House staff and handles complicated staff and Secret Service conflicts through the PPD management and White House operations chains-of-command. But if the White House chief of staff, or the president, were to instruct his team to be more accommodating, and less confrontational, with the Secret Service, and to include them as workplace equals during advance work, and not subservient security guards, the rank-and-file agents would likely be more comfortable coming forward and disclosing breaches of conduct that they’ve seen on foreign trips. Many of the Secret Service agents I remain in contact with have told me that the Trump administration has been taking steps to work with the Secret Service and to improve the information flow and working relationship between the members of the presidential bubble. It is comforting to hear that President Trump’s operations staff within the White House has begun to open up to a more prominent advisory role for the Secret Service. Maybe then, with this new and more cooperative model, the Secret Service can begin to bury the troubled past with prior White House staffs and move forward with a less obsequious posture. This would ease the “wow factor” when working as a PPD agent in the White House and would encourage more responsible decision making, not subservient behavior designed solely to avoid conflict with Secret Service protectees and irresponsible White House staff members.
10
THE BROKEN WHITE HOUSE SECURITY PLAN
THE EIGHTEEN-ACRE WHITE HOUSE COMPLEX is a dual security threat. Both the physical building located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and the president of the United States, who both works and resides inside the building, are top-tier targets for terrorists, hostile state actors, and psychologically disturbed individuals. Few buildings in the United States have been attacked as often as the White House. It has been attacked from the sky (during the 1994 Cessna crash on the South Lawn), from the north side (during the 1994 SKS rifle attack on the north grounds), and from the south side (during the 2011 sniper attack from Constitution Avenue). In addition, in just the past few years, two intruders, Omar J. Gonzalez and Jonathan Tran, both mentioned earlier, made it onto the White House grounds on both the north and south sides, respectively. Gonzalez made it all the way to the State Floor of the East Wing of the White House before being stopped by an off-duty Secret Service agent. The White House is a magnet for attacks, and the main obstacle to appropriately securing the facility is that some of the White House stakeholders insist on treating the White House as a museum rather than as the most threatened government office building in the world. Making changes to the security plan at the White House is a complicated process because nearly every inch of the building is bound to a piece of history that someone is attached to and someone is convinced should be preserved. And while no one in the Secret Service I’m aware of is suggesting anything as dramatic as a complete redesign of the external grounds of the complex, they would likely meet heavy resistance if they were to put a substantive plan on the table to significantly modify the White House grounds to protect against today’s threats.
The White House was designed to house the president in a far different security environment from the one we live in today. It wasn’t uncommon when the White House first opened in the early 1800s for visitors to walk directly up to the front door of the building. And both East and West Executive Avenues were open to pedestrian foot traffic. Pennsylvania Avenue, on the north side of the White House grounds, was open to horse-and-buggy traffic, as was the area now encompassed by the fifty-two-acre White House Ellipse. But although there have been significant security upgrades at the White House since its construction, the upgrades are not enough to fix the security p
roblems. The White House is in both a challenging location for security, Washington, DC, and within a challenging location within that challenging location, the business center of Washington, DC. The White House needs a dramatic security overhaul of its external perimeter to mitigate the growing threat of an organized tactical assault on the grounds, and thus far, Secret Service management has not been able to force these changes.
Here are some changes the Secret Service should immediately seek to implement at the White House to enhance its security footing:
1.The Secret Service should stop tinkering with the current White House fence. With the exception of the new “anti-climb” spikes added in 2015 to the top of the fence, the fence has not undergone any significant changes since 1965. The current White House fences on both the north and south sides of the White House will do little to stop an organized terrorist assault team from penetrating it and making way to the White House front and back doors. The White House fence was designed to stop people from walking on to the grounds, but it was never designed to withstand a blast from small yield explosives, or a strike from a vehicle, and both the Secret Service and the terrorists know this. The Secret Service made a small effort to combat the threat of an organized assault at the White House fence line in April 2017 when they announced that the south grounds fence line would be closed, and pedestrian foot traffic would only be allowed on the north side of the Ellipse. But this policy, although well-intentioned, will do little to stop an organized terrorist tactical assault team from assaulting the fence line. To prevent this, the Secret Service must start over and tear down the White House fence. It’s a relic from a different era, littered with different threats, and it is an open invitation for people looking to do our president harm. In its place, the Secret Service should install an aesthetically pleasing double fence, wired with vibration sensors to detect movement, and angled outwards, which would make scaling the fence nearly impossible. The double fence should have enough distance between the two fences that Uniformed Division officers and K-9 teams can patrol the area and respond to threats rapidly. The fence should be high enough that, in conjunction with the angling outward of the fence, it should prevent scaling and the use of ladders to bypass it in an attack. And although no fence would withstand a blast from higher-yield, heavier explosives, the fence should be sturdy enough at its base to maintain some semblance of structural integrity in the event that a group of terrorists employs explosives in an attempt to breach it. Tearing down the current White House fence and replacing it with a more technologically advanced fence with some of the specifications I mentioned will provide an enormous tactical advantage to the Secret Service when, not if, the White House is attacked by a committed team of heavily armed terrorists.
2.The Secret Service Uniformed Division should consider turning the Uniformed Division Foreign Missions Branch over to the State Department and immediately reassigning the Foreign Missions officers to the White House. The Secret Service’s troubled history with mission creep has also impacted the Uniformed Division. The early 1970s expansion of the Uniformed Division’s (then known as the White House Police) mission to include foreign diplomatic missions was a misguided one. The Secret Service provides unparalleled value to the American taxpayer in fulfilling its core mission, keeping the president of the United States safe and secure. And in a normal business environment, this would be known as a “core competency.” But the Secret Service has always had a difficult time resisting the urge to expand its portfolio of responsibilities for reasons already discussed. Expanding the Uniformed Division mission to include securing foreign diplomatic missions does little to support the core mission of the Secret Service, which is keeping our president safe. The State Department has a budget far larger than that of the Secret Service, ranging from approximately $40 billion to $58 billion, depending on whether you factor in funds applied to overseas conflicts. The Secret Service’s budget is approximately $2 billion, a fraction of what the State Department is allotted for overseas conflicts alone. The boldest way to solve this problem is to rid the government of the alphabet soup of federal law enforcement agencies, intelligence agencies, and inspectors general, and to combine assets from the different agencies into a larger, but more efficient, federal law enforcement operation where none of this jockeying for funds and responsibilities would be an issue. But I don’t see this happening anytime soon. Lawmakers think small nowadays, and their interests are largely in reelection and parochial items. The boldness of our Founding Fathers has escaped this generation of politicians, who prefer to remain on the ship while it’s sinking rather than fix the leaks. In addition to the lack of political will to course correct the Secret Service among the political class, the Uniformed Division would likely resist giving up the responsibility for foreign diplomatic missions as well. Contrary to public perception, working at the White House is not a sought-after assignment within the Uniformed Division. Most officers would much rather be assigned to the Foreign Missions Branch of the Uniformed Division, where they can engage in patrol and actual police work. Uniformed Division officers assigned to the White House are largely relegated to fixed posts, which forces them to stare at walls and doors all day. After the allure of working at the White House wears off, which can happen after a few long, boring, days there, most of the officers want a break from the monotony. The Foreign Missions Branch has been that break because it allows the officers the freedom to police the areas around the foreign missions facilities and to do what’s in their hearts, be cops. But the Secret Service simply does not have the manpower for this expanded role any longer. By dropping the Foreign Missions Branch responsibilities altogether, they could free up personnel for reassignment around the eighteen-acre White House complex, where many of the officers could be permitted to roam and patrol, and to break up the monotony of fixed White House posting. But there’s another obstacle. The White House complex, and the surrounding streets, are a political hot potato when it comes to police jurisdiction. Governments are experts at creating unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles, and the White House policing plan is no different. As the plan currently stands, there are multiple federal and local police agencies that have their hands in the security plan surrounding the White House. This would prevent the Uniformed Division from reallocating Foreign Missions Branch officers to patrol roles in, and around, the White House. The Washington, DC, Metro Police Department, the U.S. Park Police, and the Secret Service Uniformed Division, share policing jurisdiction in the areas surrounding the White House, and these agencies would likely hesitate to give up their piece of the security pie. Whether an incident happens in the White House, on the sidewalk to the White House, on the streets surrounding the White House, or in the parks on both the north and south sides of the White House is determinate in deciding which of these law enforcement agencies has jurisdiction. Do you realize how absurd this is? Having a stew of law enforcement personnel, although dedicated and committed to their missions, surrounding the White House with different training, different weapons, different cultures, and different communications infrastructures, is outrageous and a lesson in government inefficiency. Here’s an easy trade for lawmakers, and the Secret Service (which I have no illusions will happen because it’s too simple, and the changes would hardly benefit any Congressman’s reelection campaign): the Secret Service gives up foreign diplomatic missions security, and in turn, the jurisdiction for security of the White House, the surrounding streets, and the parks on the north and south sides of the complex are turned over to the Uniformed Division. This would finally give them the ability to do the police work around the complex that they crave, and have specific expertise in.
3.The Secret Service should expand the Emergency Response Team, the K-9 Team, and the Counter-Sniper Team presence at the White House. One of the bright spots for the Secret Service Uniformed Division is their special teams. Although the special agent workforce and the Uniformed Division officer workforce rarely interact outside of the White House and the vice presiden
t’s residence, I’ve worked closely with many of their special teams members while doing advance work for Presidents Bush and Obama. Uniformed Division officers assigned to the K-9 and Counter-Sniper teams will routinely travel outside of Washington, DC, with the special agent advance teams from the PPD to assist in securing presidential sites both within the United States and overseas. I have always been impressed by the skill and work ethic of the members of the Uniformed Division special teams while conducting security advances. The K-9 unit dogs and the Uniformed Division officers were always impressive in their ability to adjust to complex work environments (dogs don’t adjust very well to time changes on long overseas security advances, and many of the K-9 team personnel had to learn to be diplomats in some majority-Muslim countries where dogs are not allowed in certain locations). Even on the most difficult of assignments (a visit to a foreign capital city, with multiple high-rise buildings, which is a sniper’s paradise) the Counter-Sniper Team’s work product was always timely, and appropriate to the threats. The Secret Service has some of the best countersnipers in the world. They routinely train to neutralize targets out to thousands of yards, and under difficult weather conditions. The Secret Service Counter-Sniper Team uses a JAR as their primary weapon. And in case you’re thinking that JAR stands for something sophisticated, it stands for “just another rifle.” Although the rifle is customized to fit the bodies of the technicians using them (officers assigned to the Counter-Sniper Team are called “technicians”), they are Winchester Magnum bolt-action rifles, not dramatically different from the commercially available version. In addition to the Counter-Sniper teams, the Secret Service deploys the Emergency Response Team (ERT) on the grounds of the White House. The ERT is the Uniformed Division’s version of SWAT, and the officers assigned to the ERT must meet rigorous physical fitness and firearms proficiency requirements. The personnel assigned to ERT are some of the most skilled and tactically proficient officers the Uniformed Division has, and their footprint should be dramatically expanded on both the North and South Lawns of the White House. The physical and firearms capabilities of these elite operators are far superior to those of ideologically driven but generally poorly trained terrorist assault teams. And as for any concerns that an expansion of ERT Uniformed Division personnel would make the White House look like an “armed camp,” this is nonsense. The White House north and, to a greater degree, south grounds have a multitude of places where ERT Uniformed Division personnel could patrol and dodge in and out of view of the public, which is always watching on the fence line. If the Secret Service ever combines an expansion of ERT personnel on the grounds of the White House with an expansion of the number of Counter-Sniper Team personnel assigned to watch the skies and the surrounding buildings around the White House and an expansion of the number of K-9 units around the eighteen-acre complex, then a terrorist assault team even considering an attack on the White House had better factor in massive casualties on their part first.
