by Dan Bongino
On election night of 2000 my campaign experience with the Clintons was coming to a close. It was bittersweet. I not only learned valuable lessons about our methodologies from the PPD agents assigned to the first lady, I also learned a lot about myself. I pushed myself harder than I ever had in my life and had come through it unscathed. After all the visits, motorcades, travels, and threats, Mrs. Clinton was alive and well, with not even a close call during the campaign.
But there was no rest for our weary bodies on election night, as the Melville field office was assigned to work the Hyatt in New York City, where Mrs. Clinton, her staff, and crowd of supporters would gather to monitor the returns. Personally I hoped for a national Republican victory that night, and held out hope that the party could also take the New York Senate seat. Although I would have forfeited my life proudly for Mrs. Clinton in my role as a Secret Service agent, I was still a Republican and knew the party needed a win both nationally and in New York. That night I was receiving minute-by-minute updates on all the ongoing races from the Clinton staff, who the whole time were feigning disinterest in order to not create a scene in the event Mrs. Clinton lost. Adding to the chaos of the night, our handheld metal detector failed at the checkpoint I was manning, and I was forced to have to manually pat down incoming guests. My first victim happened to be actor Ben Affleck, who was good-hearted about it.
As the night wore on and exit poll results came in, it became apparent that the first lady would be declared the winner. When the race was called for Mrs. Clinton it seemed like the entire hotel shook in elation. I was politically disappointed but touched by the outpouring of genuine emotion from the campaign staff I had come to know well. It was clear that they believed in their cause as passionately as I believed in mine. But the presidential election was an entirely different story.
I was relieved by another agent late that night and headed to my room still unclear as to who the next president was going to be, Texas governor George W. Bush or Vice President Al Gore. This decision had potent ramifications for me both politically and personally. The Clinton staff was confidently telling me that Gore “had it,” but some of the skeptical ones were quietly saying that it was “not over.” When Florida was declared for Gore by some media outlets, I was devastated. I felt that the obituary for the Republican Party had just been written.
I awoke the following day thinking that the first lady had won her race for New York’s Senate seat and that our new president was Al Gore. To my astonishment when I turned on the television cable news channel, Florida was back in the “undecided” column. What followed was nearly a month of speculation and well-documented political theater, which had very real consequences for the Secret Service. With no margin for error in their planning, the Secret Service was forced to plan for a presidential security footprint for two presidents-elect, George W. Bush and Al Gore.
Planning for one presidential transition is difficult enough, within both the White House and the Secret Service, but planning for two was a situation that had never been considered. The chaos ended in mid-December 2000 when the Supreme Court halted the recount of the presidential ballots and George W. Bush was declared the winner.
5
9/11
SEPTEMBER 11, 2001, was a quiet, calm morning in our Long Island office. Tony, Joe, and I were planning a search warrant and arrest for an Internet fraudster who was “selling” diamonds on eBay (without the actual diamonds). While discussing the arrest logistics of the operation, Tom, a senior agent within the office who had developed a reputation for calm and who loved to say, “Take it easy” every time he felt an agent was getting emotional, rushed into my office shouting, “Someone just bombed the World Trade Center.” He had been on the phone with our New York office located in 7 World Trade Center as the first plane struck the North Tower, and the New York dispatcher he was speaking to believed it to be a bomb.
Collectively stunned that the World Trade Center had been attacked again (Muslim terrorists had detonated a truck bomb in its underground garage in 1993), we dropped our arrest paperwork and rushed into the rear of the office where Marty had a cable news channel on … and nothing. There was no mention of any bomb at the World Trade Center. Marty began to change the channels and I remember as he stopped at the show The View he looked up and said, “I don’t see anything.”
At that point, we saw the dreaded “Breaking News” scroll across the screen and a live newscaster interrupt the program, clearly unprepared for what he was about to say. I don’t recall any of his words or the words of anyone else in the room at that time, as I was transfixed on the television screen. There was a live image of a gaping hole in the side of the North Tower of the World Trade Center that appeared surreal. I had just been with some Secret Service friends at the Windows on the World restaurant on the top floors of the North Tower the week prior and had been marveling at the incredible 360-degree views. I also began my career with Tom, Lisa, and Don in the lobby of our 7 World Trade Center New York field office, and I frequently reflected on the moment when I ascended the escalator into the World Trade Center plaza on the day I was hired. It was one of my proudest moments, and the plaza always brought back feelings of renewal and goodwill. So it was a surreal image to watch papers and pieces of the building fall into that plaza below. Marty, who rarely showed any emotion and had chastised me many times during my time working for him for wearing my emotions on my sleeve, was clearly as shaken by the attack as the rest of us. His normally stoic face telegraphed the anger we were all feeling but not saying.
The news began reporting that a plane hit the building, and the first words I recall hearing were those of Paul, a new agent to the Melville office who had been a navigator in the US Navy with many hours in flight time, protesting, “There is no way in this weather a plane hit that tower.” The sky was clear blue that morning and there was not a cloud in the sky.
We all watched, hypnotized by the tragedy. Although it was only seventeen minutes after the North Tower was struck that United Airlines Flight 175 struck the South Tower, it felt like days. We watched the second plane strike the South Tower in horror. I distinctly recall Marty saying “Holy shit!” as an incredible ball of fire screamed out of the opposite side of the tower. I knew, right at that moment, as most Americans did, that our definition of “normal” was about to be discarded. Life in America was now going to be defined in terms of pre-September 11 and post-September 11.
Any talk of the arrest we were planning was quickly forgotten and one of the longest, most emotionally devastating days of my life was just beginning. After quickly discussing with Marty the most effective way for us to help, we decided to drive to our satellite field office at JFK airport in Queens, where Tom was assigned, and begin the process of trying to locate the hundreds of Secret Service personnel who worked at the World Trade Center.
As we left, workers from the other businesses occupying the office building were walking aimlessly in the hallway crying and trying desperately to reach loved ones. The cell phone networks were overloaded, and completing an outgoing call was nearly impossible. The inability to complete a call was taking an emotional toll on me as I frantically attempted to reach my brother Joseph.
Joseph was an emergency medical technician with the New York City Fire Department, and knowing my brother, I was certain he had rushed to lower Manhattan to render aid. My cell phone rang as I opened the car door and I anxiously looked down hoping it was Joseph, but it was my father. I had never known him to be an outwardly emotional man, but he was crying on the phone, clearly with my brother in mind. It would be hours before I would hear from Joseph but regardless, we had to get to the JFK office to help.
At JFK we were met by Manny, a senior agent in the office, who told us that there were hundreds of agents unaccounted for and we should start paging them on their work-issued pagers and cross them off the list as they called into the office. As they called in one by one, they all told stories of unthinkable terror. They all mentioned the horror o
f witnessing terrified people in the towers who chose to jump rather than burn alive, and the sounds of bodies crashing against the pavement. I could never forget these stories and for years after when I would check into a high-rise hotel, I would look out the window and imagine the horror the victims of this attack felt when making the decision to jump.
There were also tales of heroism that emerged about the brave men and women of the Secret Service’s New York field office who, rather than flee, stayed at the plaza to provide medical aid and assistance. Two agents, John and Tom, who despite multiple warnings ran into the North Tower to evacuate those who could not make it out under their own power, stand out to me as potent examples of the valor exhibited by many that tragic day. Both men were in the North Tower as the South Tower collapsed. They listened to the roar of the collapse and were blinded by dust and debris while trying to descend the North Tower’s poorly lit stairwell. Lives were saved because of these two men, but it’s something they rarely, if ever, discuss. Their heroism was the quiet type.
By the late afternoon of Tuesday, September 11, after crossing off name after name on my list of New York field office personnel who could be accounted for, only a few names remained on the list. With each passing minute our fear grew that their phone call would never come. We did not speak of their potential demise openly; we only guessed at possible reasons why they were not answering the pages we sent out. Finally, we received a call from an agent telling us the location of a large block of the missing agents, and we crossed off a swath of names. Some of the agents had evacuated people in boats and made it to New Jersey, but their pagers had fallen off, becoming casualties of the chaos.
Despite the relief that accompanied locating the agents, we still had two names remaining on the list. One was a friend of mine, Kevin, whom I worked with in the Melville office for a brief period. Kevin and Marty were not the best of friends during Kevin’s time in Melville, but they learned to coexist. Kevin was a grizzled veteran who rarely withheld what he was thinking—the exact opposite of Marty, who was difficult to read. I had come to respect Kevin, and the thought of what had potentially happened to him was tough to bear. I was relieved when we received a call notifying us that he had been on assignment in Lagos, Nigeria, and was fine.
There was one name on that list that was never crossed off. As the evening hours approached, it was apparent that Craig Miller was going to be the only member of the Secret Service to never return home after the terrorist attacks. Master Special Officer Craig Miller perished on that fateful day, and given his history of service to this country in both the US Army and the Secret Service, it is thought that he died in the World Trade Center plaza rendering medical aid to victims when the South Tower collapsed. Craig Miller died a hero in service to his country in a time of need.
Although the planes struck only the North and South Towers, the damage to the surrounding buildings after the collapse was substantial. The New York field office was located on the ninth floor of 7 World Trade Center. As the fires raged in the building it became structurally unsound and by 5:00 p.m. that day it collapsed, taking everything with it. All of the criminal case files, weapons, equipment, radios, armored vehicles, and agents’ personal effects were gone. As I drove home that night from the JFK office, I made one final stop at the Melville office and saw Marty talking to an agent I knew from New York. The agent was coated in the now-infamous white dust from the collapse of the towers and was holding a bag with a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun. I asked him why he had the MP5 and he responded, “It may be the only thing that made it out of the building.”
In the days and weeks following the attacks, the pain and horror were compounded by the bitter feelings the special agents of the New York office felt regarding the Secret Service management’s response. As the days passed and our detached leaders, who rarely left their insulated offices in our DC headquarters, did not visit the site of the attack, the anger grew into an open fury rarely seen in an agency proud of its culture of both discipline and secrecy. It was my first taste of the divide between the emotional response of the working-class Secret Service agents and the “cocktail party” managerial class’s callous attitude. Bureaucracy spawns a lack of accountability, and that lack of accountability spawns an indifference that I would later come to learn is endemic within the entire US government.
One leader from Washington who did come to New York was Representative Steny Hoyer. The congressman had a reputation for supporting the Secret Service, and he made multiple visits to our New York office personnel, now scattered around Manhattan in various facilities, to personally express that support. This was my first contact with Representative Hoyer, whom I would later come into contact with in my political career when I endorsed his opponent in the 2012 general election for Maryland’s Fifth Congressional District. Although I disagreed with Representative Hoyer politically, I never forgot his admirable dedication to our cause after those tragic events.
On a deeply personal note, I met my future wife, Paula, just days before 9/11. She worked for the Securities Industry Association (SIA), whose offices were adjacent to the World Trade Center towers. When she did not answer my calls on September 11, I feared she might have been a victim. But in a stroke of luck, she had decided at the last minute to visit her mother in Nevada and was touched by my continued messages checking on her. Her building was not damaged, but she would look down on the hallowed grounds of Ground Zero from her office from that day forward.
It was not long before New York City’s nerves would be tested again and Paula’s safety would motivate me to action. Only two months after the devastating September 11 terror attacks, a plane unexpectedly crashed, shortly after takeoff, into the Queens, New York, neighborhood of Rockaway.
I was in a local gym on Woodhaven Boulevard in Forest Hills, Queens, at the time of the crash and immediately felt my Secret Service pager vibrating and heard the roar of dozens of emergency vehicles screaming down the boulevard. Terrorism was immediately suspected and having no immediate reason to believe otherwise, I rushed to my car and headed to Paula’s office on the edge of Ground Zero, believing it might be targeted again. I met her in her office and pleaded with her to leave with me. She reluctantly agreed and, despite her supervisor thinking I was overreacting, we hurriedly headed to my car and I drove her home. It was later discovered that a tragic combination of wind conditions and pilot error had caused the plane to crash into the Rockaway community, killing all 260 passengers and five people on the ground.
6
AN ASSASSIN AMONG US
A HIGH-LEVEL GATHERING of the United Nations General Assembly was always a logistical nightmare for the Secret Service. Planning and implementing a full-spectrum security plan for over a hundred heads of state and their spouses, along with the president of the United States, in the congested streets of New York City gives a security team limited options and is the perfect target for an assassin or terrorist. In the post-September 11 era, these complications were magnified even further. The 2002 UN General Assembly was going to be a test of the new operational techniques and contingency planning efforts the Secret Service was implementing since the devastating 9/11 terrorist attacks.
By 2002, I had risen through the ranks quickly and was one of the senior agents in the protective intelligence squad. My new assignment after the Melville field office was the New York field office, now located in downtown Brooklyn after the destruction of our office space in 7 World Trade Center. The new field office was under construction when we moved in, and the wounds from the terrorist attacks were still very fresh with the agents in the office, making the dreary “under construction” setting more emotionally draining than any normal remodeling effort. The purple walls and abandoned equipment from the prior tenant, who had left in a hurry, gave it a distinctly unserious, noninstitutional look that only further damaged the already badly damaged sense of office morale.
When the assignments for the UN General Assembly began to filter in and Scott, the ba
ckup (a term for the second in command of each squad within a field office), posted them, we rushed to see who would be covering each dignitary. The Secret Service was an agency full of alpha males and females, and everyone in the squad was hoping to be assigned to a high-threat country. There was no greater challenge for a field office agent than to successfully conduct advance work for a foreign head of state designated as a high-threat-level protectee.
I was eager to see where I would be assigned and was elated when I saw the name of a country on the board with my name next to it whose threat level was high. This particular head of state claimed power in a coup d’état and instability was the only stable characteristic of his country at the time. My assignment was to exhaustively research the threats to this country, its leader, and the UN in general and provide a threat assessment based on all of this information so the members of the advance team could provide for appropriate countermeasures. The lead advance agent, Dave, was known for his thorough work and willingness to put in the long hours, and I was comfortable that he would use the information I provided to design an effective security plan.
I conducted approximately a week of planning for the visit and held thorough but contentious meetings with the staff of the foreign country. The staff, as did many others, wanted more cars in the motorcade than we could properly secure. Motorcade length is a symbol of power in the business and sometimes juvenile politics of dignitary protection, and the arduous negotiations to shrink the motorcade lasted for days. Despite such lengthy debates about minute details, the arrival of the protectee into the country was, thankfully, without incident.