Life Inside the Bubble: Why a Top-Ranked Secret Service Agent Walked Away From It All

by Dan Bongino

  After spending some time at home with my family and staying busy with advance work within the United States, I began to grow concerned over the state of the country and my role in it. I saw a journey down an economic path our government had tried before with disastrous results, and as a result my academic interest in economics turned into a passion. I spent every spare moment I could find, whether on planes or during lunch, reading voluminous amounts of material on Austrian School economic theory. It fueled in me what was quickly becoming a fiery passion for political engagement. It appeared that the only thing that could keep me from politics was an advance assignment, but due to my recent work in Prague and Indonesia I didn’t expect another big assignment in the immediate future. My assumptions about my workload could not have been more incongruous with what was to come.

  In June of 2010, I received a phone call from PPD operations asking me how I felt about Indonesia. Confused, I responded that I had a wonderful time there and was disappointed that the visit was cancelled. I was told that the visit was now officially back on and that PPD management wanted me to return to Indonesia to repeat the advance based on my prior experience there. I knew this would cause some consternation with the PPD lead advance agents because these important assignments were becoming increasingly more difficult to come by, given the president’s limited travel schedule with the Obamacare negotiations and the nowerupting BP oil spill crisis.

  I agreed to do the advance and travel as soon as possible. When I told Paula what was happening she was understandably apprehensive, believing that we were tempting fate by returning to a high-threat zone with the same presidential schedule. I could not disagree with her, but I felt we could secure the visit and had no desire to see someone else get hurt if I chose to pass on the assignment. After convincing Paula that I would be fine, I began the long journey back to Indonesia. Paula was again visibly upset and I empathized with her. The travel was now becoming so intense that sleeping in my own bed was an anomaly. When we landed in Hong Kong after the second leg of our long journey, I turned on the satellite phone to call Paula and tell her we were fine. Noticing I had a message on it to call PPD operations, I turned to one of the advance team members and said, half jokingly, “Can you imagine how upset the Indonesians would be if this trip is cancelled again?”

  When I called operations they said, “You are not going to believe this, but the trip is cancelled.”

  I was stunned. This was now the second time we had cancelled, and I knew the amount of diplomatic currency that had already been spent on the trip. Personally, it was going to be difficult to salvage any credibility with General Norman in Indonesia. He already allocated thousands of man-hours to this and now I would have to call Frega and tell him the trip was cancelled again.

  As it turns out, the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico had grown into a political embarrassment for President Obama as the spewing gash at the bottom of the ocean was causing a media frenzy. The president could not leave the country until there was some action on this growing environmental disaster. I dreaded calling Frega, but in his always-dignified manner he assured me it was “no problem,” although I knew it was. We had cancelled on him twice, and pretending that our credibility was intact was a useless exercise. I apologized profusely, and with the entire advance team, I rushed to book yet another flight home.

  13

  OIL SPILLS, INDONESIA AGAIN, AND MAKING A WAR ZONE “SAFE”

  ARRIVING HOME AFTER THE SECOND CANCELLATION of the Indonesia trip, I resolved to myself that my time on the detail was coming to an end and the trip was just not meant to happen. I hated that we worked tirelessly on a plan that would never be implemented and the international law-enforcement relationships between us and the Indonesians were left to wither.

  I was not home for more than a few hours when PPD operations called me about assisting another agent during his first lead advance assignment. The agent was Tim, my good friend from our time together at the training center and the PPD transportation section. I was honored to do it and, although Paula was upset at my having to leave again, she and Tim were friends, and she understood what needed to be done. Tim and I were sent to Dauphin Island, Alabama, with the president to search for signs of the oil spill. It appeared that the White House staff was desperate to have the president appear as if he were “doing something” and wanted some photo ops of him on an oily beach looking concerned. The public generally sees through this type of thing, but every presidential administration I worked for used this strategy regardless of how obviously orchestrated it appears.

  We met the staff on Dauphin Island and got started quickly getting to know the area. It was obvious in a short amount of time that there did not appear to be significant damage to the beachfront. The White House staff could not have the president on a relatively clean beach giving statements to the press about the devastation. In presidential politics this is a “no-go.”

  After a few days of looking and finding only small tar balls, the staff decided that it would be better to put the president on a boat and to ensure the press shots were of him looking into the ocean. It was an unusual request and the Secret Service, in general, prefers to avoid open ocean adventures with the president. But Tim was a skilled agent and he put together a very workable plan, although he ruffled some staff feathers in the process. Tim had no time for weakness or indecision and had no problem letting the White House staff know. This made him a hero to the advance team but a foe to the staff. Despite the personal disagreements, the visit went smoothly, with no unusual issues, and I took pages of mental notes on what was becoming a growing frustration with political leaders, their spin machines, and what seemed to me to be a premium placed on the style and not the substance of leadership.

  After the successful completion of our Dauphin Island advance, I became one of a few agents that operations would select on a regular basis to serve as a “lead advisor.” These were cherished assignments because the energy was high but the workload was dramatically reduced. The lead advance agent would rely on me for assistance but generally did most of the work himself. I figured that my last few months on the detail would be uneventful and that the advisor role was my last act on the PPD. I was scheduled to leave the PPD in December and it was now the end of October, and I looked forward to the possibility of a nine-to-five workday in my next assignment. Life back in a field office after PPD was generally easier. Looking to avoid the devastating Washington, DC, traffic I requested the Baltimore field office. This was a difficult assignment to get because the office was small and openings were rare, but I was confident that the PPD would do their best to help facilitate the transfer.

  My optimistic outlook quickly faded when I began to hear whispers within the detail that the Indonesia trip was being discussed again among the White House staff. Paula would certainly not accept my traveling to Indonesia for a third potential presidential visit with a similar schedule. The dangers would now be magnified because any group looking to do harm to the president would have had months to plan. Although no one from PPD operations confirmed any plans with me, I was sure I was going to be asked to return again. I began to slowly prepare Paula for the eventual phone call from operations, and only days later I found myself, now for a third time, on the long flight back to Indonesia.

  I reunited with Frega, the representative for General Norman, and made a point to apologize for all of the confusion. Frega was always a gentleman and once again pretended not to mind, although I knew it was bothering him. The advance work was made easier logistically since I was already familiar with the country and many of our Indonesian military and police counterparts. The security planning, however, was going to be more difficult, as it was no mystery among the Indonesians and their press corps where the president intended to visit while in the country.

  Dealing with the homegrown threat of terrorism and trying to make a well-known itinerary secure was difficult, but the new White House staff lead, Dave, who had replaced the now-departed Carrie, w
as willing to work with us. I insisted on deception in all aspects of the plan and was determined to never use the same motorcade route, vehicle lineup, or entrance to any location twice. When the team and I looked at all the variables, we felt that unpredictability would be our greatest asset and injected deception and randomness to our security plans whenever possible.

  The seemingly endless string of bad luck with this trip was not over. As we approached the arrival date, Indonesia’s Mount Merapi began to spew volcanic ash. This was a grave concern for the Air Force One advance team on the ground. They were worried that the ash could clog the engines of Air Force One and potentially take the plane down. Indonesia and Washington, DC, were twelve hours apart on the clock, and the briefings between the senior White House staff, the White House Military Office, PPD management, and me were on their time, not mine. Information changed hourly and the phone rang with each new update, many times at two and three o’clock in the morning Indonesian local time.

  The lack of sleep was taking its toll and I was having a difficult time staying awake during the day. The decision to make the trip or not was now in the hands of the White House Military Office and its atmospheric forecasters. To my surprise, instead of cancelling again, the decision was made to cut the visit short by one day but to still make the journey from India, the president’s first stop on his itinerary.

  The India portion of the trip was a “disaster,” according to some friends of mine who were detailed there, and the PPD management was in no mood for more mishaps. The Indian security force assigned to the visit had reneged on deals made during the advance and they openly defied the Secret Service advance team’s wishes, creating an embarrassing situation for both the Secret Service and the staff. Patience wore thin, and I knew our visit had to be flawless.

  The fun began when a security representative from the hotel where the president would be staying rushed toward me with a concerned look on his face and a picture in his hand. He stated that a man had checked into multiple rooms in the hotel using different names and moved back and forth between these rooms before leaving the hotel. The Indonesians confirmed for us that the man had affiliations with a number of groups that were a very serious concern for me and the intelligence agents on the ground.

  The stress was magnified under the circumstances and decisions were required very quickly, as Air Force One was in the air from India and headed to us in Indonesia. I could not bring the president to the hotel until I was absolutely sure that it was clear of threats. The explosives sweep had turned up nothing and had taken hours to complete due to the complexity of the hotel layout, and we did not have hours to redo the sweep. I asked the team to resweep and search the rooms the man had checked into. At the same time I asked the hotel security team to ensure that the man was questioned if he attempted to reenter the hotel.

  When the sweep came back with negative results, I was slightly relieved but I began to wonder if all the bad luck surrounding this trip was a sign that it was doomed. Suffering from the chronic lack of sleep and feeling extremely uncomfortable wearing suffocating clothing in the near-hundred-degree heat, I prepared our motorcade and departed for the airport to finally pick up the president.

  The Indonesia trip, now officially cut short due to the ash plumes from the erupting volcano, was proceeding along without incident as we moved from the airport to the hotel and on to the Indonesian presidential palace. The security plan we designed was working perfectly, but the ash plumes were getting thicker and the White House Military Office was growing increasingly concerned. The following morning I met with the PPD advance team and the supervisors assigned to the visit and was informed that in order to cut the visit by a few more hours, we were cancelling the last scheduled stop and going directly from a speech at a local university to the airport.

  It was becoming a race against time to beat the erupting volcano and the advancing ash plume. Our first stop of the day at Istiqlal Mosque was rushed as we hurried along to the speech site. The president received a hero’s welcome at the university despite the shortened schedule. We still had not located the suspicious man at the hotel, and with the advancing ash plume, I was content to see the president leave the country earlier than expected. Coordinating the logistics of the early departure was made slightly more complicated because the president was not returning to the United States but was flying directly to South Korea, and they were not ready to receive him.

  I contacted Colin, the lead advance in South Korea, and told him that he would have to meet with the South Koreans to adjust the schedule. Meanwhile, I quietly prayed during the motorcade from the university to the airport that the security plan would hold and we would get the president off the ground without incident. The stress was mounting and, combined with oppressive fatigue and the searing Indonesian heat, I feared the worst. Between the suspicious hotel guest, the indigenous threats I dealt with daily, and the ash cloud that threatened to strand the president in Indonesia if we fell even minutes behind schedule, I was constantly on the cell phone with new requests for the team.

  Fortunately, the advance team assigned to the visit was tier one and they superseded expectations each and every time I called them with a change or new request. After multiple trips and thousands of man-hours dedicated to an airtight security plan, I feared that a random mishap at the last minute could ruin what was left of the goodwill the team and I built with the Indonesians. During my trip to Paris with President Bush, a dog had rushed into the street and nearly caused an accident with the presidential limo, so I was keenly aware of the potential for a random disaster on a moment’s notice. At my request the motorcade drove quickly, and the staff moved the president briskly through a few thank-yous to local dignitaries. Despite the many complications, Air Force One was in the air minutes later. The relief and elation I felt was indescribable as the nearly yearlong advance operation finally came to an end.

  But the sense of relief was short-lived. Before we made it back to the hotel, I received a phone call from one of the logistics agents at the airport. All of the support personnel in Indonesia to help implement the security plan were being told that they might be stranded due to the atmospheric ash and the military’s inability to fly us out. This was both a logistics and security nightmare for me. I intentionally placed all our personnel in hotels with layered security plans and within a short distance of our command center in the event of an emergency, and none of these locations had any rooms available. I feared that it would become widely known that the American security team was stranded in Jakarta and that we would become an appetizing target for the local terrorist groups.

  I called operations and asked for permission to bypass financial restrictions on the cost of flights home as the only alternative. Although the available flight plans involved convoluted layovers, the logistics team managed to find flights home for most of the stranded personnel. The remaining staff were forced to stay on cots in rooms we had at the Shangri-La. It was not ideal, but I was sure it was secure. Eventually, we all made the trip home safely, some flying thousands of miles in the wrong direction just to get out of the country to a connecting flight.

  Having now successfully “checked the box” on designing and implementing a complete foreign security advance plan in both Prague and Jakarta, and having my request for vacation time approved, I was sure I had seen my last assignment as an agent on the PPD.

  On my second day of vacation I was in my basement exercising, trying to sweat out the illness I had returned from Indonesia with, when my phone rang. On the other end was Vic, the second in command among PPD management, and he asked me if I could see him tomorrow at his office in the White House. I knew not to ask a lot of questions and simply said yes, but was perplexed as to what he could want to discuss. Ideas began to filter through my mind. I wondered if something had happened in Indonesia that I had not been made aware of.

  The following day, I drove to the White House hoping that the unusual request to meet Vic in his office during my vaca
tion was not the result of something I had done wrong. Vic and I developed a solid working relationship during my tenure on the PPD and when I sat down in his office, he engaged in some brief small talk. Then he quickly cut to the chase and asked me if I would be willing to go out again.

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, I had vacation time already approved and was scheduled to leave the detail in just one week for my new assignment in Baltimore. Vic told me that the president was planning to visit Afghanistan and that the trip was to be kept “dark” until we landed on the ground at Bagram Airfield. He asked me to conduct the advance and said I would have to leave the next morning. He assured me that he would notify the Baltimore field office that I was sick and that my transfer there would be delayed. I accepted the assignment and began to wonder how I was going to explain this to Paula yet again.

  Paula and I had been together long enough where she could predict with incredible accuracy what I was going to tell her. I was bound to not to disclose the visit, even to Paula, so I told her I had an “assignment” and that I had to fly out of the country immediately. She cried and asked me to turn it down, clearly emotionally drained by the entire PPD experience. She felt that she had married me, not the Secret Service, yet they had taken me away from her. She was not an overly superstitious person, but she believed that after I had made it safely back from Indonesia that we had tempted fate, and she desperately wanted to avoid any other scenario where I could be in harm’s way. She was also savvy enough to know that I was not headed to a luxury resort given the top secret nature of the visit. I did my best to console her and assured her that this was the last trip, that it was all over after this, but unfortunately she had heard this all before. My daughter Isabel was also devastated that I was going to be overseas, because it was my birthday and she had planned something special.