by Tim Wood
A few weeks later I was sitting in the recruiter’s Kansas City office, completing the paperwork to sign up for the Officer Candidate Program. The Marine Corps must have been short of pilots that fall, because the captain was really pushing the Naval Aviation Program to the handful of wide-eyed college students that morning. That sounds like fun. Where do I sign? A pilot had to have perfect twenty-twenty vision, and mine was just a little off, but the recruiter said I could become a naval flight officer as a radar intercept officer in the F4 Phantom or a bombardier/navigator in the A6 Intruder. I passed the aviation written test and I signed on the dotted line.
I went to Officer Candidate School the next summer and was commissioned a second lieutenant after I graduated from the University of Missouri in December 1977. The next month I started my Marine Corps career at the Basic School in Quantico, Virginia, a six-month training course for all newly commissioned officers.
The Naval Flight Training Command in Pensacola, Florida, was next. And those wings of gold were pinned on my chest in the spring of ’79. I reported to the A6 Replacement Air Group at Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) Cherry Point, North Carolina, a month later. After twelve months I was a fully trained bombardier/navigator and ready for the fleet. I had two choices of duty stations: The 2nd Marine Air Wing in Cherry Point or the 3rd Marine Air Wing in El Toro, California. That was a no-brainer. California…Southern California was the place for me. I loaded my brand-new pickup truck with all my worldly possessions and drove west.
I made a surprise stop at the Diamond’s restaurant in Gray Summit, Missouri, to say hello to my dad before popping in on my mom at home. My dad was the manager of this truck stop–type restaurant. The Diamond’s was a local landmark; it had been in business since the 1920s. It started out as the Banana Stand, at the intersection of Route 66 and Highway 100 in Villa Ridge, Missouri, selling sandwiches, along with the local produce, to hungry travelers. Business was so good the owner eventually built a permanent building to house his restaurant. My dad started working there when he was in high school, and would be the manager for over fifty years.
The original building burned to the ground late one night in 1948. My mom used to tell the story of that night. When Dad got word the building was on fire and he and Mom headed out from their home in Washington, Missouri, flying down Highway 100 the twelve miles or so to Route 66. By the time they got there, the place was a total loss, but Mom saved a coffee can full of melted pennies; and that’s all that was left.
The owner rebuilt the restaurant, and added a motel and employee bunkhouse. Some of the guys Dad hired lived in the bunkhouse. Dad grew up during the Depression and served in World War II, and to my dad these “down on their luck” veterans just needed a job and a place to sleep. Most of them had a drinking problem, and every now and then, one of them wouldn’t show up for work and Dad would say, “He’s on a drunk.” But when the guy sobered up, his job was always waiting for him. Dad was like that…he had a big heart.
He always said, “Nobody leaves the Diamond’s hungry.” And what he meant by that was if a hobo came in and asked him for a job to earn something to eat, Dad would gladly give them a free meal; but if a patron walked out without paying, he’d call the Sheriff’s Office in a heartbeat. Dad used to always tell me, “If they would have just told me they were broke before they ordered food, I would have gladly bought them lunch.”
I started working at the Diamond’s when I was twelve years old, cleaning tables, washing dishes, and sweeping out the basement. I worked there every summer up to and including my college days. Busboy, dishwasher, short order cook, but my favorite job was working outside at the filling station. My brother, sisters, and all my cousins worked there in the summers, too; all the kids in the family always had a guaranteed summer job working for my dad.
I continued on my first coast-to-coast road trip and eventually made it to California. As I drove south on Interstate 5 toward MCAS El Toro, I remember gripping the steering wheel of my pickup like I was hanging off a thousand-foot cliff and letting go would plunge me to my death. I’d never seen such crazy bumper-to-bumper traffic flowing at seventy-five miles per hour! Obviously, the speed limit didn’t mean shit around there. And then I smelled it, the orange groves of Orange County, California. What a beautiful smell. To this day a whiff of orange essence will take me back to El Toro.
The 3rd Marine Air Wing assigned me to the Bats of VMA (AW) 242, one of the finest Marine All-Weather Attack A6E squadrons in the Fleet Marine Force. Two thousand accident-free flight hours later (with a few close calls) it was time to move on. I put in an application as a special agent with the United States Secret Service.
After a very long, drawn-out application and interview process, I was offered a position as a special agent and reported to the LAFO on the first Monday after Thanksgiving in 1984. Before my career was over, the Secret Service would move the Redhead and me six times; Los Angeles to Las Vegas, Las Vegas to DC, DC to Seattle, Seattle to Boise, Boise to DC, DC back to Seattle. I would arrest over a hundred criminals and protect presidents, vice presidents, former presidents and numerous foreign heads of state.
I started my career in the LAFO Forgery Squad, where 99 percent of all new agents were assigned. The LAFO was a large field office with almost one hundred agents. The Forgery Squad investigated stolen or forged US Treasury checks. In the eighties, paper government checks were still the primary way Uncle Sam paid his bills. EFT (electronic funds transfer) was just getting started. I even got a paper paycheck every two weeks in those days. Los Angeles is a big city and we had plenty of forged check cases to work.
One Monday morning, after I’d just returned to the field office from the training academy, the SAIC (special agent in charge) called an all-hands office meeting. I walked into our big conference room a little early and grabbed a seat in the back row against the wall. There were about five us already in the room and we were bullshitting about nothing in particular, when one of the admin ladies walked in with a new guy. And this new guy wasn’t shy; he walked around the small group of early arrivals and shook hands with everybody introducing himself. The room began to rapidly fill up and the next thing I know, the new guy sits down next to me. The first thing I noticed about this guy is his size. This guy’s looks like he could give the wall a forearm and break right through it. We struck up a conversation. He said he was former policeman from Salt Lake City. The Beaver had just entered my life.
The LAFO had satellite offices, called Resident Agencies (RAs), in Santa Ana, Santa Barbara, Riverside, and Las Vegas. Our geographical area of jurisdiction was L.A. County, Orange County, Santa Barbara County, Riverside and San Bernardino County, and damn near all of Nevada. The RAs were very thinly staffed…a resident agent and two or three special agents
The LAFO had the Forgery Squad, the Counterfeit Squad, the Fraud Squad, the Special Investigations Squad, the Protective Intelligence Squad, and the Protection Squad. I was hoping my next assignment would be the Counterfeit Squad. One of the reasons I was attracted to the Secret Service was counterfeit money. US currency had always intrigued me. If you look at an FRN, it’s a thing of beauty. The detail in the engraving is a work of art. The intaglio printing gives the bill that rough, three-dimensional look and feel. And to think a skilled craftsman…albeit a criminal, but still skilled in his craft, could reproduce those notes was very interesting. And I wanted to catch those guys.
I knew that L.A. was just the first step of my career. Most agents spend their first few years honing their investigative skills in a field office before being assigned to a permanent protective detail—the President, Vice President, or one of the former presidents’ details. I had one goal for my future—PPD, the Presidential Protective Division. The A team, that’s what I had my eye on. I would settle for nothing less.
* * *
In the mid-eighties, Reagan was president and, of course, he and Mrs. Reagan spent a lot of time in Los Angeles and S
anta Barbara. Their children also lived in the L.A. area and the Secret Service assigned agents to protect them. Former president Ford lived in Palm Springs, out in the Riverside RA’s area of operation. Every agent in L.A. seemed to always be busy with some type of protection assignment. Standing post for President Reagan or the First Lady, doing advances for former president Ford, or being assigned to one of numerous foreign heads of state that visited Los Angeles.
One of my first PPD post-standing assignments was at the Century Plaza Hotel in Century City. I was assigned to the President’s holding room. My instructions were simple: No unauthorized people were allowed into the holding room. I was pretty pumped about that assignment. I was just a GS-7 in those days, fresh out of training, and I figured for sure they’d stick me in a stairwell, but the holding room for the President of the United States? That was a choice assignment.
At the appointed time, I heard on my radio that President Reagan was moving to the holding room. I was concentrating on making sure I was doing my job, effectively and efficiently. Because when the President showed up, so would the agents from PPD and I wanted them to take notice of me. Rumor among the young guys was, you don’t call PPD—PPD calls you. So impressing the bosses and other agents assigned to the President was key in advancing to that detail.
President Reagan walked into the holding room from a door at one end of that large conference room with an entourage that was unexpected, to say the least. I guess I was expecting to see the President and a handful of PPD agents. What I got was a gaggle of very important-looking people. Holy shit, everybody had an earpiece for a radio, everybody had an official lapel pin, who is who? I was overwhelmed. Now what do I do? I had been instructed that when President Reagan entered the room, I would be “pushed off” to take up a post in the hallway outside the door. The PPD shift, working the inner perimeter, would handle security in the room once the President entered. Okay, he’s here. Which one of these guys is going to “push” me off?
I didn’t panic; I was just concerned I would fuck this up. It turned out there was no need to worry. President Reagan and his entourage kept walking and walking fast, through the room to the opposite door. They didn’t stop; they didn’t even slow down, for Pete’s sake. President Reagan walked past me, looked right at me, and gave me a nod. President Ronald Reagan just gave me a nod!
Securing a venue for the President of the United States is a major undertaking. Preparations start days before the visit and require many hours and extensive manpower the day of the visit. It is a process; a very thorough, detailed process. I’d been standing in that holding room for hours. And in my young, just-out-of-training mind I had spent hours worrying about something I didn’t need to worry about. As I watched the door close behind President Reagan, it hit me. I am a United States Secret Service agent; those PPD agents walking with the President are the same as me. The only reason they are with the President is because they have more experience and time on the job.
Months later, I was assigned to suite security at the Beverly Hilton Hotel for First Lady Nancy Reagan while she was in Los Angeles for a few days visiting her family and some old Hollywood friends. The agents assigned to her protective detail went with her whenever she left the hotel, but they left me and another LAFO agent to man the Secret Service security room and keep the suite secure during her absence.
I was told Mrs. Reagan liked to cook when she was in L.A. and away from the White House. One morning when reporting for duty in the Secret Service Security Room at the hotel, one of the PPD agents told me she was in the suite baking. It looked like she would be in the suite most of the morning, so the shift leader told me to rotate in with his PPD agents securing the hallway and suite door. The shift leader was Tim McCarthy, the agent shot by John Hinckley when Hinckley fired off five shots at President Reagan back in 1981 at the Washington, DC, Hilton Hotel. I was very excited to be assigned to work with a real Secret Service hero, a man who took a bullet for the President.
Later that morning, it was my turn to hold the security post on Mrs. Reagan’s suite door. After a few minutes, the suite door opened behind me, and there stood Nancy Reagan holding a plate full of freshly baked cookies. I think she was a little surprised to see me. She didn’t know me, as I was not permanently assigned to her detail, and so she kind of paused, and looked at my lapel pin, which identified me as an agent.
“Good morning, Mrs. Reagan. Can I help you with something?” I said.
She handed me the plate of cookies and said, “Here, these are for you and the boys.”
It didn’t take us long to devour those cookies. When I got home late that evening and told the Redhead that story she was incredulous, “What? You didn’t save any of those cookies? You guys ate Nancy Reagan’s cookies?”
“Well yeah we ate the cookies,” I said. “What was I supposed to do with them? Frame them for the mantel?”
* * *
I’d been keeping an eye on what was happening in the Las Vegas RA, as arrest reports always seemed to be flowing out of that office. Rumor was the guys in Vegas were quite busy and they all seemed to have a good reputation, not only within the LAFO, but service-wide. When they left Vegas, they were going to their first choice of assignment.
As young agents at the LAFO, we always had the Western Protective Detail hanging over our heads. That detail was charged with protecting President Reagan’s children, an important assignment, no doubt, because all of the protective missions were very important, but that’s not what I wanted to do.
I had to position myself to get assigned to PPD. It seemed to me that assignments to the Western Protective Detail just came up randomly and young agents ready for their first protection assignment would be plucked from the ranks on a Friday and told to report on Monday. No thanks; I have to get to Washington, DC. The Las Vegas RA was starting to look like a really good way to get there. First, it would get me out of my twice-daily two-hour commute from Orange County to the LAFO. Secondly, the Redhead and I could actually afford to buy a house in the Vegas real estate market, something that was not happening in Southern California in the eighties for a GS-7. And finally, I would get to work criminal cases in Las Vegas…Sin City. Not to mention going to Vegas would reduce the chances of a transfer to the Western Protective Detail and if I did a good job, I could get my wish to be assigned to PPD. But in the meantime, there had to be an opening.
After about a year on the job, the boss decided it was time to shuffle the agents around and do an office realignment. To be a well-rounded investigator we had to be exposed to all criminal jurisdictions, not just one aspect. In a small or medium-sized office young agents were exposed to all of the types of the Secret Service criminal jurisdiction. But in the large offices, we were divided into different squads. I was keeping my fingers crossed for an assignment to the Counterfeit Squad. Working counterfeit cases seemed to me to be the real deal…undercover meets, controlled buys, search warrants and plenty of surveillances, busting down doors and arresting the bad guys. Fraud—white-collar crime—just seemed so bland and boring.
So, what happens? I got reassigned to the Fraud Squad! And boy was I wrong about fraud cases. The Fraud Squad boss was Assistant to the Special Agent in Charge (ATSAIC) Earl “the Pearl,” the King of Fraud, and he was an incredible boss. It wasn’t long after I got assigned to his squad that I heard he had just come from the Las Vegas RA, where he was the resident agent. He got promoted from Vegas to be an ATSAIC in L.A. See? It must be true, work in Vegas, do a good job, and move to your first choice of assignments. For “the Pearl” it was a promotion to the next higher grade; for me it could mean transfer to PPD. Or so I hoped.
In the early eighties, the Secret Service realized the future of monetary transactions was changing. Credit cards were becoming the next big thing…the news media used to run stories about how the United States was moving away from paper money into the realm of paperless financial transactions. “Someday soon,�
�� the media said, “people won’t even carry currency in their pockets.” There would be no need for paper money.
The US Congress was formulating a new federal statute to give federal law enforcement a tool to combat credit card fraud: Title 18 United States Code Section 1029, Unauthorized Use of an Access Device. Secret Service headquarters lobbied Congress hard for jurisdiction of this new law—after all, if the economy were moving to paperless transactions, what would we investigate? Protecting the financial system of the United States had been our primary investigative mission for decades.
The Secret Service was organized on April 14, 1865, by executive order; the last executive order signed by President Lincoln before he attended Ford’s Theater for an evening performance of Our American Cousin. John Wilkes Booth shot President Lincoln that evening and he died the next day. A very fine investigative agency was born on April 14, 1865, though two more presidents would die from an assassin’s bullet before Congress would authorize protection for the life of the president. In 1901 the Secret Service assigned agents to protect President Theodore Roosevelt, and they’ve been at it ever since.
During the Civil War, it was estimated that one-third of all currency in circulation was counterfeit; it was a serious threat to the country’s financial freedom and economy. The Secret Service was organized to investigate counterfeiters and protect the financial system of the United States. By the 1980s the financial landscape was changing and the United States Secret Service had to change with it. Credit card fraud was becoming very popular with the criminal element. We used to always say only a fool robs a bank with a gun nowadays, all you have do is get some MasterCard or Visa account numbers and you can steal a bank blind.
At that time, credit card transactions were processed manually. A cardholder presented their credit card to the merchant and the merchant used an imprinting machine to make a copy of the card account number on a carbonized credit card receipt. One copy of the receipt for the merchant, one copy for the cardholder and a third copy to the merchant’s bank to be processed through to the cardholders account for payment to the merchant. The obvious flaw in this system was that carbon copy with an account number floating around in a trash can. The “Dumpster divers” would go through trash bins behind stores and find these carbon copies casually tossed away. Now they had a valid account number to use on a counterfeit card or on the telephone to make a purchase. Today you could equate “Dumpster diver” to “computer hacker.”