by Crisis of Character- A White House Secret Service Officer Discloses His Firsthand Experience
Instructor Timmy chambered a round, demonstrating to us his movements, but he hadn’t even de-cocked his pistol. It remained in single action and loaded as he lurched about, as if he were in dry practice. He continued gesturing toward us with his firearm. Our lives hung on his hair trigger, on less than two inches of movement from a crisp six pounds of trigger pull. One of us could be shot point-blank. A head would literally explode from the hollow-point bullet speeding through it.
You can believe I didn’t hesitate to interrupt Timmy in midsentence.
“Sir, you realize you are flagging us with your firearm right now and you have a live round chambered in single action?” I said furiously, but still trying my best to be respectful.
My fight-or-flight response had kicked in big-time. Peering into the barrel of a loaded gun does that to a man. You might find it unfathomable that an instructor could get a student killed, but at JJRTC and elsewhere in the tactical community, we heard stories about training schools that played it fast and loose and someone got shot or killed. It happened. It was true. It resulted from complacency and negligence every time. There’s an old military and law enforcement adage that was drilled into me in the Air Force: “Complacency kills.”
Timmy responded sharply—and condescendingly, “Well, you’re just going to have to get used to that, Gary. That’s how things are done here.”
“Well, no, I don’t, because what you’re doing is wrong. The gun’s still loaded on single action, and I’m not going to watch you shoot one of us! Someone’s going to get shot with you pulling that crap,” I said, pointing my finger at him.
“Oh, you know what, Gary…” What followed was ludicrous, the lamest of excuses. Nothing short of repositioning himself to point his firearm in a safe direction, clear it, and make it safe would be acceptable—so I cut him off again. We had training firearms, blue plastic things for the purpose of practicing hand-to-hand combat with or for dry demonstrations, but there is never an excuse for an instructor to point a loaded, chambered, and live firearm at his students. It was beyond insanity, and it was going to get some poor student, father, mother, and good man or woman’s head blown off. This instructor was in way over his head.
I turned to my class leader. “I’m not going to watch him shoot one of us. So I’m going to walk out. You should bring the rest of the class and leave with me.”
He put his hands on my arm and grabbed me. “Gary, do you have your ducks in a row on this?”
“I do,” I said, looking him straight in the eye.
He was a good man and was going to make a hell of an air marshal, but at that moment he was naïve and conditioned by the Army to trust blindly in authority. In the Army, just as in the Air Force, I’m sure that submission saves lives, but this wasn’t the military—and FAMS had lowered its standards. I knew what our class leader didn’t: He was about to watch his instructor shoot a squad mate in the head. My class leader didn’t realize, at first, that we don’t see ourselves as being individuals when we are part of a group or part of a team, but we always have the initiative to be a leader as individuals, wherever we rest on the food chain.
My class leader signed up for FAMS figuring the guy who would attack him would be shouting “Allah hu Akbar!” and wielding a box cutter. But sometimes bureaucracy and corruption make it so that the guy who shoots you square in the neck, leg, chest, or face could be your incompetent firearms instructor. Beyond the veil, sometimes the enemy is the one that’s supposed to have your back, sign your paycheck, or shake your hand on graduation day. I learned that primarily from the Clintons, but the message really clicked once I had been threatened by the FBI for obstructing justice, withholding evidence of a federal investigation, and dereliction of duty. I was seasoned enough to know how to respond when bad character was going to get the wrong guy killed. Don’t think. Act!
Everyone, including our team leader, knew that I risked being instantly kicked out of FAMS. I had called out a superior in front of our team, but every human being has the right to self-defense and dignity, to be a leader—that’s the God’s honest truth. Timmy should have swallowed his pride and admitted that he screwed up. Safety should always be number one in training, period.
I walked out alone.
No surprise there. Another instructor later followed me out of the shoot house—but only to give me grief. I anticipated being told to pack my stuff and go home. Waiting nervously by the tables of guns, ammunition, and gear, I readied myself for the tempers to flare and the human resources and legal shit storm to come, but whether you’re facing armed terrorists or subpoenas, what will be will be.
Wishful thinking never saved a life.
Timmy’s conduct had been immediately dangerous, so I handled it immediately. It would have been unsafe to hesitate or to file a grievance later. The mission is never so important to screw it up. That’s why I couldn’t be like my team leader or rest of the pack. Even the Service would never put up with that crap and would wipe the floor with a trainee or instructor who flagged (pointed a loaded firearm at) someone or was so wildly unsafe. I thought back to my FAMS interviewer. He had asked if I had any regrets from my time in the White House. Not really. Most nights I could rest my head squarely on my pillow and sleep soundly—that’s the litmus test of character. My father had instilled in me that your odds of success don’t create right or wrong. You fight for what is right.
At the classroom, maybe I saved a life that day. I could live with being shit-canned for it, but they would have to write me up on paper for it, and I knew they never would.
“Gary, do the right thing.” Since the Clinton debacle, that saying always rang in my head.
The only way I was going to have a regret was if I hadn’t walked out of that shoot house and someone got shot by an instructor’s negligent discharge.
“You think for a second you’re going to make it through training?” barked the self-assured instructor who followed me out. He thought he knew it all, even though he was junior to me in both age and experience.
“Listen,” I told him, “if that’s how you want to play this, I’m going to make a few phone calls. You make yours. We’ll meet at the end of the day and we’ll see who wins.”
I was still choked up and flustered—partly from staring down an instructor’s gun barrel, partly from staring down an unthinking bureaucracy’s gun barrel. I didn’t go back into the shoot house. The instructor made some calls.
So did I.
A few days later someone from FAMS headquarters came down and looked into it. It was clear neither I nor my instructors nor HQ was going to make a big stink about it. Just as in UD under the Clintons, I needed to keep my job and have my teammates keep our heads. Nothing was personal, but it was clear that a few instructors close to Timmy had it in for me. I had no trouble giving it back to them.
Cooler heads prevailed, but the head shaking didn’t stop. The instructors, Timmy especially, should have drilled themselves in anticipation of teaching us. It sat poorly with a lot of students, including myself, that unqualified patsies were becoming overpaid power-tripping instructors only because they were friends with someone with pull. Many students were already so good, you wondered if their bullets were guided like unseen holy forces, like the ballplayers in the movie Angels in the Outfield. They fired with such quickness with their bullets so closely grouped on target. Some trainees were sheriffs, “staties,” or weekend warriors who had some law enforcement and firearms experience. They weren’t bad but needed to fill some gaps. But those who joined FAMS as their first law enforcement position struggled mightily.
They needed training badly.
And how could someone teach what he didn’t know?
One instructor was messing with me, and it got too much. I had to get into his head as much as he was trying to get in mine.
“Listen,” I said, daring to challenge him, “why don’t we just put this to rest? You’ve got two choices. You and I can go out to the range and we’ll have a shoot-off, and
you pick whatever parameters you want—but I’m going to tell you right now you’re going to lose because you can’t even come close to my skill. Or we can take it to the mat room and we can roll. You’re a former Marine and ten years younger than I am, so I’m sure you got all kinds of skills I haven’t learned in the last twenty years, but even then, I’m going to win.”
He responded, “Oh, well, I’m an instructor, so I can’t really do that.…”
And I nodded at him. He knew he was a wuss, frankly. It told me everything I needed to know. An instructor has to be more knowledgeable and skilled than the students, otherwise just certify me and put me on the airplane. If he couldn’t lay skills on the range or the mat room, then how in the hell did he have the confidence to teach anyone or put them into action on an airplane against terrorists? Our exchange told me two things: First, he wasn’t confident in his own abilities and therefore was a fraud collecting a paycheck, an instructor in title only, and second, that he had weak character. Leaders should always demand more of themselves than those under their command; that is how you lead by example. A good leader issues demands of the men and women he’s charged with, but a great leader gets the men and women under his or her command to demand from themselves. You have to know what the hell you’re doing and be your own example—it’s that simple. The rest will follow. That’s something the Clintons, for example, never grasped.
Behind the instructors’ backs in the parking lot after every training session, I was demonstrating and instructing new guys, and older ones, too, on what the instructors were trying to teach. I used a blue practice gun I purchased online. It was the best, and least, I could do. Many of my classmates were great people, and we all needed help in one area or another. A former Army medic and squad mate helped me manage my Motrin and other meds to decrease my muscle aches and the swelling in my shins, knees, and feet from all my running. Another was a real physical training guy. He showed me ways I could work on my cardio when we were on Weekend Morale and Rest (WMR), without running or using my feet, and he was my gym partner. Another person helped me with notes and in return I demonstrated what our instructors simply couldn’t.
One drill the instructors were trying to demonstrate was the Six-Round Rhythm Drill. It’s also known as the Six-Round Pistol Control Drill. It’s a drill most anyone can do and is a staple for air marshals, Secret Service personnel, and competitive shooters alike. Just as at JJRTC, instructors have to teach not just proficiency, but also the ability for students to train themselves, maintain their abilities, and identify their own issues so they can correct them. We have to be able to keep our skills razor-sharp so when called upon, our reactions are second nature. The drill requires firing six controlled rounds within three seconds at seven yards and demonstrates the difference between rapid fire and controlled rhythmic shooting on target. That was the curriculum, and it’s what air marshals would be expected to do, but none of our six instructors could fire the six shots in three seconds, period—let alone on target.
It was embarrassing.
“Well, you get the idea,” said Timmy after he made some excuse why he couldn’t do it but expected us to.
I raised my hand. “Sir, I think I might be able to demonstrate it.”
After the shoot house incident, I was taking a stab at overt politeness. They brought me up to try my hand. It had been a few weeks since JJRTC and I was demonstrating in front of everyone, so I requested to do it dry a few times, then do it for real. I approached the line. As soon as the shot timer went beep, in the next three seconds exactly, my group was tight and that target silhouette was a dead man.
“Nice, Gary,” said the one instructor recruited from Border Control. The instructors originally from USSS just stood there, shall we say, stoically.
Later, before everyone returned to the hotel, I explained the mechanics of how to accomplish the drill to the others. No one wanted to be the guy who just skidded through training. I began, “It’s similar to what the instructors were saying, but forget all that. Here’s what you do, and here’s how it really works.…”
Still, the rift between our instructors and us got worse. Before class, one of the instructors slammed a stack of papers on my desk. “Here, Gary, hand out these papers. It’s the perfect job for you.”
“Anything, sir, to help out a fellow federal employee,” I said like the brat I was.
If you give it out, you’ve got to be able to take it, and I handed out the packets to each student with a smile. Our instructor walked out, and I sat down and flipped through the packet. I gasped at the last page. It was a sheet with the names of every person in our class with our Social Security numbers and salaries.
“What the f—?” someone said.
“Do you see this?” I asked my friend Jimmy, who’d also transferred from UD. He nodded in astonishment as each person caught wind of the final page.
“Jimmy, grab those up. I’m going to go get this guy,” I said, and I ran through the hallway.
“Excuse me, sir. Sir, do you realize what you just did?” I was trying to help him out so he could get ahead of his own jam.
“Mr. Byrne, get back in that classroom. I’ve had enough shit from you.”
“All right. But I’m just trying to help you. Are you sure you don’t want to hear me out?”
“I don’t need your help,” he said bitterly and looked me dead in the eye.
I returned to the classroom. Everyone was losing their minds. Some of the guys had entered FAMS at less than $50,000 from the Army after having served multiple combat tours, but guys from the UD, the Defense Department, and the Park Police had better leverage to transfer. They were already in the federal pay scale system and had rank. The military was a different system. Many of the guys were furious to be paid $20,000 less than both me and a former UD ERT sergeant, but we had twelve years or more in federal law enforcement. The sergeant earned $10,000 more than I.
Some were concentrating on the discrepancies in pay. Others saw this as a ploy for that instructor to trip us or divide our class into petty grievances. Each person had his or her cell phone out, contacting allies outside the chain of command. One Army veteran even phoned his congressman! Our team leader finally was catching on and marched us all to the Special Agent in Charge’s office (technically we were skipping class). Though the instructor tried to hold us back, our team leader pushed us through. I’ll never forget the SAC’s face when he saw the final page. He turned ten sheets of red. The entire day of training was screwed over for HR damage control. Needless to say, it was a major disaster, dividing classmates for the rest of our training and deepening the wedge between us all and FAMS leadership.
Eventually we completed our training at Artesia, New Mexico, and it was off to Atlantic City’s Federal Air Marshal Service Training Center for the next phase in training. The Atlantic City training center staff had its head on straighter, but it wasn’t without drama. Of our starting class of forty trainees, some couldn’t hack the physicality or the stress and washed out. I was forty when I went through the school. Some young guys thought they could take it, but they couldn’t keep a steady pace for a two-miler or couldn’t handle someone throwing them down on the mat room. No one washed out for marksmanship, which was astonishing (some of our class were terrible marksmen), but it was a serious blight on setting and keeping standards, the character of our leadership, and our piss-poor instructors. They were passing the buck to the field offices, which set a nasty precedent.
Yet one guy who didn’t make it through FAMS was an inspiration, and I’ll never forget him. I’ll call him Barnett. He was on active reserve in the Marines, and his unit got called up. He could have finagled his way out of it, since he was in training for a federal law enforcement agency. But he had trained with his Marine unit, and to him they were family. He felt a great sense of loyalty to them, the Marines, our country, and the mission. He said he would go through school all over again after this next tour in the War on Terror. Men like that don’t do it for
the money; they do it for the mission. When I was working alongside him he reminded me of situations where commitment was either 100 percent or not, even with no guarantee of either success or of life itself.
I graduated from Atlantic City’s training center and even took home a marksmanship and shooting award. I was among the top five shooters, but the four guys above me, Barnett included, were far beyond my skill level. Those four trainees were so lightning fast that we couldn’t see them move. When you looked at their shot timers, they all read less than a second. Their paper targets were hit in such a tight group—they looked like a single .410-bore shotgun hit—that you thought they had missed their follow-up shots. These guys were some former Special Forces pros, true warriors because they had been on the two-way range in the War on Terror and in other conflicts. I’m proud of my marksmanship award; it’s a memento of my skills. But so many of my colleagues humbled me by their service and heroism. They gave me great strength and kept my ego in check.
By my August 2003 graduation, 40 percent of new air marshals going to their field offices were failing their first qualifier, the Practical Pistol Course (PPC), and therefore couldn’t fly—and we shrugged it off as if it were normal. And even the PPC was heavily dumbed down from its former standards. My fellow qualifying air marshals would sarcastically say, “But hey, fly safe” no differently than an Army vet might raise an eyebrow when witnessing similar bad policy and cynically say, “Safety Number One.” Worse, our field offices were under too much pressure and were having the failing FNGs (freaking new guys) fly missions while still on probation.
Never is the mission so important to screw it up!
After our transition from training school to our field office we stood ready to deter and to combat hijackings, bombings, and attacks on our commercial air traffic by all means possible that don’t hinder or deter Americans from traveling and maintaining a healthy economy. After all, the 9/11 attacks were as much an attack on our economy and way of life as they were designed to inflict mass casualties or destroy command structure and real estate. The president and Congress agreed on that policy. FAMS leadership was to implement the policy and we, the boots on the ground (or in the air), were to make it actuality.