Standing Next to History: An Agent's Life Inside the Secret Service

by Petro, Joseph

  It was no problem for me to drive her, but these boats need to be maintained properly, and when they’re not, all sorts of things go wrong. This one was in horrible condition and, sure enough, no more than a hundred yards from the dock, the pin connecting the Jacuzzi water pump to the diesel engine snapped. We lost power, and, just like that, my starboard engine shut down. We arrived at the palace ten minutes after the barge, which gave Deaver more than enough time to remind everybody that I’d knocked out half the Thai fleet.

  The second of the three trips preceding a presidential visit takes place one month before he leaves the White House and is called “the preadvance.”

  This time a much a larger group goes and includes several people from the White House press office, television producers, a video production guy, and a still photographer. The Secret Service also adds to the entourage the lead advance agent for each country. On this trip we retraced our steps, again starting in Hawaii, going through Guam to Japan and Korea. With Indonesia and the Philippines out, we went from Korea to Thailand. By design, the preadvance is a much more granular exercise. We no longer ask, Where? We start to ask, How? It’s all about establishing parameters for timing, motorcades, distances, routes.

  Three weeks later, which is one week before the president leaves Washington, the actual advance team goes in to do all the nitty-gritty detail work. The Secret Service team now includes the lead agent, site agents, intelligence agents, and the transportation people, who lock down everything concerning the motorcades. The White House sends site people, press advance, and logistics people. The military teams do advance work for the planes and the helicopters. WHCA has enough folks to hook up all the telephones and communications. The residences where the president will stay are swept and secured twenty-four hours ahead of his arrival. Every site where he stops is swept and secured on the day of the visit, as close to his actual arrival time as possible. By this point, if the survey and preadvance have been done properly, all that’s left to do is to work out the logistics: where we’re going to put agents, where the cars will be parked, where the airplane will be parked, how we’re going to feed people.

  But this time problems awaited us in Tokyo. To begin with, the Japanese announced that they intended to add cars to the middle of the motorcade. They’d decided that our Secret Service follow-up car—which contains the shift leader and the working agents, and normally travels right behind the limousine—should be two cars back so that they could put their own people in the car immediately behind the president. We said no, and explained why until we were blue in the face. Next, they balked at our concerns over the visit to the Meiji Shrine. There had just been an incident at the Martyrs Mausoleum in Rangoon, Burma, where a bomb had exploded, killing seventeen people, including four South Korean cabinet ministers on an official visit. My feeling was that if the Rangoon incident was an indication of rising political unrest in the Far East, exposing the president to a public shrine was not a good idea. The Japanese said it was a must stop. I worried that they would be so respectful of the shrine, they wouldn’t want to disturb it and therefore wouldn’t search it well enough. There was no way we could cancel the visit to the shrine, so we insisted that it had to be swept by a Secret Service team. The Japanese said no. We tentatively settled on the idea that the Secret Service would, instead, be permitted to watch the Japanese security sweep the shrine. We also wanted to run everyone through metal detectors at all of the president’s events, including the visit to the shrine. That, too, was met with resistance.

  There wasn’t time to resolve those issues on the advance, so, three days before the actual visit, Bill Henkel and I returned to Japan. I probably would have gone back there anyway before the president, because it’s always a good idea to have a supervisor on the ground, rested and fresh, when he lands. With the visit occuring in a few days, however, it was unusual to have still outstanding issues.

  Bill and I sat down with ten people from the Japanese government and stayed at the table for the entire three days trying to negotiate ourselves out of what had become a major impasse. The stumbling block was the head of the national police, a little man in his fifties, heavyset with thinning black hair, named Motoishi. He didn’t appreciate our interfering in his security sweep of the shrine, wasn’t going to let us run everyone attending any presidential event through magnetometers—he said that, anyway, “magging” members of the press was illegal—and insisted that our follow-up car give way to his own cars in the motorcades. At all times, the Japanese contingent remained polite, but no matter how long we sat there, no matter what we said, and no matter how hard we tried to reason with him, Mr. Motoishi remained unmovable.

  I left the room every so often to report back to Washington that we were still deadlocked. Bill and I also kept our ambassador to Japan informed. Mike Mansfield, formerly a U.S. senator from Montana and majority leader of the Senate, had been appointed by Jimmy Carter in 1977. He was seventy-four years old at the time, and perhaps President Carter felt this was a suitable reward for a man on his way out of public life. But Mansfield was a legendary figure. Ronald Reagan reappointed him, and he served in Tokyo until 1989—at the age of eighty-six—longer, older, and arguably more efficient than any previous U.S. ambassador to Japan.

  By noon of the third day, Bill and I conceded that our marathon stalemate with Mr. Motoishi had gone on long enough. We went to brief Ambassador Mansfield, who decided that the situation was critical enough to wake Mike Deaver, Secret Service director John Simpson, and Bob DeProspero, who was now head of PPD. It was the middle of the night in Washington, and the president was due to leave the White House in six hours.

  After hearing the ambassador explain the problem, Deaver came straight to the point. “If these issues aren’t resolved, we’re not coming.” That was a pretty dramatic moment. Mansfield hung up, looked at Bill and me, reached for the phone, and dialed Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone’s office. He said he needed to see the PM at once, and was told to be at his residence in an hour.

  Despite the ticking clock—the president was now five hours away from takeoff—the prime minister escorted us through all the usual niceties, including tea. The ambassador outlined the problem, and I went into specifics. I said there were three issues: the bomb sweep of the Meiji Shrine, the use of magnetometers for everyone attending the event there—including the press—and the position of the follow-up car in the motorcade. When I was done, the ambassador informed the PM, “I’m afraid that if we are not able to work out these issues right away, the trip could be in some jeopardy.”

  Nakasone got visibly upset. He kept dropping sugar cubes into his teacup but instead of stirring them gently, he started mashing them ferociously with the flat side of his spoon. He needed this trip to bolster his waning political popularity, and having it canceled at the last minute would be a personal disaster. Suddenly he grabbed a handful of pencils, lined them up on the coffee table, announced that they were cars in the motorcade, and tried to come to an agreement with me about where the follow-up could be. I clarified why each car is positioned the way it is, but he continued moving pencils until there was really nothing else to say. That’s when he rang for his secretary of the cabinet—the number-two man in his government—and ordered him to assemble a group of insiders to meet with us immediately to resolve these issues. Within five minutes, we were escorted out of his office and into a nearby conference room, where, sitting around the table, I was shocked to find many of the same characters I’d been dealing with for three days, including Mr. Motoishi.

  He came up to me and very aggressively demanded, “How could you do this to me?” I’d gone over his head, and he took it as an insult.

  I reminded him, “I told you this was serious, and you didn’t believe me.”

  We sat down with the cabinet secretary now at the head of the table and began what had to be the final meeting. It got a little heated, but the weight of the prime minister’s office did the trick, and with just four hours to go before the
president took off from Washington, they agreed we could observe the sweep of the shrine and could use magnetometers. In turn, I compromised, allowing them to save face on the position of the follow-up car. We telephoned Deaver to say it was settled, and the president left the White House on schedule. That night I fell asleep reminding myself I just discussed the intricacies of motorcade philosophy with the prime minister of Japan.

  The next morning I got up believing that the worst was over. I got to the airport early to do a final check on the arrival arrangements and was assured that everyone understood what was going to happen, that everything was all right. The president would get off Air Force One, stand at the bottom of the steps for the usual ceremonies, then walk about fifty yards to the waiting Marine One helicopter, which would fly him to the Akasaka Palace. In situations like that, we drive the limousine parallel to the president’s walk, and even refer to it as “the parallel car.” It stays a few feet away from him on the tarmac, rolling at his walking pace, close enough so that if something happens, we have a place to put him and, if need be, a way to evacuate the scene. It had all been explained to the Japanese during the survey and preadvance trips and had never been an issue. Until now. With Air Force One no more than ten minutes out, our advance agent ran up to me, frantic, because the police would not allow the limousine through the gate.

  Looking around, I spotted a slightly smug Mr. Motoishi. I walked over to him and said politely, “There must be a mistake. The parallel car is supposed to be on the tarmac.”

  He shook his head emphatically, “No car.”

  I reminded him, “But we’ve already agreed …”

  He repeated, “No car.”

  I didn’t know if this was just his ego talking—some sort of payback for the day before—or if he thought he had some logical reason. Either way, I didn’t care. This was a clear challenge to us, and if I allowed it to happen, it would undermine all of the agreements we’d made for the rest of the trip. I said to him, point-blank, “Mr. Motoishi, if the car is not out here on the tarmac, the president is not getting off the airplane.” He glared at me, gave a sharp intake of breath—which the Japanese do to show displeasure—and I showed him how displeased I was by turning my back and walking away.

  Out of his earshot, I got on my radio and called up to DeProspero on Air Force One. “I’ll explain this to you when you get on the ground, but I need you to keep the president on the plane for three minutes after the door opens.”

  This is not the way these things are supposed to happen, and the door opening is significant. When the president arrives, they crack the main cabin door while the staff, agents, and press hurry off the rear of the plane. That takes about five minutes. Once everyone is ready, the main door is pushed open, “Ruffles and Flourishes” is played, and the band strikes up “Hail to the Chief.” That’s when the president emerges. And that was the point where I wanted Bob to keep him out of sight and to start the three-minute countdown.

  Mr. Motoishi was fifty feet down the tarmac from me as the gleaming white and blue 707 came into view. We watched it land and then taxi up to where we were all waiting. As the president was due at ten o’clock sharp, the plane blocked precisely at 10:00:00. Air Force One pilots take great pride in “meeting the block time” to the second. I know from being on the plane with President Reagan that whenever he landed, he’d watch the atomic clock on the bulkhead in the front compartment, waiting for the final lurch into the blocks. On those rare occasions when the plane touched down a few moments late, we’d taxi at ninety miles an hour to hit the blocks on time. If we landed a few moments early, we’d taxi at five miles an hour to block precisely. Air Force One is, to say the very least, an on-time airline.

  So the president’s plane blocked at ten o’clock sharp, the front door cracked open, and the staff, agents, and press hurried out the back. Some of the agents came up to where I was standing, and in the middle of what was an extremely stressful few minutes, a warm feeling swept over me. Our guys were there, and the shift leader, Rick Wright, started barking orders. You go here, you go there. I told myself, the cavalry has arrived. But the parallel car still hadn’t.

  Everybody was ready for the president. There were little girls with flowers and a line of dignitaries waiting to greet him at the bottom of the steps. Then, suddenly, the front door was flung open. The band played “Ruffles and Flourishes,” went straight into “Hail to the Chief,” and … nothing happened. The president didn’t appear.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that Mr. Motoishi was very nervous, pacing along the tarmac. I refused to look straight at him because I wanted to make it clear that we had nothing to discuss. It was a very long three minutes. No one on the tarmac knew what was wrong or why the president had not yet left the plane. Except for me and Mr. Motoishi.

  Then Mr. Motoishi blinked. He nodded to someone, the parallel car rolled into position, and at that very instant a beaming Ronald Reagan stepped through the door.

  CHAPTER THREE

  PROTECTING PEOPLE YOU LIKE

  Life at the White House is fairly routine for the Secret Service. The president comes to work and goes home. It’s a four-minute walk. But when he leaves the building, everything changes.

  If you fire a handgun at the White House while standing on Pennsylvania Avenue, you’ve committed a crime that falls under the authority of the Washington Metropolitan Police and you will be arrested by them. If you step onto the sidewalk in front of the White House and do the same thing, you answer to the United States Park Police and will be arrested by them. If you jump the fence, you are under the jurisdiction of the Secret Service and will be arrested by our Uniformed Division (UD). But if you stand on Pennsylvania Avenue and fire a shot, then run onto the sidewalk and fire a second shot, and then jump the fence, it’s not clear who has jurisdiction. You will be arrested, and arrested very quickly, but which group prosecutes the case remains a question.

  The gate that surrounds the White House and its lawns is the outer perimeter. The Uniformed Division, which works inside the gate, forms the middle perimeter. Once known as the White House Police, they are also responsible for the canine corps, which is bomb dogs for sweeps of cars and in buildings; the countersniper division, which places officers on rooftops with automatic weapons and precision sights; our shooting ranges and our weapons training; and all the electronic protection for the White House, the EOB, and the vice president’s residence, which includes alarms, motion detectors, closed-circuit television cameras, and so forth. They also set up and run our magnetometers. The equipment they use is top of the line, but in the end the equipment is just tools. You need people with eyes paying attention to protect the president. You need to put people between the president and danger.

  Accordingly, if someone tries to come over the fence, bells and whistles go off everywhere, and the UD responds with weapons drawn. The fence jumper is usually intercepted by the time he hits the ground. Depending on where the president is, the Secret Service detail inside the White House—being the inner perimeter—might move in on him a little closer. But there’s no chance that anyone coming over a fence is going to get near the building, because before he gets close, he’ll be stopped. But then, people who jump the fence are, generally speaking, not assassins. They are people who want to get caught, or shot, or both. They are people looking for attention.

  And even if someone manages to get close to the building—which he couldn’t—he’d never get inside, because all the doors and windows are locked.

  And even if someone gets inside—which he couldn’t—he’d never get inside the Oval Office, because those doors are also always locked. What’s more, none of the four doors to the Oval Office open like regular doors. There’s a trick to it. That also applies to the doors on the limousine. They don’t work like regular car doors, and unless you know to open them, they simply won’t open. Anyway, there are always so many people around the White House with weapons that getting close to the president isn’t something
that’s going to happen.

  Although fence jumpers are not a daily occurrence, they show up more regularly than most people know and only make the papers when someone is shot on the White House lawn. Still, there are contingency plans for everything, even the impossible. The president is briefed on what to anticipate if something happens and knows where he will be taken. In the hours immediately following 9/11, President Bush was moved to a secret location where he was safe. On several occasions, Vice President Cheney has also been moved. These contingencies are practiced and rehearsed.

  There are two operational command posts at the White House. The UD runs a big, hi-tech command post. That’s where they have all the alarms and security cameras. The Secret Service command post is officially called W-16, but code-named “Horsepower,” and is on the ground floor of the West Wing. It’s a rectangular office that runs along the wall on the south side, partially under the Cabinet Room and partially under the Oval Office. When I worked in that room, my mother would tell people, “My son’s desk is ten feet from the president’s. Vertically.”