When I was a young agent, impromptus were rarely done, but we live in the age of the media, and they’ve become part of the politician’s repertoire. President Reagan liked diners. He would walk in, say hello to everybody, order something—but not drink it or eat it—and stick around just long enough for a local news crew to get some tape of him there. Then he’d say good-bye and we’d be gone. Almost every motorcade we did with him had at least one impromptu.
I recall being with him once in Pittsburgh on our way to the airport when we did an impromptu at a bar that was filled with people drinking beer. In walked Ronald Reagan. Even if the people there hadn’t voted for him, they were still awed by the sight of the president of the United States standing right there. People called out, “Hey, Ronnie, can I buy you a beer?” No one could do an impromptu like him, with the possible exception of Bill Clinton. And every now and then I stumble across some place where there’s been an impromptu, and sure enough, there’s a prominently displayed picture of President Reagan and the cup or glass he used.
Once, with Dan Quayle in Phoenix, Arizona, we were driving by a high school and he spotted a football practice going on. It was right there by the road, so we pulled in. He got out and walked around the field with all the players. It was perfectly safe, not at all disruptive for the school, and five minutes later we were back in the car. It made for some terrific photographs.
The inauguration of the president of the United States is a military event run by the Military District of Washington. The Secret Service handles all the security arrangements, but the U.S. Army has traditional charge of the event and all the protocol.
At his inaugural in 1977, Jimmy Carter walked for several blocks from the Capitol to the White House. But it was planned that he would only walk certain blocks and ride the limousine for the rest. Pennsylvania Avenue is lined with buildings, and they have thousands of windows, so we sent people into the buildings to make sure every window stayed shut. Each side of the street had countersnipers watching with binoculars, making sure no one opened a window. Had there been even one, President Carter’s walk would have ended abruptly, with agents escorting him quickly into the limousine.
For all sorts of reasons, not the least of which were weather and the fact that President Reagan was considerably older in January 1981 than Carter was at the time of his inauguration—it was decided that the Reagans would not walk. Instead, he would use an open car for the trip down Pennsylvania Avenue. In those days there was a hole in the bubble top, where the president and first lady could stand up and wave. They were exposed from the waist up. The assassination attempt a few months later meant that 1981 was the last time an open car was ever used at any president’s inauguration.
Four years later, I was scheduled to take President Reagan from the Capitol down to the White House in the inaugural parade. This is something every agent wants to do once in a lifetime. But it was so bitterly cold that the parade had to be canceled. And as far as I know, it was one of the few times in our history that’s ever happened. The president took his oath of office inside the Capitol under the rotunda.
That night, the president and first lady made the rounds of all the usual parties, which might have been fun for the people attending them, but wasn’t necessarily fun for the Reagans or the agents with them. All too often, for the president, the first lady, and the working shift, parties are a real chore. For the agents the worst of these are, ironically, the most glamorous for the guests—state dinners. These are highly programmed black-tie evenings, filled with protocol. I attended dozens of them, but after the first few they lost their glitter and became routine.
They begin with the president and first lady greeting the visiting head of state on the North Portico. The visitor either stays at the Blair House—which is the official guest house across the street from the White House—or at his embassy or at a hotel, and timing is critical. Military officers are lined up on the north grounds, and the cars are scheduled to arrive at specific times. The president steps off the North Portico to greet the visiting head of state and spouse and escorts them upstairs into the Oval Yellow Room of the residence for a private reception. The movie The American President is a realistic version of how it works.
At a certain point, the other guests at this private reception come downstairs while the president, first lady, guest of honor, and spouse go out the side door and down the grand staircase, during which “Ruffles and Flourishes” is played. The four of them then go into the East Room to stand in a receiving line. After that, everyone goes into the State Dining Room at the other end of the building for dinner. The dining room is usually set up to accommodate a dozen round tables of ten people each. The president sits in front of the Lincoln fireplace, facing the room, and the first lady sits at the other end of the room facing him. There’s then a whole protocol list of who sits where. The head of state sits with the first lady and the spouse sits with the president. The Secret Service supervisor sits on a chair placed behind and to the left of the president, right next to the fireplace. Another agent sits behind the first lady.
The chair behind and to the left of the president is actually closer to the table where the secretary of state sits. In my day that was George Shultz. I don’t know if this was ever publicized, and I don’t think it was contrived, but at every state dinner there were actresses, especially with the Reagans, and it always seemed that the prettiest women—I’m thinking of Brooke Shields, Christie Brinkley, and Cindy Crawford—always ended up sitting next to Shultz.
During dinner, certain things happen at certain times. The president gives the toast, and the visiting head of state responds with a toast. Then, at a precise moment, the string section of a military band comes in and wanders through the room. After dinner, cordials and coffee are served in three rooms—the Blue, Red, and Green— where everyone mingles until the president, the first lady, and the guests of honor move into the East Room for the entertainment. In my day that could be anyone from Andy Williams to Itzhak Perlman. Everyone had assigned seats. The president would sit in the front row with the first lady and the guests of honor. After the entertainment, which lasted half an hour, the president, first lady, and the guests of honor would move into the main foyer, where a military dance band would be playing. The Reagans would normally dance once, say good night to everyone, and leave.
By then it would be close to eleven o’clock. The agents were always anxious for the president and first lady to go upstairs, because we’d been working all day, and the sooner they left, the sooner we could leave. The rest of the crowd usually stayed much later, and there were times the dancing went on well past midnight. That’s the way state dinners are still done today. If a Secret Service agent says that he or she enjoys these evenings, you can bet they’re new to the job.
In the United States, wherever Air Force One flies, air traffic control clears the airspace so that the president’s plane is alone. Many countries are pretty competent at doing the same thing, but some occasionally try to show the president that he’s welcome and thereby upset a lot of people in the offering. Every now and then some country will scramble fighter jets to accompany Air Force One on its approach to the landing field. No one on board appreciates that, especially the air force pilots, who do whatever they can to get those fighters away from their plane. Other nations have odd requirements. The Soviets, for instance, used to require that one of their own pilots be on the plane whenever Air Force One flew into Soviet airspace.
Each president has his own habits and needs. George H.W. Bush, for example, usually went out to Andrews Air Force Base several hours before he was scheduled to leave on a long overnight flight. He’d get on board at, say, eleven o’clock and promptly go to sleep. The plane would then leave at whatever time it needed to, often several hours later, which gave Bush the benefit of a full night’s sleep. It wasn’t easy on the agents, who needed to be there with him, but it was convenient for him. I find it difficult to imagine how he could sleep through takeoff. Pres
ident Reagan’s little habit was to slip out of his trousers and get into gray sweatpants, which he wore with his white shirt and tie.
For the most part, the president stayed in his stateroom throughout the flight and worked on his upcoming events, although on the big international trips he would sometimes wander through the plane—in his sweatpants—and often go talk to the press. The depiction of what happens on that plane in the film Air Force One was suspenseful, but not at all realistic. The idea that terrorists could somehow take over the president’s plane is completely far-fetched. It simply could not happen. Everyone going on board Air Force One is put through a metal detector, except the agents and the president. All luggage is X-rayed and specially tagged for each trip. When you arrive in a city, you don’t carry your bags, the air force and the Secret Service secure the luggage and it gets delivered to each room. That was one of the nicest perks of being on the detail. You’d put your bag outside your room before you went to bed, and when you got to the next city, your luggage would magically appear in your room again.
There were no flight announcements by the pilot on Air Force One, at least not in those days. Also, unlike regular commercial flights, once the plane landed and taxied off the active runway, you could stand up, and most people did. Agents didn’t normally wear weapons when we flew—so they’d stow them in a carry-on bag. It was while the plane was taxiing that the shift would be getting ready to leave the plane, putting on their weapons and their jackets and heading for the back door. I always moved up front so that I could get off the plane right behind the president.
The working shift and the supervisor flew with the president. The rest of the Secret Service detail was either on the car plane or the press plane. For foreign trips, the press plane was a 747, which meant we could get more than three hundred people on it. Some agents also flew on the backup plane. It’s not generally known that wherever the president goes there are two planes for him in case there is a problem with one. Provisions also have to be made for the U.S. Air Force’s flying command post. We didn’t see much of it, but it was always somewhere nearby in case it was needed. Everybody knows about its existence, and it has appeared in films like The Sum of All Fears, but the plane and its operations are classified. I will say, however, that the size of the president’s entourage, and the equipment needed to support his trips, sometimes astounded people in the host nations. When we went to China with President Reagan, the Chinese were very surprised at the number of people we were bringing with us. It was during the survey trip, with Bill Henkel and Mike Deaver, when we sat down with our Chinese counterparts, that one of them produced a big map of the airport where the president was going to land. He pointed to a spot off to the side and proudly showed it to us: This is where we will put your president’s airplane. He couldn’t understand that there would be nine hundred people and that we’d have nineteen planes.
President Reagan traveled more on Air Force One than the three previous presidents combined. According to White House records, the Boeing 707 with the tail number 27000 flew 566,386 miles with presidents Nixon, Ford, and Carter, and 631,640 with President Reagan. Today, 27000 is a permanent exhibit at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California.
If the president flew that much, staff members racked up at least three times as many miles for the survey, preadvance, and advance trips that had to be made before the trip with him. I certainly got more than my share of them, and in all the miles I flew as part of PPD, only twice did I ever experience anything approaching a problem. The first time was on the advance to China, flying in the backup 707, tail number 26000.
At certain times of the year, Midway Island is inundated by huge albatrosses, affectionately known as gooney birds. Some of them stand nearly four feet tall. Landing there to refuel, we were all amazed at the literally thousands of gooney birds that covered the airfield. The navy had to run trucks up and down the runway all day long to clear away the birds. The usual survey-preadvance gang was sitting in the staff area, all of us very accustomed to flying in this particular airplane. But this time, as we pulled off the ground, the plane lurched almost straight up in the air and began to shudder. Bells now went off in the cockpit. We were suddenly losing lift and shaking so badly that I realized the plane had stalled and was about to crash. The crisis lasted fifteen seconds, then the bells stopped, and we leveled off and flew away. A few minutes later, the air force advance officer—who had come along to check runaways and approaches for Air Force One—walked out of the cockpit white with fear. He explained that as we took off, a flight of gooney birds took off in front of us. If we had hit them, they’d have gotten into the engines, and we would have gone into the water. So the pilot pulled back to avoid the birds, and that set off the stall alarms. He said we were at the absolute edge of the envelope, within seconds of dropping tail first into the water.
Neither the president nor the press corps was on the plane, so it never made the papers. Although the second, and only other, time something happened in flight, the president was aboard, and so was the press corps. It didn’t make the papers either, probably because none of the reporters knew how close we had come to crashing.
It was snowing badly that morning as Air Force One made its approach to a certain midwestern city. I had trouble seeing anything out the window because of the weather. Then, all of a sudden, the plane made a hard right turn, and now, out my window, I could see buildings right there. They were very close. We landed a few seconds later. It looked to me as if we’d missed the approach to the runway and nearly smashed into one of those buildings. None of the crew ever mentioned it. No one else ever spoke about it either.
After four years on PPD it was time to leave, but I left filled with regrets. Although I was being promoted to agent in charge of the Dignitary Protective Division (DPD)—a very good job with a lot less travel—I felt as if I were leaving my second family, not just the agents and the staff, but the Reagans as well. We were well into Reagan’s second term, the political pressure was off, and it was a more relaxed time. The Iran-Contra scandal hadn’t been exposed yet, and speculation about the president’s health was only just starting to make the news. I can honestly say that from the first day I walked into the Oval Office, until September 28, 1986, when I left, I never noticed any change in his memory or his comportment.
The last trip I took with him was to Omaha, Nebraska, on September 24, 1986. We went through a whole series of events, and I kept thinking to myself, This is my last motorcade with him, the last speech with him, the last rope line with him. When we got on the plane to fly home—my last flight on Air Force One with him—the president came back to spend a few minutes with me, to say thank you.
It was traditional that when you left PPD, you and your family would be escorted into the Oval Office for a photo with the president. So a few days later, Barbara and Michelle came with me to the White House. The president was his usual self, warm and friendly and funny. Michelle was now fourteen, and when he spoke with her and gave her some gifts, she kept saying to the president, Thank you, thank you, thank you. She was very cute, and he seemed delighted.
What I was only beginning to realize was the toll the Secret Service in general, and the PPD in particular, had taken on me. Being assigned to the president, especially as a supervisor, means you can never get your job out of your head. You’re always worrying about something, not just some visit, but about doing the right thing under stress, about being ready when something wrong happens, about all of the agents under your supervision. And you’re always thinking about time—how time is never your own. It affects so many of the things that are important in your own life.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
SHEPHERD ONE
On May 13, 1981, Pope John Paul II was shot while riding in an open convertible in St. Peter’s Square. For the second time in my life, I would be protecting someone who had barely survived an assassination attempt.
The ruler of Samoa loved roller coasters. He loved amusement parks,
and he loved California, too, where there are a whole lot of amusement parks, particularly ones with roller coasters. As agent in charge of the Dignitary Protective Division (DPD), I asked my old friend Earl Devaney to look after him whenever he came for a visit. But the ruler of Samoa was a heavyset gentleman, and Earl wasn’t a small guy either, which didn’t leave a lot of room inside the roller coaster cars. So Earl recruited a younger, slimmer agent who rode in roller coasters all over California with the ruler of Samoa. We used to call such requirements “Other duties as assigned.” Although Earl usually preferred the more sarcastic label “Just another opportunity to serve.”
During any given month, DPD might have fifteen to twenty heads of state on visits somewhere in the United States. While I was running DPD, we looked after individuals such as the prime minister of Japan, King Hussein of Jordan, Margaret Thatcher, and her successor, John Major. In many cases, heads of state brought their children along, and it never came as a surprise that somewhere on the itinerary was Disneyland or Disney World. Because most of those visiting dignitaries are otherwise unknown to the American public—how many people in Florida would recognize the prime minister of Belgium?—escorting them around was easy. There are issues such as, Do we stand in line? but those things are easily expedited, and a lot of Secret Service agents in Florida know the ins and outs of Disney World.
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