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

by Petro, Joseph

  There was a long pause on the other end. “What?”

  “We’re seizing the gate,” I said. “Inform the station commander’s office that as of nine o’clock, we are taking control of the gate because of the possibility of terrorism.”

  Two UD officers and a supervisor walked up to the gate and announced to the contract guards, “We’re taking control.” And that was that. From then on, the Secret Service decided who went in and out. I waited all morning for a phone call from the navy, but it never came, and to this day we command that gate.

  Controlling access is an obvious way to protect someone. Giving the protectee access to us in an emergency situation is another. For that reason, protectees have panic buttons. It’s usually a pager-type device, like the alarms many people have in their homes that are tied into a private security company. Push the button and the cavalry arrives. Among other places, we put them in the protectee’s bedroom, mainly for medical emergencies. After all, we’ve got the room totally surrounded, so no one can get in unless we let them in. But we wouldn’t necessarily know if the president or vice president was having a heart attack.

  It’s the Technical Service Division that comes up with these things. They are to the Secret Service what Q is to James Bond. And they’re always inventing new perimeter sensors, night-vision devices, and tiny cameras to monitor hallways and stairwells. For some reason, TSD designed a panic button to look like the Washington Monument. All the protectee had to do was knock it down and the alarm would go off.

  One of the first people to have one was Dan Quayle. The Quayles were on a trip, staying in a hotel, and we put one next to their bed. About half an hour after they retired, with agents on post outside the door, the alarm went off. Agents burst in, only to find a very startled Mr. and Mrs. Quayle sitting up in bed, wondering what on earth had happened. Mea culpa. I’d forgotten to tell him where the alarm was, and in the dark, he’d mistakenly knocked it over.

  I later learned that TSD wanted it to look like the Washington Monument so that hotel maids wouldn’t know what it was. Why any hotel maid would think that the president or vice president traveled with a replica of the Washington Monument is beyond me, but TSD sometimes thought out of the box like that. Anyway, hotel maids never get into a protectee’s suite unless an agent is there, too.

  Nor does room service. The president never has room service because he has his own stewards cooking for him in another room. If the vice president wants something, we order it from the command post.

  The same with pizza deliveries. The Quayles ordered pizzas every now and then at home, like all families with kids, but obviously couldn’t just pick up the phone and say to Domino’s, “This is the vice president of the United States, please send over a large pie with extra cheese.” So if they wanted a pizza, they’d place their order, and give the address of the Naval Observatory, as if it were for the guards at the front gate. When the kid taking their order asked, “Name?” the Quayles would say, “Petro.”

  I might not have looked all that graceful in Dan Quayle’s autobiography, falling out of the raft, but a few years ago when I bumped into him at Citigroup, he told me that, to this day, they still order pizzas using my name.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  LIFTING THE BURDEN

  Leaving the Secret Service meant that I was leaving behind a big piece of my identity, my professional history, and a great sense of fraternity.

  During those years with Dan Quayle, the Secret Service resolved several long-standing problems.

  The first had to do with our weapons. The Uzis, shotguns, and .357 Magnums we used were all bought off the rack. Personally, I’ve never liked guns and hated to shoot, but I became comfortable with the six-round .357 Magnum revolver. It was safe, you really had to pull the trigger for it to go off, it wouldn’t jam, and you could reload fast. But there was a faction of agents who were “gun nuts.” They’d carry two—one in a shoulder holster, the other in an ankle holster—and by the late 1970s, they faced criminals carrying guns with fifteen rounds. They were arguing that we needed to move up to 9mm semiautomatics.

  So the Secret Service commissioned a study. The head of the Beltsville training facility—a fellow who knew weapons, named Don Edwards—was put in charge, and his committee looked at dozens of guns. But with every one, they always found something wrong. They tested each gun by firing ten thousand rounds, only to discover that after so many rounds the barrel cracked, or the gun jammed, or something unexpected happened. One gun after another was ruled out, and it got to be sort of a joke that no weapon could pass the test.

  It wasn’t a big issue for agents working protection because we had so much support around us, like CAT teams and police, but field agents doing criminal work were seriously outgunned. Many of them bought their own semiautomatics because they couldn’t wait for Edwards and his committee. It took nearly fifteen years before the Secret Service settled on a weapon that became the authorized sidearm. I never qualified with it, and I wasn’t alone, because a lot of older guys didn’t want to give up their trusty revolver. But the struggle that the Secret Service went through became an interesting study in how you can overanalyze something to the point where the process becomes the problem.

  While I sat on the sidelines of the gun debate, I got deeply involved with two problems at the Capitol. That is a different place. Because the legislature is a separate branch of government, agents accompanying the executive were treated as if we were in a foreign country. There were sacred places where we were not permitted to go.

  The U.S. Capitol Police was created by Congress in 1828 to protect the Capitol and members of Congress. They are, admittedly, an older law enforcement branch than the Secret Service, and when it comes to enforcing laws on the Hill, they have jurisdiction. But we also have authority inside the Capitol, just as we have it outside the Capitol, because where we accompany the president or the vice president, we have the responsibility to protect him.

  However, the Capitol Police had their “rules.” For instance, there is a cross hall outside the vice president’s office that is next door to the Senate Chamber. At one end of that cross hall, there’s a vase and a partition where chairs and newspapers are provided for the senators. At the other end there’s another little partition and another vase. The rule was, Secret Service agents could not go past those vases. So when the vice president left his office and went into the Senate Chamber, we’d have to put agents up in the gallery to watch him. But teenaged kids working as interns and pages were running around the vases. What’s more, if the vice president had a meeting at the other end of the cross hall, I’d have to get somebody to go around to the other side to meet him, because the Capitol Police wouldn’t allow an agent to walk across that hall with the vice president.

  One day I’d simply had enough. I phoned our liaison agent on the Hill who works with the Capitol police. I said, “I don’t care who you talk to over there but I am never again walking all the way around the Senate floor when I’m accompanying the vice president. The next time he walks through that cross hall, I’m walking with him.”

  This created a huge dilemma, putting the Capitol Police and the United States Senate on a collision course with the Secret Service. Phone calls went back and forth, but that “rule” did get changed.

  The other battle we fought there was slightly more complicated. I’d accompanied President Reagan to several State of the Union addresses. When the announcement was made, “Mr. Speaker, the President of the United States,” I’d walked down the center aisle of the House Chamber with him.

  In 1991, I was taking Vice President Quayle to the State of the Union address. The way it works is the vice president waits in his office at the Senate while all the senators gather in the Senate Chamber. Ten minutes before the president arrives, he leads them over to the House, and they go into the House Chamber. On that particular night, the advance agent informed me, “They’re not going to let you walk down the center aisle.”

  I wanted to
know, “Who’s not going to let me?” He explained that the Capitol Police were insisting I’d have to go all the way around the House chamber and meet the vice president at the base of the podium. I told the agent, “I intend to walk down that aisle with the vice president. You tell the Capitol Police, if anybody interferes, they will be arrested for interfering with a federal agent in the performance of his duty.”

  That night, the vice president and all the senators left their side of the Capitol and walked through the rotunda to the House. I stayed with him. When we got to the House, the doors opened and the vice president’s entourage started in. I did, too. And nobody said a word. I went down the aisle with the vice president and took my place stage left. Five minutes later, I spotted the agent in charge of President Bush’s detail—John McGaw—who had prepositioned himself across from me on stage right. He, clearly, was not going to accompany the president into the chamber. I was surprised. The next day McGaw called me and asked me how I was able to accomplish that. When I said that I’d firmly insisted, I heard him whisper to himself, “I guess I should have pushed harder.” I felt uncomfortable that I had upstaged him.

  The friction I’d inadvertently created with McGaw did not manifest itself immediately. Anyway, there were already plenty of jealousies built into our relationship. There always is between PPD and VPPD.

  To improve this problem, one of the positive projects that McGaw implemented when he ran PPD was to exchange agents with VPPD. Agents on the two details did not always understand each other. PPD was looked upon as the prima donnas, and it was often joked that they carried two holsters, one for their gun and the other for their hair dryer. So McGaw came up with the idea—and I wholeheartedly supported it—that we would exchange one agent each for thirty days at a time. One PPD agent would spend thirty days with VPPD, and vice versa. We did that for a couple of years, and it really helped. Agents would return to the vice president’s detail saying that it was tough on PPD; they might not travel as much, but standing post around the Oval Office is not so glamorous. We heard the same feedback from the PPD agents temping with us; the VPPD was not as easy as they imagined. I don’t know whether the two details still exchange agents, but they should.

  At headquarters, remnants of the Knight-Powis-Simpson battles continued. It was a sad time for the Secret Service, because it came down to victimization, or what I sometimes called the euthanasia of old agents. Too often, senior agents at the end of their careers found themselves in someone else’s way. Maybe that happens in other organizations, both inside government and in the private sector, but it shouldn’t happen in the Secret Service. The battle widened the schism between protection and investigation and created a parochialism that got out of hand throughout much of the 1980s and well into the 1990s. It ruined careers and caused enormous damage.

  Simply put, the Secret Service had become too political. And John McGaw was one of those political characters. I’d unintentionally embarrassed him at the State of the Union address. Just before George Bush left the White House, the president rewarded McGaw by naming him director of the Secret Service. Within a few days, the new director transferred me from the vice president’s detail to the Washington field office.

  When I was a young agent on Edmund Muskie’s detail—he was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination—and he went to play golf, we wore blazers with an open shirt. By the time I got to the Quayle detail, the golf course dress code had deteriorated considerably. We always wore some sort of coat, because we didn’t want to display our gun or radio. But it can be hot on a golf course in the summer, so before long agents were wearing fishing vests. I always thought that outfit looked very unprofessional, and I continued wearing a blazer or some sort of wind breaker. However, I tolerated fishing vests because everybody had one. That is, until we took Quayle to a pro-am golf tournament in Fort Wayne, Indiana. As we pulled into the country club, I spotted an agent wearing a fishing vest, safari pants with huge pockets, and a pith helmet. He looked like Ramar of the Jungle. When we got back to Washington, I sent a memo to the detail decreeing no more fishing vests. The following week, we took the vice president to the Bush family summer home in Kennebunkport, Maine, to see the president. A golf game was scheduled, and while McGaw’s PPD agents were in fishing vests, we were in blazers. There was a real visual dichotomy between the two details. We reflected our own pride by looking more professional, and the PPD agents knew it.

  I don’t know whether McGaw even recalled the fishing vest incident, but working in the Washington field office meant I could enjoy the freedom that came from no longer having to travel so exhaustively. There was no denying that I’d been moved sideways, and, in the back of my mind, I began contemplating retirement. My Irish mother always said that everything happens for a reason.

  While I was thinking about what I was going to do, a call came in from an old friend, Larry Buendorf. He was the agent who’d grabbed Squeaky Fromme’s gun during the 1975 attempt on Jerry Ford’s life. Larry was back with Ford as the head of the former president’s detail. He was calling to say, “I’m in New York, and there’s a company called Primerica. President Ford is on the board, and the chairman of the company is Sandy Weill. I’m phoning from his office. He says the company is going to get bigger and they want to bring someone in to deal with security issues. Are you interested?”

  My honest answer was “I don’t know.” I told Larry that I had a résumé and he asked me to fax it to him right away. Fifteen minutes later I got a call from one of Sandy Weill’s aides, John Fowler, asking, “When can you come to New York?” I went up there the following week to meet Sandy, his general counsel Chuck Prince, Primerica president Jamie Dimon, and Frank Zarb, who was head of Smith Barney at the time. Zarb had worked for President Ford as energy czar. Sandy was very impressive, having surrounded himself with some young and very bright people. I returned to Washington thinking to myself, If I’m going to retire, this looks like the right company.

  Another factor had changed my life at this point. Barbara and I had separated, and Michelle was now a freshman at James Madison University in Virginia.

  As an agent on protective details, you learn the hard way that you can’t make many future plans because when the time comes, there’s a chance you might be halfway around the world. The reality of the job is that you are forever on someone else’s schedule. It’s not easy to deal with, and, unfortunately, it’s not only the agents who pay the price. It also affects families. I missed many occasions to be with my daughter as she was growing up. I missed birthdays, I missed parties, I missed ball games, and I missed all those special Kodak moments. I missed a great deal of my daughter’s childhood and it still saddens me.

  By mid-May 1993, I had accepted the offer from Primerica and announced my intention to retire in June. On my last day in the Secret Service, I invented an old navy tradition. Someone had given me a small bottle of Jim Beam, which I’d had in my desk for years, so I invited half a dozen of my guys from the Quayle detail to join me in the “traditional emptying of the ration.” When they walked into my office, they found me wearing a borrowed fishing vest.

  The burden had been lifted.

  I’d felt that way when I left the president’s detail, and I’d felt that way as I watched the pope’s plane take off in Detroit. I’d felt that way when I left the vice president’s detail, and now I felt that way as I retired. I’d worked hard and had always tried to do the best I could for the people I protected and for the other agents. Twenty-three years later, it was over. I kept telling myself that going to New York might be the best career move I ever made. As it turned out, it was. The personal and professional decisions were significant and I spent a lot of time soul-searching. I had to admit that I had been extremely lucky. I am lucky to have had great role models as parents, lucky to have survived Vietnam, lucky to have had such extraordinary experiences. I may not have benefited from all the opportunities I have been given, but I am very grateful for so much.

  The
first call I made when I arrived in New York was to Dick Lefler, who was head of security at American Express. He’d left the Secret Service in 1985 and was one of the first agents to get a big New York job. He gave me some of the best advice anyone ever has. He said, “You’ve been in an agency for twenty-three years where you’ve been surrounded by people who mostly think as you do. There may be some disagreements on the edges but we fundamentally think about things the same way.” He said, “Now you’re in an organization where you’re surrounded by people who do not think as you do. Be prepared for that.”

  He was right. Leaving the Secret Service meant losing my identity, my authority, and a great sense of fraternity. I literally had to reinvent myself. The corporate world was a whole different game, and it took me months to get accustomed to that. In a very real sense, it is the great equalizer. We are all starting over. You can see that best when former agents meet. We bond together in a natural way, even agents who had once been at loggerheads. In the end, we are brothers and sisters under the skin, suddenly forced to survive in a different arena. Many good agents have became successful in what we frequently refer to as “the real world.” Many agents have failed there, too. It takes a lot of getting used to. Deceptively, the private sector can look familiar. It, too, is a bureaucracy in which personalities and egos run the gamut, from very smart to very foolish, from very humble to extremely arrogant. But in the private sector they keep score differently. I once believed that if you could survive the minefield that is the White House—where you are surrounded by and constantly required to balance conflicting interests, objectives, and egos—you could survive anywhere. But the private sector is a better breeding ground for greed, power, and arrogance. And all too often that mixture severely blurs good judgment.