by Fred Burton
Now I just hope the Dark World doesn’t take my soul.
eighteen
THE BRONZE STAR ASSASSIN
November 1, 1987
Bethesda
This is one of those days I’ve needed for a long time. Day after day of craziness, threats, terror, bombings, death, and hijackings will drive any man over the edge sooner or later, unless he can take a sanity break. Today, Fred Davis and I finally got a chance to go fishing again. We left early and spent the day casting fruitlessly into the Potomac River, jawing about old times. He starts flight school in a few weeks, so it was good to see him before he heads down to Alabama.
After I got home, my wife and I actually got to spend some time together. It is a rare Sunday when we’re both free from work commitments, and by dinnertime, I almost felt happy. Now, with the clock just about to strike nine-thirty, I’m more relaxed than I’ve been since joining the DSS. Shoes off, Tyler Beauregard asleep on the floor next to me, we’re kicked back on the couch watching Chris Berman recap all the NFL action of the day. The ’Skins beat the Bills 27-7. Thank God the strike is over and the real players are back on the field. Of course, football hasn’t been the same since Joe Namath retired. Then the Colts broke everyone’s hearts when they stole out of town in the middle of night a few years back.
The phone rings.
Oh, God.
Part of me doesn’t want to answer it. Today was too perfect. It rings again. I hesitate. Duty compels me to pick it up, but is it too much to ask for one night to myself?
It rings again. I know it’s just in my head, but with each ring the tone sounds more insistent, like it is trying to warn me of a brewing crisis. By ring four, I’m off the couch. Sitting on a nearby table is my new STU-III secure phone. It takes up most of a small briefcase, and every night when I come home, I plug it in. It has replaced the old code cards, which were such a pain to use. Now, from the comfort of my own townhouse, we can scramble all calls from FOGHORN and talk up to top secret. It is a great invention, but right now, I hate it.
“Burton.”
It’s FOGHORN. I listen to the agent on the other end of the line. Then I say, “Okay, going secure.”
I push a button on the STU-III. After a pause, it switches into scramble mode. We can talk freely now.
“Okay, go,” I say.
His first sentence knocks the relaxation clean out of me. His second has me reaching for the car keys. When we end the call, I make a beeline for the garage. I hardly have time to say good night to Sharon, who looks on at my departure with saddened eyes.
Fifteen minutes later, I reach the office and dash down the hallway to FOGHORN.
The agents on duty watch expectantly as I burst inside our communication center’s inner sanctum. My mind is racing. We’ve got to act fast.
“Okay guys, let’s crank up NLETS. Eastern seaboard. Send out descriptions of the suspect and his car. He’s heavily armed and dangerous. We’ve got to find him.” NLETS is the National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System. It allows us to mobilize police agencies all over the country.
The duty agents get busy. I get over to another secure phone and call the regional DSS office in Boston. “This is Agent Fred Burton. I need to talk with Special Agent Neeley.”
I’m patched through to his line. Neeley is the Boston ASAIC—assistant special agent in charge. He was the one who called out the hounds on this one, and now I need more information.
Neeley tells me everything he knows. By the time I get off the phone, I have no doubt that we’ve got a serious situation on our hands. A lone nut is on his way to kill the secretary of state and the president.
Rose Gallo had called Neeley at 9 P.M. She told him that her son, Edward Louis Gallo, had been acting stranger and stranger throughout the weekend. On Sunday morning, he watched the TV news programs and suddenly erupted in anger. He paced around the house, screaming obscenities and threats. On one program, he saw both President Reagan and Secretary of State Shultz. That pushed him over the edge. He blew a gasket, shouting, “Kill! Kill Reagan! Shultz, you’re dead.”
It was in that state that he went for his guns. He’d recently purchased two shotguns and a civilian version of the M16. He wrapped them up in an old army fatigue jacket, dropped them in the trunk of his 1986 Buick sedan, and bugged out of his Worcester, Massachusetts, neighborhood, leaving his mother in a state of near panic.
She hadn’t seen him since. So, at nine o’clock this evening, she made the hardest phone call of her life.
All night long we wait for word from the street. The local D.C. cops are supposed to be checking motel parking lots for the Buick. Others are on patrol, hoping to intercept Gallo before he reaches the capital. Meanwhile, we alert the Secret Service to the threat and give our own agents guarding the secretary of state a thorough briefing. Everyone mans their battle stations. We hunker down and wait.
A deranged man is coming to kill two key American leaders. Our protective security teams are the last line of defense. We’ve got to trust the local beat cops to do their jobs. They are the front line of this battle.
Dawn comes. No word. Rose has yet to hear from her son. She grows so concerned that she reports him missing later in the morning, despite the fact that every law-enforcement agency between Boston and D.C. is already out looking for him. This is understandable; she’s being a mom.
Monday night, and nothing. The evening drags on without a single clue. Gallo’s Buick has simply vanished into the vast American landscape. Finally, I have to get some sleep. Before midnight, I head home and fall asleep in my suit.
FOGHORN’s phone call shakes me out of exhausted slumber. I grab the STU-III and even before I go secure, the agent tells me, “The car’s been located, sir.”
“On my way.”
God bless the D.C. police. An alert Metropolitan Police Department beat cop spotted Gallo’s black ’86 Buick in the parking lot of the Regency Congress Inn. I know the place. It is a fleabag motel in a very poor, mostly African American district in north D.C. It sits on New York Avenue, one of the major thoroughfares into the capital from the northern suburbs.
Time to call in the cavalry. The MPD are already bringing in reinforcements, and we do the same. At Foggy Bottom, I grab a G-ride (a government car), another Crown Vic, and speed to the scene with lights flashing. Scott Tripp, the ASAIC from Secretary of State Shultz’s security detail, meets me at the motel. He’s the number-two man in what we call “the Detail.” For us, guarding SECSTATE is like guarding the president is for the Secret Service. There’s no higher duty within the DSS.
By the time we get to the scene, the MPD have already brought in a SWAT team. The area’s cordoned off. Gallo is an out-of-work chemist, and there is concern that he’s got explosives with him. The police stop traffic and clear the block. Very quietly, the MPD evacuates everyone from the motel. We confirm Gallo is in there.
Scott and I huddle up with the MPD leadership and discuss our options. We don’t want this to turn into a siege. We decide waiting him out is a poor option. He could be heavily armed in there. Once he wakes up and sees us out here, he could start shooting. Better to surprise him. We decide to send in the SWAT team.
The entry squad lines up near Gallo’s motel room door. Scott and I are not far away, watching the scene from behind a parked car. Our weapons are drawn. We’ll be the SWAT team’s backup should things go wrong.
The entry team moves to the door. Using a heavy battering ram, they smash the door in just as they start yelling, “Police! Police!” Within seconds, the cheap door crumples inward. Now comes the most vulnerable moment: getting through the doorway. If Gallo’s in there waiting, he can kill the entire team should it get hung up in the entrance. That’s why doorways are called fatal funnels.
The SWAT guys pour inside the room. We hear shouting and the sounds of a scuffle. Then a gunshot rings out. Scott and I look at each other, and without a word, we charge across the parking lot, weapons in hand. We reach the doorway, pause on
the outside, then together swing through it.
We are too late. Edward Louis Gallo is lying handcuffed, facedown on the bed. He doesn’t appear to be hurt, just pissed off. He’s swearing at us. I look over at Mike Brooks, one of the SWAT team members, and ask, “What happened?”
Mike shakes his head and replies, “Accidental discharge. One of our guys tripped. Had his finger on his Uzi’s trigger.”
“Damn near blew my head off!” screams Gallo from the bed.
Thank God nobody was injured. What would we have told Rose Gallo if we’d accidentally killed her son?
A D.C. cop walks through the door and announces, “Press is here. The traffic situation must’ve gotten their attention.”
I look at my watch. It is after eight. The morning commute has started, and we’ve got New York Avenue sealed off. It must be a total goat rope out there, especially with the press on the scene now.
We get Gallo on his feet and call for a cage car. He looks disheveled in a pair of trousers and a white T-shirt. We stuff him in the back of the car, which will take him to MPD headquarters. We’ll follow in a few minutes. Both Scott and I are eager to talk to Gallo and find out what he’d been planning.
Before we leave, a bomb squad gingerly opens up Gallo’s Buick. There’d been some fear that he’d wired it with explosives, but that turned out not to be the case. However, the trunk contains a mini arsenal. We find the AR-15, the civilian version of the M16. Nestled next to it is a Remington Model 820 Wingmaster 12-gauge shotgun. Gallo had sawed off the barrel and had removed the stock. He’d built himself a nice, compact street sweeper with it. He also had a Mossberg pump shotgun with him. Altogether, we gather up 110 shotgun shells and nine magazines for the AR-15—that’s over 200 rounds of .223 ammunition. Edward Louis Gallo wanted a fight.
An hour later, Scott and I reach MPD headquarters. Traffic had been utter gridlock, and local news radio station WTOP covered the scene live. The press is all over this one, and reporters are hanging around the headquarters, trying to get some information out of the police. Fortunately, they ignore us as we head inside to meet with our would-be assassin. We link up with a Secret Service agent and an MPD detective. Together, we’ll do the first interview.
The D.C. cops give us an interrogation room and bring Gallo to us still in handcuffs. When he sits down across from us, I see that his eyes have a hollowed-out look. It is eerie. Gallo isn’t all here. He starts mumbling to himself. Scott and I exchange quick glances. We may not even be able to interview him. He’s clearly not well.
“Mr. Gallo,” I ask, “what are you doing here in D.C.?”
Without looking at me, he shouts, “I’m a tourist! I’m an American tourist!”
“What did you come down to see?”
“I’m a hunter! I was going hunting.”
“Hunting for what?” I ask. “What do you hunt with an AR-15?”
He doesn’t respond at first. Then he mutters something under his breath. He becomes incoherent again, but suddenly through the nonsense, he recites Secretary of State Shultz’s private address.
“How did you know that?” I ask, stunned by this revelation.
Gallo mumbles incoherently. In mid-babble, I hear him say something about his television controlling his mind.
Thirty minutes later, we end the interview. “The guy’s a whack job,” the Secret Service agent says as we part ways.
“Maybe. But how did he know the SECSTATE’s home address?”
The Secret Service agent shrugs and heads out. The MPD detective turns to me and says, “We’ll probably transfer him to St. Elizabeths Hospital. Your fed buddy’s right. Gallo’s a nutcase.”
I return to Foggy Bottom unsettled by the entire episode. Something is not right here. Gallo should not have known where George Shultz lives. That is closely guarded information. We need to do a full workup on Gallo.
In the days that follow, Gallo is held without bail on multiple weapons charges. The MPD does transfer him to St. Elizabeths Hospital, where he receives psychiatric care. In the meantime, the pieces of his past start to come into focus.
Edward Louis Gallo was once a brilliant chemist with great potential. He worked for ten years as a manager at the Upper Blackstone Water Pollution Abatement District in Millbury, Massachusetts. His coworkers had nothing but praise for his intelligence and analytical abilities. He was well liked and affable enough, though he wasn’t close to anyone in his office. His neighbors said the same thing. Nice guy. Very smart. Kept to himself.
Then his dad died in 1982. His grandfather passed away not long afterward. Gallo was devastated by their deaths, and he never really recovered. He began hearing voices. He flew into fits of rage without any provocation. Sometimes the neighbors would see him standing in his front yard, screaming and cursing at invisible people. At work, his performance deteriorated. He got into verbal altercations with his coworkers. He developed an explosive temper and sometimes threw books around when upset. A couple of times, his peers found him walking in frantic circles around a bench outside their office.
In 1986, Gallo lost his job. He spent the next fourteen months watching television and living with his mom. He grew angrier, and his rage gradually focused on two individuals: President Reagan and Secretary of State Shultz. He would curse them every time they came on his television. He would shout their names and scream that he would kill them. When he finally left the house on Sunday, November 1, he’d been fixated on the two men for months.
Edward Louis Gallo may be a mentally ill chemist, but he is also a combat veteran. After graduating from college in 1968, he joined the army and served as a young lieutenant in Vietnam. He was a ninety-day wonder, and he served with great distinction. His unit saw heavy combat around Saigon, and before he came home in the fall of 1970, Gallo had been awarded the Bronze Star for valor. Bronze Stars for meritorious service are a dime a dozen from Vietnam, but Gallo’s is for bravery on the battlefield. He’s a war hero.
His military records also show that he is an expert marksman.
Gallo is not your off-the-rack, loser, lone-gunman type. He doesn’t fit the profile. I need to talk to him at length. In mid-November, I make arrangements with St. Elizabeths to sit down with Gallo for a series of interviews. When I arrive at the hospital, I’m shocked at Gallo’s transformation. They have him medicated, and instead of a delusional, muttering lunatic, I’m met by a calm and highly intelligent human being. Whatever had gone wrong inside Edward Louis Gallo could obviously be controlled.
“Mr. Gallo, how did you know Secretary of State Shultz’s address?”
He answers matter-of-factly, “I followed his motorcade.”
What? How did our agents not detect him?
“How did you do that?”
Gallo shrugs and replies, “I sat on a bench outside the Truman Building. Watched the motorcades come and go. After a while, I figured out which limousine was the secretary of state’s. It wasn’t that hard.”
He goes on to recite a typical day for George Shultz. He’s spot-on, and his description is chillingly detailed.
He concludes by off-handedly mentioning, “One day, I parked near the VIP entrance and just followed him home.”
Unbelievable. I’m reeling at this.
“What did you do once you followed Shultz to his house?”
“Watched things. That guard in the front yard with the Uzi made it tougher, but I still was able to do it.”
He starts recounting our security arrangements. He has an amazing memory and an eye for detail. He figured out how many agents protect SECSTATE, where they are posted, when shift changes take place. He found the gaps in the security screen and developed contingency plans to penetrate them.
He also spent hours watching the Truman Building from different positions on the street. He took note of our security arrangements for motorcades and knew where each agent was placed. He noted their fields of fire and areas of responsibility.
Gallo deciphered and compromised everything. Worst
of all, we never even noticed him. Had it not been for his mother, I have no doubt he would have been able to execute an attack on the secretary of state. Gallo in his nonmedicated, delusional condition could have delivered a devastating blow to the United States.
I spend hours debriefing Edward Louis Gallo. When I come away from our meetings, I can’t help but feel sorry for the man. He had built a successful life for himself, only to see it ruined by family tragedy and mental illness. Once treated, he seemed utterly normal. But by then, it was too late. His career had been derailed, his relationships had frayed, and his delusions drove him to attempt assassinations. Now he’s a brilliant but ruined man who will spend years behind bars.
At the same time, he has highlighted profound weaknesses in our security operations. How was he able to conduct such extensive surveillance without attracting our attention? How was he able to follow the Detail around, snoop out our tactical deployments at Shultz’s house, and figure out the best places to launch an attack? Clearly, we need to do something different.
We never saw him coming. That fact haunts me. It underscores our vulnerability and makes it blindingly obvious that we need to totally revise how we do business on protective security details. If we don’t, somebody in our charge is going to die.
nineteen
PAK-1 DOWN
August 17, 1988
Bethesda
Flash Precedence
We have been informed by the Pakistani foreign minister that the presidential aircraft, PAK-1, crashed near Bahawalpur. There were no survivors. President Zia-ul-Haq, Ambassador Raphel, and U.S. Army BG Wassom plus the Pakistani joint chiefs of staff were killed in the crash. Pakistani military units are en route to the scene and martial law has been declared.
Post requests further guidance by flash precedence.
From my desk behind the big blue door, I reread the cable with a sinking feeling. Pakistan’s senior governmental and military leaders are all dead. Zia barely held the country together with terror and an iron rule when he was alive. With him dead, Pakistan could dissolve into total chaos—with nukes. And all of this is going down at ground zero for the biggest Cold War conflict since Vietnam.