Life Inside the Bubble: Why a Top-Ranked Secret Service Agent Walked Away From It All (14 page)

After a series of intense negotiations with the Russian diplomatic entourage and security personnel over everything from the locations of our snipers to whether the presidents would be seated or standing, I proudly witnessed the signing of the treaty by both presidents. I was relieved to complete the operation without incident and was desperate to get back home to my family. But at the end of the visit I suspected my plans to get home, incredibly, might be sidetracked again when Polish president Lech Kaczynski was killed in a plane crash on April 10, 2010. Poland was within driving distance of the Czech Republic and I knew the United States was going to send a representative, and it was likely to be the president.
Already past the point of fatigue, I hoped that PPD operations would find someone else to conduct the advance should the president attend. My concerns were eliminated by the eruption of a volcano in Iceland and the associated atmospheric ash, which made the flight to Poland too dangerous. The advance team and I quickly closed down the work area in the hotel, shredded all documents, and rushed to the airport to escape the ash and return to the US. We arrived home safely but, oddly, it would not be my last experience attempting to escape volcanic ash in a hurry to get home.

After spending some time at home with my family and staying busy with advance work within the United States, I began to grow concerned over the state of the country and my role in it. I saw a journey down an economic path our government had tried before with disastrous results, and as a result my academic interest in economics turned into a passion. I spent every spare moment I could find, whether on planes or during lunch, reading voluminous amounts of material on Austrian School economic theory. It fueled in me what was quickly becoming a fiery passion for political engagement. It appeared that the only thing that could keep me from politics was an advance assignment, but due to my recent work in Prague and Indonesia I didn’t expect another big assignment in the immediate future. My assumptions about my workload could not have been more incongruous with what was to come.

In June of 2010, I received a phone call from PPD operations asking me how I felt about Indonesia. Confused, I responded that I had a wonderful time there and was disappointed that the visit was cancelled. I was told that the visit was now officially back on and that PPD management wanted me to return to Indonesia to repeat the advance based on my prior experience there. I knew this would cause some consternation with the PPD lead advance agents because these important assignments were becoming increasingly more difficult to come by, given the president’s limited travel schedule with the Obamacare negotiations and the nowerupting BP oil spill crisis.

I agreed to do the advance and travel as soon as possible. When I told Paula what was happening she was understandably apprehensive, believing that we were tempting fate by returning to a high-threat zone with the same presidential schedule. I could not disagree with her, but I felt we
could secure the visit and had no desire to see someone else get hurt if I chose to pass on the assignment. After convincing Paula that I would be fine, I began the long journey back to Indonesia. Paula was again visibly upset and I empathized with her. The travel was now becoming so intense that sleeping in my own bed was an anomaly. When we landed in Hong Kong after the second leg of our long journey, I turned on the satellite phone to call Paula and tell her we were fine. Noticing I had a message on it to call PPD operations, I turned to one of the advance team members and said, half jokingly, “Can you imagine how upset the Indonesians would be if this trip is cancelled again?”

When I called operations they said, “You are not going to believe this, but the trip is cancelled.”

I was stunned. This was now the second time we had cancelled, and I knew the amount of diplomatic currency that had already been spent on the trip. Personally, it was going to be difficult to salvage any credibility with General Norman in Indonesia. He already allocated thousands of man-hours to this and now I would have to call Frega and tell him the trip was cancelled again.

As it turns out, the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico had grown into a political embarrassment for President Obama as the spewing gash at the bottom of the ocean was causing a media frenzy. The president could not leave the country until there was some action on this growing environmental disaster. I dreaded calling Frega, but in his always-dignified manner he assured me it was “no problem,” although I knew it was. We had cancelled on him twice, and pretending that our credibility was intact was a useless exercise. I apologized profusely, and with the entire advance team, I rushed to book yet another flight home.

A
RRIVING HOME AFTER THE SECOND CANCELLATION
of the Indonesia trip, I resolved to myself that my time on the detail was coming to an end and the trip was just not meant to happen. I hated that we worked tirelessly on a plan that would never be implemented and the international law-enforcement relationships between us and the Indonesians were left to wither.

I was not home for more than a few hours when PPD operations called me about assisting another agent during his first lead advance assignment. The agent was Tim, my good friend from our time together
at the training center and the PPD transportation section. I was honored to do it and, although Paula was upset at my having to leave again, she and Tim were friends, and she understood what needed to be done. Tim and I were sent to Dauphin Island, Alabama, with the president to search for signs of the oil spill. It appeared that the White House staff was desperate to have the president appear as if he were “doing something” and wanted some photo ops of him on an oily beach looking concerned. The public generally sees through this type of thing, but every presidential administration I worked for used this strategy regardless of how obviously orchestrated it appears.

We met the staff on Dauphin Island and got started quickly getting to know the area. It was obvious in a short amount of time that there did not appear to be significant damage to the beachfront. The White House staff could not have the president on a relatively clean beach giving statements to the press about the devastation. In presidential politics this is a “no-go.”

After a few days of looking and finding only small tar balls, the staff decided that it would be better to put the president on a boat and to ensure the press shots were of him looking into the ocean. It was an unusual request and the Secret Service, in general, prefers to avoid open ocean adventures with the president. But Tim was a skilled agent and he put together a very workable plan, although he ruffled some staff feathers in the process. Tim had no time for weakness or indecision and had no problem letting the White House staff know. This made him a hero to the advance team but a foe to the staff. Despite the personal disagreements, the visit went smoothly, with no unusual issues, and I took pages of mental notes on what was becoming a growing frustration with political leaders, their spin machines, and what seemed to me to be a premium placed on the style and not the substance of leadership.

After the successful completion of our Dauphin Island advance, I became one of a few agents that operations would select on a regular basis to serve as a “lead advisor.” These were cherished assignments because the energy was high but the workload was dramatically reduced. The lead advance agent would rely on me for assistance but generally did most of the work himself. I figured that my last few months on the detail would be uneventful and that the advisor role was my last act on the PPD. I was scheduled to leave the PPD in December and it was now the end of
October, and I looked forward to the possibility of a nine-to-five workday in my next assignment. Life back in a field office after PPD was generally easier. Looking to avoid the devastating Washington, DC, traffic I requested the Baltimore field office. This was a difficult assignment to get because the office was small and openings were rare, but I was confident that the PPD would do their best to help facilitate the transfer.

My optimistic outlook quickly faded when I began to hear whispers within the detail that the Indonesia trip was being discussed again among the White House staff. Paula would certainly not accept my traveling to Indonesia for a third potential presidential visit with a similar schedule. The dangers would now be magnified because any group looking to do harm to the president would have had months to plan. Although no one from PPD operations confirmed any plans with me, I was sure I was going to be asked to return again. I began to slowly prepare Paula for the eventual phone call from operations, and only days later I found myself, now for a third time, on the long flight back to Indonesia.

I reunited with Frega, the representative for General Norman, and made a point to apologize for all of the confusion. Frega was always a gentleman and once again pretended not to mind, although I knew it was bothering him. The advance work was made easier logistically since I was already familiar with the country and many of our Indonesian military and police counterparts. The security planning, however, was going to be more difficult, as it was no mystery among the Indonesians and their press corps where the president intended to visit while in the country.

Dealing with the homegrown threat of terrorism and trying to make a well-known itinerary secure was difficult, but the new White House staff lead, Dave, who had replaced the now-departed Carrie, was willing to work with us. I insisted on deception in all aspects of the plan and was determined to never use the same motorcade route, vehicle lineup, or entrance to any location twice. When the team and I looked at all the variables, we felt that unpredictability would be our greatest asset and injected deception and randomness to our security plans whenever possible.

The seemingly endless string of bad luck with this trip was not over. As we approached the arrival date, Indonesia’s Mount Merapi began to spew volcanic ash. This was a grave concern for the Air Force One advance team on the ground. They were worried that the ash could clog the engines
of Air Force One and potentially take the plane down. Indonesia and Washington, DC, were twelve hours apart on the clock, and the briefings between the senior White House staff, the White House Military Office, PPD management, and me were on their time, not mine. Information changed hourly and the phone rang with each new update, many times at two and three o’clock in the morning Indonesian local time.

The lack of sleep was taking its toll and I was having a difficult time staying awake during the day. The decision to make the trip or not was now in the hands of the White House Military Office and its atmospheric forecasters. To my surprise, instead of cancelling again, the decision was made to cut the visit short by one day but to still make the journey from India, the president’s first stop on his itinerary.

The India portion of the trip was a “disaster,” according to some friends of mine who were detailed there, and the PPD management was in no mood for more mishaps. The Indian security force assigned to the visit had reneged on deals made during the advance and they openly defied the Secret Service advance team’s wishes, creating an embarrassing situation for both the Secret Service and the staff. Patience wore thin, and I knew our visit had to be flawless.

The fun began when a security representative from the hotel where the president would be staying rushed toward me with a concerned look on his face and a picture in his hand. He stated that a man had checked into multiple rooms in the hotel using different names and moved back and forth between these rooms before leaving the hotel. The Indonesians confirmed for us that the man had affiliations with a number of groups that were a very serious concern for me and the intelligence agents on the ground.

The stress was magnified under the circumstances and decisions were required very quickly, as Air Force One was in the air from India and headed to us in Indonesia. I could not bring the president to the hotel until I was absolutely sure that it was clear of threats. The explosives sweep had turned up nothing and had taken hours to complete due to the complexity of the hotel layout, and we did not have hours to redo the sweep. I asked the team to resweep and search the rooms the man had checked into. At the same time I asked the hotel security team to ensure that the man was questioned if he attempted to reenter the hotel.

When the sweep came back with negative results, I was slightly
relieved but I began to wonder if all the bad luck surrounding this trip was a sign that it was doomed. Suffering from the chronic lack of sleep and feeling extremely uncomfortable wearing suffocating clothing in the near-hundred-degree heat, I prepared our motorcade and departed for the airport to finally pick up the president.

The Indonesia trip, now officially cut short due to the ash plumes from the erupting volcano, was proceeding along without incident as we moved from the airport to the hotel and on to the Indonesian presidential palace. The security plan we designed was working perfectly, but the ash plumes were getting thicker and the White House Military Office was growing increasingly concerned. The following morning I met with the PPD advance team and the supervisors assigned to the visit and was informed that in order to cut the visit by a few more hours, we were cancelling the last scheduled stop and going directly from a speech at a local university to the airport.

It was becoming a race against time to beat the erupting volcano and the advancing ash plume. Our first stop of the day at Istiqlal Mosque was rushed as we hurried along to the speech site. The president received a hero’s welcome at the university despite the shortened schedule. We still had not located the suspicious man at the hotel, and with the advancing ash plume, I was content to see the president leave the country earlier than expected. Coordinating the logistics of the early departure was made slightly more complicated because the president was not returning to the United States but was flying directly to South Korea, and they were not ready to receive him.