Life Inside the Bubble: Why a Top-Ranked Secret Service Agent Walked Away From It All (25 page)

D
URING MY RUN
for the United States Senate I learned that in the business of politics, themes are important. Themes are helpful because they assist your audience in both understanding and categorizing the information you are trying to get across to them. A theme should speak to a larger idea but be compact enough to remember.

If I had to sum up the theme of this book, it would be “beware of the soft tyranny of bureaucracies.”

When
everyone
has responsibility for something as critical as security
and emergency response, then
no one
has ultimate responsibility. Having lived inside the bubble, I have seen for myself how our government has grown to such a point where decision makers can take credit for politically beneficial outcomes and hide behind the false facade of “the bureaucracy” when scandal and tragedy strike. There is no moral difference between the hard tyranny of acting against the citizens you swore to serve and the soft tyranny of hiding like a coward and allowing someone under your chain of command to take the fall.

The events and experiences I described in these final few chapters were specifically chosen to show the contrast between individual sacrifice and dedication, and the systematic failures of our current government. I was constantly awed by the many men and women I worked with during my time as a Secret Service agent and their dedication to their mission. It is challenging to reconcile how some federal employees can be so selfless when others are completely out of touch with the country they are supposed to serve.

The problem with our government is not the people but the system that fosters a “just following orders” approach and marginalizes good people attempting to do the right thing. A perfect example is the recent Benghazi hearings, where whistle-blowers finally were allowed to testify after enduring months of intimidation and threats by those in the administration who did not want the truth to be told. We are rapidly approaching the point where we must ask ourselves if we want a limited, smaller government that performs a small number of tasks well, or an expansive government that performs a large portfolio of tasks poorly. The consequences of the wrong choice are very real, as I have documented in the recent tragedies in Arizona, Benghazi, and Boston.

I was privileged during my twelve years with the United States Secret Service and my four years with the New York City Police Department to work with local, state, and federal officials from the law enforcement, legislative, judicial, prosecutorial, diplomatic, and military divisions within our system of government. I found bravery, honor, and sense of duty to be the rule, not the exception. Although government employment can provide for a solid middle-class existence, no one is going to become wealthy as a government employee. Despite this unavoidable economic fact, some of the brightest, hardest-working people I have ever encountered have
decided that service to the government and the American people was their proper path.

This begs the important question: how is it that a government populated with hard-working, dedicated men and women applying their intellectual and physical gifts to public service could produce law enforcement, security, and counterterrorism failures such as Fast and Furious, Benghazi, and the Boston bombings?

The answer lies in bureaucratic failure. In the example of Fast and Furious, the government’s failure to slow the proliferation of illegal firearm sales by prosecuting the case in a timely manner appears nearly criminal. As I describe in my analysis, I place the blame squarely on the Department of Justice. It is not the people within the department who have failed, but the system they work within that is broken. The incentives within the system have been perverted as a result of the growth in the levels of bureaucracy within the DOJ and the politicization of its agenda. Rather than being incentivized to prioritize and fight criminality with the greatest negative impact on American citizens, the incentives are set up to prosecute cases that are neatly packaged by investigators in order to give federal prosecutors easy guilty verdicts. This is done to avoid lengthy trials and potentially losing the case, which would negatively affect both the DOJ’s budget and prosecutorial success rate. Do not underestimate the impact of these factors—many cases with merit whose investigation and prosecution would make our country substantially safer are bypassed or delayed due to bureaucratic ineptitude and crass political considerations, not personal failures. Forcing a system of unethical incentives on individuals, regardless of the content of their character, is inevitably corrupting.

This broken system being forced upon the federal agents and employees working within it undoubtedly played a role in the numerous failures leading to the Benghazi attacks. It is assumed that our government has a moral requirement to do everything in its power to defend those serving the country overseas. So how do we explain the lack of assistance to those who came under assault with the imminent threat of serious personal injury or death? How do we excuse it when someone in government ignores desperate pleas for help just to save a political career?

Based on my experience within the walls of the White House, I am confident that a number of military, diplomatic, law-enforcement, and
Obama administration officials were well aware of the SOS signal from the heroes in Benghazi and the danger of their situation. Yet they were left to die.

Not only were their pleas ignored but, based on the accounts of a number of contacts I have spoken to, the military unit that was initially activated to rescue the Benghazi victims was instructed to stand down. It is simply not possible that all the eyes and ears that saw and heard the pleas of Ambassador Stevens and his team all belonged to people lacking a moral compass who did not care about the victims. These people were likely forced into compliance by a top-down decision-making process that was driven by politics first and the safety of the personnel in Benghazi a distant second. The penalty for failing to “go along” was and is severe. Jobs may have been threatened, and this is a sad testament to where we have come as a government.

Growing levels of bureaucracy in all areas of our government have made it possible to deflect the deadly consequences of decisions. The blame can be spread thin as a result of the diffusion of responsibility that comes with the explosive expansion of the bureaucratic class. The “I was just following orders” phenomenon is facilitated by a bureaucracy so large that even senior-level diplomatic officials comprised only a small part of the decision-making pie. It allows these officials to tell themselves that although the decision to abandon those men and let them die in Benghazi was both morally and legally bankrupt and a violation of their oath to support and defend the Constitution, it was not theirs alone and they were “just following orders.” This was even stated by the State Department’s own politically driven Accountability Review Board, assigned to investigate the Benghazi terror attacks, when it concluded that “systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus of the State Department … resulted in a Special Mission security posture that was inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place. Security in Benghazi was not recognized and implemented as a shared responsibility by the bureaus in Washington charged with supporting the post, resulting in fragmented discussions and decisions on policy and security.” It is also noted in the report that “certain senior State Department officials within two bureaus in critical positions of authority and responsibility in Washington demonstrated a
lack of proactive leadership and management ability.”

The broken system unfortunately surfaces again in the missed opportunities to disrupt the Boston terror attacks. Despite an analysis done after the 9/11 attacks that conclusively stated that interagency government communications were severely lacking and contributed greatly to a number of missed opportunities to break up the 9/11 terrorists’ operation while in the planning stages, we still suffer from the same problem and failed again with the Boston terror suspects.

Again, this is not a function of an army of federal law-enforcement officials who do not take seriously their solemn responsibilities to the American people; it is a function of a system set up to fail and minimize the effects of anyone looking to change it. No organization can overcome the effects of having over a hundred thousand federal law-enforcement officials isolated within different fiefdoms of government. All of these government agencies have different communications networks, investigative priorities, budget priorities, and cultures that, at times, run directly counter to the missions of their brother agencies. We saw in the Fast and Furious investigation that we had ATF agents investigating suspected gunrunners who were, unbeknownst to the ATF, working as informants for the FBI. In the Benghazi attacks, we had a politically driven Accountability Review Board conclude—seemingly blind to the fact that we have tens of thousands of federal agents currently investigating low-priority crimes—that resource constraints “had the effect of conditioning a few State Department managers to favor restricting the use of resources as a general orientation.” And finally, we had a terror suspect, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, exit the country, setting off what Department of Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano called a “ping” in the DHS computer system, which the FBI was unaware of and led to no investigative follow-up. Secretary Napolitano never describes the “ping” because she likely does not understand what the “ping” means either.

Any private citizen can set up a Google Alert and receive an e-mail the instant his name appears on the Internet, but incredibly, our behemoth federal government has yet to figure out how to keep track of terrorists who freely come in and out of our country. If this sounds like an oversimplification, I assure you it is not. The dense fog of bureaucracy has descended on our government, and wading through it to find your path
is more and more difficult. I remember my early days with the Secret Service working in the Melville field office when I was actively engaged in the investigation of a fraud ring with a distinct connection to terrorism. I involved the FBI’s local office because of the terrorism angle and was taken aback at having to make an appointment to drive over to their office and take physical custody of a document on one of the suspects that was redacted (blacked out) to the point where it was almost unreadable. I had a top-secret clearance and was authorized to carry a firearm next to the president of the United States in order to protect him and his family, but apparently I was not trusted to read another agency’s document regarding a suspect I was investigating. The delays in the investigation due to this web of obstacles were substantial and serve as a small example of the large problem we face in an ever-expanding government.

I was honored to serve my country as a special agent with the Secret Service, but living within the bubble of Washington, DC, leaves scars that are a permanent reminder of a broken system—a system that incentivizes acquiescence at the expense of both the American public and the dedicated cadre of federal employees who largely sought out public service as a means to serve, not harm, their fellow Americans.

I saw this numerous times in my career and distinctly recall asking why we transferred agents around the country to different field offices at great financial cost despite any obvious need for it. I was told, “That’s the way we have always done it.”

As the late economist Milton Friedman once stated, “When everybody owns something, nobody owns it, and nobody has a direct interest in maintaining or improving its condition.”

Although Friedman was referring to property, the principle of which he speaks is perfectly applicable to the fact that our ever-expanding government has created a system where very few people have any direct personal interest in improving its functioning. It is ironic that some political opportunists have sold the American public on the idea that a growing government means a more caring, benevolent government and a more prosperous society. The sad reality is that a growing government has led to a more callous, detached government, where the diffusion of responsibility throughout the exploding legions of new bureaucrats has led to bad decision making.

We can fix this, but it is going to require a new era of citizen activism, an activism where we take responsibility for a better government and we stop relying on those inside the bubble to fix the mess they have created. Call the offices of your elected officials until you receive the answers you are looking for. Show up at town hall meetings and refuse to be silenced until your questions are answered. Write letters to your local newspapers challenging the status quo. Use the power of social media to spread your message. Do not remain silent, because silence is complicity.

But most important of all, do not lose hope. This country is exceptional because it is not simply a group of people or a piece of land—it is the embodiment of an idea. It is an idea that heroic men and women for generations have fought and died for, sacrificing their lives knowing that our incomparable American freedom and our exceptional degree of individual liberty were unique to this place. We can fix this; we can turn this ship around. But it all begins with you.

T
HE IDEA FOR THIS BOOK
came about because of a paradox I encountered during my time with the Secret Service. Having worked with legions of dedicated and patriotic military personnel, federal law-enforcement agents, and political staffers who genuinely cared about their country and its citizens, I wondered why a government composed of genuinely good people continues to get it wrong. In light of the bevy of scandals that broke subsequent to the completion of this book, the question has become even more pressing.

My answer to this question is made clear in the final chapters, where I
state that the growing government bureaucracy has diffused responsibility both vertically and horizontally so that the idea of responsibility has lost all of its meaning. When everyone takes a small bite of the decision-making pie, no one is really responsible when the baker asks, “Who ate my pie?”