“Yeah,” Jarvis said.
The man shook his head and walked through the living room and into the kitchen.
“I gave my partner the nod to go in and talk to him,” Jarvis says. “My impression was he was disgusted because he didn’t believe her.”
Jarvis asked the psychic what she had seen in her vision. The woman said the president was going to come to Oklahoma: He was going to get off the plane, and he was going to get in a limousine.
“I see him sitting behind the driver,” she said. “As they start to drive by an overpass, the passenger window is shattered, and he is killed.” The next thing she saw was Bush in front of the family home in Kennebunkport. At that point, he is no longer the president.
“How could he be killed, and then your vision down the line is that he’s no longer the president and he’s at Kennebunkport?” Jarvis asked her.
The woman wasn’t sure, but as Jarvis questioned her, she offered more details of her premonition. When Bush gets into his limousine, he does not have a suit on, she said. Instead, he is wearing a light jacket and an open-collar shirt.
Jarvis knew that when the president flew in on Air Force One, he always came out in a suit and tie, and the dress code for the visit was suit and tie. Moreover, when the president is in the limousine, he is not behind the driver; he is on the right rear side, the position of honor.
Just then, Jarvis’s partner came out of the kitchen.
“What did he say?” Jarvis asked.
“The husband said if she’s seen a vision, it’s going to happen,” the other agent said.
As a chill went up Jarvis’s spine, he asked the woman to describe the limo. She correctly said the car was already in Enid. The Secret Service always flies its vehicles to the sites of presidential visits on a cargo plane prior to the visit, storing them in fire stations or in hangars at the airport where Air Force One is to land. At that point, Jarvis himself did not know where the limo was being stored.
Jarvis asked her to pinpoint where the limo was. She said it was at the air force base near Enid. He asked if she could take him to it; she agreed.
As they drove to the base, Jarvis asked the woman a series of questions to see if she had learned the location of the vehicle through some other means besides her clairvoyance: Did she know anyone who worked at the base? Had anyone told her that they had seen a cargo plane unload a limousine at the base?
As they drove toward the five hangars on the base, the woman gave Jarvis directions.
“As we got close to this one hangar, she said to slow down,” Jarvis says.
“Something is in that building right there,” the woman said.
“What do you mean?” Jarvis asked.
“Something important is in that building there.”
“Okay, but not the limo?”
“No,” the woman said.
As they drove past another hangar, the woman said it contained the limo. She then identified another hangar as containing something important.
Jarvis’s hunch was that the limo was in the firehouse bordering the runways. As it turned out, he was wrong and the psychic was right. Secret Service agents guard the president’s limo until he steps into it. Jarvis checked with them and learned that the hangar identified by the psychic as housing the limo did indeed contain two presidential limousines.
Jarvis mentioned to the woman that the president usually sits on the right side. She insisted that he would be sitting behind the driver. As the woman walked back to Jarvis’s car, he asked the special officer in charge of security for the limos what was in the other two hangars she had identified as containing something important.
“He said one contains Marine One, and the other contains other important assets for the president in case of emergencies,” Jarvis says.
Jarvis immediately briefed supervisors at the Secret Service Intelligence Division duty desk in Washington.
“You guys are going to think I’m crazy,” he said, and then related the information about the vision and how the woman had correctly led him to the president’s limo.
As Jarvis saw it, “We deal in the bizarre all the time. Nothing’s too wacky that hasn’t come across the duty desk report sheet. You’re just straight up and lay it out the way you see it. And together you examine and turn the thing over and make a determination.”
At one A.M., Jarvis called the head of the advance team and briefed him. However, since the psychic seemed to have been wrong about what clothes Bush would be wearing and about where he would be sitting, they dismissed their concerns. Still, that morning before Bush left for Oklahoma, the head of the advance team informed detail leaders based in W-16 at the White House about the bizarre tale.
Jarvis then discussed the matter with the agent in charge of the motorcade. He asked if the motorcade route would take the president by an overpass. The agent said it would.
“Do you have an alternate motorcade route?”
“Sure. We always do,” the agent replied.
That morning, Air Force One landed. Known by the Secret Service code name Angel, Air Force One got its name when Dwight D. Eisenhower—code-named Providence—was president. Prior to that, the aircraft used by Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman had been known by air force designations. Because a flight controller mistook the president’s plane for a commercial one, the pilot suggested calling the plane the president was using Air Force One.
The current presidential plane is a Boeing 747-200B bubble top jumbo jet acquired in 1990 when George H. W. Bush was president. It has a range of 9,600 miles and a maximum cruising altitude of 45,100 feet. It cruises at six hundred miles per hour but can achieve speeds of seven hundred one miles per hour. In addition to two pilots, a navigator, and a flight engineer, the 231-foot-long plane carries Air Force One stewards and seventy-six passengers. The plane has eighty-seven telephones.
While the average 747 has 485,000 feet of electrical wire, the presidential plane has 1.2 million feet, all shielded from the electromagnetic pulses that would be emitted during a nuclear blast. Near the front of the six-story-high plane, the president has an executive suite with a stateroom, dressing room, and bathroom with shower. The president also has a private office near the stateroom and a combination dining room and conference room. Toward the back are areas for the staff, Secret Service, guests, and the press.
Under Federal Aviation Administration regulations, Air Force One takes precedence over all other aircraft. When approaching an airport, it bumps other planes that preceded it into the airspace. Before it lands, Secret Service agents on the ground check the runway for explosives or objects such as stray tires. Generally, other aircraft may not land on the same runway for fifteen or twenty minutes before Air Force One lands.
As Bush walked out to the ramp, Jarvis stared at him in amazement. Bush was not wearing a suit. He had on an outdoor jacket and an open-collar shirt, just as the psychic had said he would. Jarvis exchanged glances with the advance leader, who had a shocked look on his face. Then Bush walked down the steps and got into the limousine’s right side, his usual position. Jarvis started to relax. But after giving a short speech in Enid, Bush invited some friends to sit with him in the limo for the drive back to the airport. They got in first—on the right side. So Bush walked around the limo and sat down on the left side behind the driver. Again, the psychic had been right.
The advance leader decided the psychic could not be ignored. Never mind if anyone thought they were crazy. Better safe than sorry, he and Jarvis thought.
The advance leader ordered the motorcade to take the alternate route, which did not go by the overpass. No harm befell Bush.
The president was never told what had happened.