19
Eagle
SECRET SERVICE AGENTS refer to what they call Clinton Standard Time. That is a reference to the fact that Bill Clinton—code-named Eagle—is often one to two hours late. To Clinton, an itinerary with scheduled appointments was merely a “suggestion,” former agent William Albracht says.
Sometimes Clinton was late because he was playing a game of hearts with his staff. Other times he ignored his schedule because he wanted to chat with a janitor or hotel worker he happened to meet.
Back in May 1993, Clinton ordered Air Force One to wait on the tarmac at Los Angeles International Airport while he got a haircut from Christophe Schatteman, a Beverly Hills hairdresser whose clients have included Nicole Kidman, Goldie Hawn, and Steven Spielberg.
“We flew out of San Diego to L.A. to pick him up,” recalls James Saddler, a steward on the fateful trip. “Some guy came out and said he was supposed to cut the president’s hair. Christophe cut his hair, and we took off. We were on the ground for an hour.”
While Clinton got his haircut on the plane, two LAX runways were closed. Because that meant all incoming and outgoing flights had to be halted, passengers were inconvenienced throughout the country.
The press reported that the haircut cost two hundred dollars, Christophe’s fee at the time for a cut in his salon at 348 North Beverly Drive. But Howard Franklin, the chief Air Force One steward, tells me Schatteman told him on the plane that his charge for the cut was five hundred dollars, equal to seven hundred fifty dollars today, adjusted for inflation. Staffers informed Franklin that someone at a Democratic fund-raiser paid it.
When he learned of the flight delays, Clinton expressed anger at his staff for arranging the haircut. But it was his hair that was being cut, and he had given the orders to delay takeoff. As president, he was aware that if Air Force One sat on a runway, air traffic would be halted.
Clinton White House staffers ardently tried to turn the fiasco into a plus. “Is he still the president of the common man?” White House communications director George Stephanopoulos was asked at his daily White House briefing. “Absolutely” he responded. “I mean, the president has to get his hair cut. Everybody has to get their hair cut. … I think he does have the right to choose who he wants to cut his hair.”
After Clinton’s inauguration, Franklin told Clinton’s advance people that “the key to being effective was planning.” That idea brought a vigorous retort. “They said, ‘We got here by being spontaneous, and we’re not going to change,’” Franklin recalls. Besides an aversion to planning, Clinton and his people brought with them the attitude that “the military were people who couldn’t get jobs,” Franklin says.
If Clinton was often late, Hillary Clinton could make Richard Nixon look benign. Everyone on the residence staff recalled what happened when Christopher B. Emery, a White House usher, committed the sin of returning Barbara Bush’s call after she had left the White House. Emery had helped Barbara learn to use her laptop. Now she was having computer trouble. Twice Emery helped her out. For that, Hillary Clinton fired him.
The father of four, Emery could not find another job for a year. According to W. David Watkins, a presidential assistant in charge of administration, Hillary was also behind the mass firings of White House travel office employees.
When Hillary found a hapless White House electrician changing a lightbulb in the residence, she began yelling at him because she had ordered that all repair work was to be done when the first family was out.
“She caught the guy on a ladder doing the lightbulb,” says Franette McCulloch, the assistant White House pastry chef. “He was a basket case.”
“When she’s in front of the lights, she turns it on, and when the lights are off and she’s away from the lights, she’s a totally different person,” says an agent who was on her detail. “She’s very angry and sarcastic and is very hard on her staff. She yells at them and complains.”
In her book Living History, Hillary Clinton wrote of her gratitude to the White House staff. The truth was, says a Secret Service agent, “Hillary did not speak to us. We spent years with her. She never said thank you.”
Agents found that Clinton’s vice president, Al Gore—code-named Sundance—was cut from the same cloth. Every agent has heard that when Gore was bawling out his son, Al Gore III, over poor performance at school, he warned him, “If you don’t straighten up, you won’t get into the right schools, and if you don’t get into the right schools, you could end up like these guys.”
Gore motioned toward the agents protecting him.
“Sometimes Gore would come out of the residence, get into the car, and he wouldn’t even give the guys the coachman’s nod. Nothing,” former agent Albracht says. “It was like we didn’t exist. We were only there to facilitate him to get from point A to point B.” As professionals, Albracht says, “We do not have to like you to protect you, but it can make the long hours a bit more tolerable.”
In contrast to Gore, his wife, Tipper, was so friendly with agents that she would play pranks, spraying them with water from a spritzer bottle she used after running. However, “She always insisted on male agents,” says former agent Chomicki, who was on Gore’s detail. “She didn’t want any female agents on the protection squad.”
Like Clinton, Gore was often late. One time he showed up an hour late for a dinner with the mayor of Beijing. Another time a Secret Service helicopter that was to shadow him in Las Vegas almost ran out of fuel because Gore was so late coming out of his hotel.
“The schedule would call for him to leave the vice president’s residence at seven-fifteen A.M.,” former agent Dave Saleeba says. “At seven-thirty A.M, we would check on him, and he would be eating a muffin at the pool.”
Gore “wouldn’t come out of the vice president’s residence on time,” Chomicki says. “He’d have an appointment at the White House, he’d get into the car and say, ‘Could you speed it up, but don’t use the lights and sirens? Get me there as fast as you can.’”
The Secret Service was not about to speed in traffic without lights and sirens. But agents quickly came up with a solution.
“The special agent in charge would come on the radio and say, ‘Yeah, let’s move as quick as we can but safely’” Chomicki says. “He’d do it just for the entertainment of the vice president.” Without pressing the button to transmit, another agent would pretend to say into the radio, “Hey, let’s go, speed it up,” Chomicki says. “That would satisfy Gore in the backseat.”
Gore never carried money with him and would borrow from Secret Service agents when he needed some. One of Gore’s daughters was graduating from high school, and Gore attended a reception with a cash bar at Old Ebbitt Grill for the families of the graduates.
“So Gore goes up and tries to get a glass of wine, and they want money,” recalls Chomicki.
“How much money you got?” Gore asked Chomicki.
Jokingly, Chomicki said, “I do real good. I’m a special agent. I make a lot of money.”
Gore explained that he had to pay for drinks.
“What do you need, twenty dollars?” Chomicki asked.
“That’ll work,” Gore said.
Chomicki handed a twenty-dollar bill to Gore, who later paid him back.
“I think he always thought, ‘I’m the vice president. I don’t have to pay for anything,’” Chomicki says.
Gore would insist on low-calorie healthy food, but whenever he saw food, he would grab some. “We used to laugh at that,” Chomicki says. “Usually, when they have a holding room, it’s standard that wherever you go, the host is always going to put something out just to be courteous. Al Gore couldn’t pass on a cookie. There wasn’t a cookie he didn’t like. He’d work hard at trying to keep his weight down. You saw after he got out of office how he bulked up.”