“This is happening all too often, that the Secret Service is purported to have said this,” Clinton said.
“For the first time in history, Mr. President, we’ve had to defend our honor in terms of being able to maintain the privacy of the family that we protect,” Dowling said. “But let’s think about this for a second. You think if we were to say something, we would say something as preposterous as that? As that your wife was going to run against you?”
“You know, you’re right,” Clinton said.
In fact, many of the stories were untrue. Hillary never threw a lamp at Bill, the Secret Service saw no indication that she was a lesbian, and Bill never left the White House to see an alleged girlfriend at the Marriott. But on August 17, 1998, Bill Clinton confessed from the Map Room of the White House on national television to his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. “Indeed, I did have a relationship with Miss Lewinsky that was not appropriate. In fact, it was wrong,” Clinton said.
The next day, the Clintons took Air Force One to Martha’s Vineyard.
“I was up at Martha’s Vineyard right after he had confessed on national TV to the whole Monica Lewinsky affair,” Albracht says. While Albracht was operating the command post, Hillary called him and said, “Where is he?”
“Ma’am, the president is downtown right now. I think he just arrived at a Starbucks,” Albracht said.
“Confirm that,” Hillary demanded, and Albracht did. Hillary then ordered Albracht to tell the president to “get home now, and I mean right now.”
Albracht passed along the message to the detail.
“Oh, my God. Clinton loves mingling with people, and he loves to play golf, but she was having none of that,” Albracht says. “Clinton was to remain at the Martha’s Vineyard estate. He was being punished. It was like he was grounded,” Albracht says.
When in public, Hillary would smile and act graciously. As soon as the cameras were off, her angry personality often became evident. During her run for the Senate, Hillary planned visits to diners and local hangouts as part of her “listening tour.”
“The events were all staged, and the questions were screened,” says a Secret Service agent who was on her detail. “She would stop off at diners. The campaign would tell them three days ahead that they were coming. They would talk to the owner and tell him to invite everyone and bring his friends. Hillary flew into rages when she thought her campaign staff had not corralled enough onlookers beforehand. Hillary had an explosive temper.”
Publicly, Hillary—code-named Evergreen—courted law enforcement organizations, but she did not want police near her.
“She did not want police officers in sight,” a former agent says. “How do you explain that to the police? She did not want Secret Service protection near. She wanted state troopers and local police to wear suits and stay in unmarked cars. If there was an incident, that could pose a big problem. People don’t know police are in the area unless officers wear uniforms and drive police cars. If they are unaware of a police presence, people are more likely to get out of control.”
In Syracuse, a bearded man who aggressively sought autographs accosted Hillary as she went for a walk outside her hotel.
“He grabbed her,” an agent says. “She was livid. But she had insisted she did not want us near her.”
Hillary’s campaign staff planned a visit to a 4-H club in dairy farm country in upstate New York. As they approached the outdoor event and she saw people dressed in jeans and surrounded by cows, Hillary flew into a rage.
“She turned to a staffer and said, ‘What the [expletive] did we come here for? There’s no money here,’” a Secret Service agent remembers.
In contrast to Hillary, since leaving the White House, Bill Clinton is “very friendly to the agents,” says one agent. “I think he realizes once he’s out of office, we’re pretty much all he’s got, and he does treat the guys really well.”
Until 1997, former presidents received lifetime Secret Service protection, as did their spouses unless they remarried. However, congressional legislation that became effective in 1997 limited the protection of former presidents who leave office after that date to no more than ten years after they leave office. Bill Clinton will be the first president whose protection will end after ten years. Children of former presidents receive protection to age sixteen. In September 2008, Congress passed legislation extending protection of the vice president, his spouse, and his children who are under sixteen years of age to six months after he leaves office.
After Clinton left the presidency, “Anywhere he went, he shook hands; he’d go out of his way to shake the hand of a worker,” says a former agent who was on his detail. “Fifty feet away and on a tarmac, he’s walking around a plane to shake the hand of a worker. Or going through the hotel’s restaurant, he’s in the back in the kitchen shaking people’s hands and taking pictures.”
Clinton’s office is in Harlem, where a woman on the street told the agent, “Honey, you can take the day off. We’re not going to let anything happen to that man.”
22
Shutting Down Magnetometers
DURING SENATOR JOHN Kerry’s presidential campaign, an event near a train station was about to start. A thousand supporters still had to be screened.
“What are we going to do?” a Kerry staff member said. “There’s still a thousand people waiting to come to the mags [magnetometers].”
“Right,” the agent said in response. “This is security. They’ll come in as soon as we can screen them.”
“Well, he’s going to be here in five minutes. There’s no way they’re going to get them in the mags,” the aide said.
According to the agent, a Secret Service supervisor then allowed the rest of the crowd to enter unscreened.
“That happened a number of times at other sites, other venues,” the agent says. “How are they making these decisions? You’ve got agents doing the right thing, making this as safe as it can be for the candidate, and one supervisor completely undercuts it.”
When President George W. Bush visited an eastern European country, “The local police set up a very good checkpoint and were doing a thorough job of screening people with magnetometers,” an agent who was assigned to the trip recalls. “When a staff lead saw the mags were backed up and not all the people would make it to hear Bush’s speech, she demanded that the mag officers expedite clearing people through. When a Uniformed Division lieutenant said they needed to do their job, the White House staff person completely went nuts, threatening the officer and threatening to report him to the head of Bush’s detail. The local authorities held their ground and did not cave to the staffer.”
Yet at other times, the Secret Service bows to White House or candidate pressure to stop magnetometer screening. When acquiescing to such requests, Secret Service management assures the White House staff that stopping screening is not a problem, Andy Card, President Bush’s former chief of staff, tells me. The White House, in turn, trusts the service.
Aides want to believe in the omnipotence of the Secret Service because it serves their political ends. They do not want to annoy stragglers. Yet if one of the people allowed through without screening drew a weapon or threw a grenade and assassinated a president or a candidate, it would be entirely because of the Secret Service’s negligence. Indeed, Arthur Bremer was able to shoot Alabama governor George Wallace—the only presidential candidate shot while under Secret Service protection—because magnetometers were not used.
As was the case with protecting presidents, Congress was slow to act when it came to protecting presidential candidates. It did not extend protection to candidates until Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated on June 5, 1968, after he won the Democratic presidential primary in California. As a result of the legislation, Secret Service agents were protecting Wallace on May 15, 1972, when he spoke to about two thousand people at a shopping center parking lot in Laurel, Maryland. It was a beautiful, sunny day. Because of the heat, Wallace decided to remove his cumbersome bulletproof vest.