Secret Service in crisis.
Matthew X
profrv at nex.net.au
Mon Sep 9 06:05:16 PDT 2002
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/020909/usnews/9service.htm
On a warm summer night last year, a 19-year-old woman sat in a crowded bar,
engaged in a rite of passage familiar to countless college-age teens:
persuading a bartender to break the law and sell her a drink. This was no
ordinary teenager, though. She was Jenna Bush, the daughter of President
George W. and first lady Laura Bush. The bartender was amenable to serving
the young womanuntil he spotted two agents from her Secret Service detail.
Nervous, he approached the agents and asked what he should do. Use your
best judgment, the agents shrugged. The bartender promptly asked Jenna Bush
to leave. She was furious. A Secret Service agent familiar with the
incident told U.S. News that Jenna berated her agents, then fled the bar
into a dark alley. Sources say one of the agents chased Jenna, and she
taunted him. "You know if anything happens to me," she said, "my dad would
have your ass."
Not quite. After she called her father to complain about the incident,
which is still widely recounted among agents, President Bush declined to
side with Jenna. Laura Bush, however, was concerned about what Jenna and
her twin sister, Barbara, view as repeated intrusions into their privacy.
As a result, sources say, agents assigned to the protective details of the
Bush twins have been ordered to pull back from traditional methods of
coverage. Many agents say they regard this as a serious security risk.
"They have no concept," says one source who has protected members of the
Bush family. ". . . They act like they don't have any concept of world
events and how vulnerable they are or can be."
Protecting the lives of families of top government officials has never been
easy. By the same token, living under the controlling, intrusive, often
overbearing, and seemingly omnipotent presence of agents can be stifling
for political leaders and their families, especially for children.
Presidents do what they can to strike a balance between protecting
themselves and their families by acceding to the demands of agents, at the
same time fighting for the right to have some semblance of a normal life.
Some family members unused to the constant presence of armed law
enforcement officers seek restrictions on agents' activities and guarantees
of privacy. Others, more hostile, rebel and try to give their minders the
slip, as Jenna's sister, Barbara, has done. Last April, Barbara's agents
were lampooned by the Yale University magazine Rumpus after the car she was
in sped through an E-ZPass lane as Barbara and her friends drove from New
Haven, Conn., to a World Wrestling Federation match in New York. Members of
her security detail had to wait in the toll lane on a bridge into
Manhattan, then weave through traffic at high speeds to catch up. In Texas,
Jenna evaded her Secret Service agents following class last fall, after the
September 11 attacks, sources say. When she finally surfaced after several
hours, a supervisor on her protective detail lectured the young woman and
warned against repeating such behavior.
The Bush twins aren't alone. Secret Service sources tell U.S. News that
shortly after 9/11, President Bush sought expanded coverage for other Bush
family members through an executive order. But this June, President Bush
changed his mind and ordered the Secret Service to discontinue the security
details he had authorized for several family members. "They are dictating
coverage," says a Secret Service agent. "And what's worse is we're letting
them."
"Protective methodology." After September 11, Secret Service executives
made significant additions to President Bush's security arrangements. But
some agents worry that Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, with its vast, open
spaces, poses serious staffing and logistical challenges, difficulties that
give pause to even the toughest military-trained tactical teams in the
service. Providing security for its protectees in remote locations like the
president's ranch is regarded as among the most difficult challenges by
Secret Service executives, agents, and officers.
How to best guarantee the safety of the president, the vice president, and
their families is just one element of a larger debate among line agents,
uniformed officers, and Secret Service executives about the agency's
changing role and responsibilities. In the past year, Director Brian
Stafford has implemented a broad new security theory known as "protective
methodology." Many agents and officers say this plan goes against the grain
of time-tested Secret Service methods and practices and could expose
protectees and their bodyguards to possible attack by reducing customary
layers of protective "insulation." The changes include cutting the number
of posts where agents and officers stand guard, eliminating some technical
assets like magnetometers, ballistic glass, and armored plating, and
withdrawing Counter Sniper, Counter Surveillance, Counter Assault, and
other tactical teams. "Basically, what we are doing now and what we were
trained to do are at different ends of the spectrum," says a veteran agent.
"It doesn't make sense."
Director Stafford declined to respond to an interview request. Paul Irving,
who heads the Office of Government Liaison and Public Affairs, also failed
to reply to a detailed list of questions for this article. A senior White
House official who works closely with the Secret Service said he believes
the service is doing a "terrific" job protecting President Bush and other
top government officials and their families. Scott McClellan, a White House
spokesman, also declined to respond to specific questions, saying, "We do
not discuss security issues. The president and Mrs. Bush are grateful and
appreciative for the outstanding job the Secret Service does in protecting
the first family and others."
Traditionally, the Secret Service has relied on a guarantee of 360-degree
coverage of its protectees. The approach calls for a team of agents
enveloping the person under protection in a kind of moving box, covering
him or her from all angles. The new protective methodology, by contrast, is
based on an evaluation of "threat assessments," calculating different
levels of risk confronting protectees like the vice president, his wife,
and their children, the president's children, and the first lady. Using
current intelligence information and historic precedents like past
assassination attempts, Secret Service executives determine how many agents
and what kinds of special teams and capabilities to assign individual
protectees. For instance, vice presidents have been considered a relatively
low assassination risk. Vice President Cheney, as a result, under the
protective methodology approach, like other VPs, has received fewer assets
and tactical support teams than the president.
Some Secret Service agents say that a protective theory based so heavily on
intelligence analysis may be dangerously flawed, especially in light of the
intelligence failures that occurred prior to the September 11 attacks on
the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. These individuals say that Secret
Service executives have sometimes ignored or discounted security
recommendations more heavily weighted to intelligence analysis, despite the
fact that such analysis has been so heavily emphasized by Director Stafford
and other proponents of the protective-methodology theory. Shortly after
September 11, Cheney's security was beefed up. Then in December, Stafford
and his deputy, Danny Spriggs, met with Secret Service agents and Uniformed
Division officers at the Naval Observatory, Cheney's official residence.
Sources say the meeting was intended as a morale booster. Stafford told the
agents and officers that though they were not assigned to the elite
presidential protective detail, they were doing a vitally important job.
Intelligence analysts rated Cheney as a higher security risk than President
Bush, Stafford continued, because of his having served as the first
President Bush's secretary of defense during the Persian Gulf War a decade
ago. The war, and the presence of thousands of American troops in Saudi
Arabia before, during and after it, have been cited as a principal source
of grievance by Osama bin Laden and others in his al Qaeda terrorist
organization. Shortly after the meeting, however, several sources tell U.S.
News, Secret Service executives reduced the level of Cheney's protection.
"You say this guy is the biggest threat? They started cutting," says one
former officer. "They were short of manpower for the Olympics. They cut
posts everywhere." By Christmas, several Secret Service officials say, the
special Counter Assault, Counter Sniper, and Emergency Response teams
assigned to Cheney immediately after September 11 were phased out. For
months, the Secret Service also rejected recommendations for magnetometers,
or X-ray machines, to screen attendees at public events where Cheney
appeared. These same sources say the service began assigning more Mag
officers, as they are called, to Cheney's detail after U.S. News reported
(June 17, 2002) on the agency's recent cost-cutting measures and personnel
difficulties. The Treasury Department's inspector general initiated an
investigation of each of the allegations cited in the magazine's earlier
story. That inquiry is continuing, sources say. The department's top law
enforcement official, Under Secretary for Law Enforcement Jimmy Gurulé,
sources say, has also begun interviewing officers to gauge the extent of
problems documented by the magazine in the Secret Service's Uniformed
Division.
"Brokenhearted." The agents who spoke to U.S. News for this account are all
currently employed by the Secret Service and have held a variety of
high-profile assignments, including protecting the president and vice
president, the first lady, Lynne Cheney, and other members of the Bush and
Cheney families. They spoke on condition of strict anonymity. In addition,
U.S. News spoke to many former Uniformed Division officers who have guarded
the White House complex and foreign embassies in and around Washington,
D.C. The agents and officers declined to discuss sensitive protective
techniques and methods so as not to compromise protectees' safety or the
security of the White House complex. Many of the agents and officers told
the magazine that they decided to come forward after the earlier U.S. News
article because of growing concerns about their ability to ensure the
safety of some protecteesfamily members who typically receive little or no
protective coverage. More than a dozen agents who have served on protective
details for a particular family member at various times over the past year
have expressed concern that security measures the Secret Service has
implemented on that individual's behalf were dangerously inadequate. U.S.
News has refrained from publishing certain security information obtained
during the reporting and research for this article and is withholding the
name, location, and other details about the individual cited by these
agents for security reasons. "If something happens to this protectee," says
one agent, "it would cause great embarrassment. Not to mention the family;
they would be brokenhearted."
In addition to the merits of the new protective-methodology plan, some
agents question the timing of its implementation. The Secret Service budget
has increased 75 percent since 1999, to $1.05 billion today. At the same
time, though, the service has suffered a debilitating loss of manpower
while the scope of its protective and investigative missions has increased
significantly. After the September 11 attacks, President Bush increased the
number of protectees from 17 to 38. The number is now down to 22, but
that's still a significant increase for a relatively small force of nearly
3,000 agents and roughly 1,000 Uniformed Division officers. The service has
butted heads with other agencies like the FBI as it has sought to expand
the original mission for which it was createdcombating counterfeitingto
take on new responsibilities like investigating cybercrimes and
international financial crimes. The service has also been given primary
responsibility for providing security at what it calls national security
special events like the Super Bowl and the recent Winter Olympics Games in
Salt Lake City.
The new missions come at the same time the departures of agents and
officers are accelerating. In the past year, more than 100 plainclothes
agents have retired, quit, or taken jobs with the newly created
Transportation Security Administration, internal Secret Service records
show. In the past two months alone, the service has lost special
agents-in-charge of its field offices in Cincinnati, Oklahoma City,
Orlando, St. Louis, Atlanta, Minneapolis, and Kansas City, Mo. Many agents
say they are leaving because they are fed up and want better pay and more
humane working conditions, including less travel. These agents are
averaging 81 hours overtime per month. A unique Secret Service pension plan
allows retirement-age agents to rejoin the federal government at other
agencies at elevated pay grades. Even elite Counter Sniper technicians from
the Uniformed Division, who fill some of the most-sought-after and
prestigious positions in the service, are leaving. CS marksmen guard the
roof of the White House and travel on presidential and vice presidential
advance trips to identify and assess possible security risks. Sometimes,
Secret Service executives have had so few CS technicians that they have
been forced to resort to what one source describes as "pseudo protection,"
for presidential or vice presidential events, shining powerful floodlights,
hanging huge drapes, or erecting special barriers in lieu of posting
Counter Snipers at vulnerable location. In recent months, the shortage of
CS technicians has been so acute that on several occasions, only one
officer has been assigned to plan advance security for an event involving
the president or vice president. "They were cutting down power to do basic
assessments," says a veteran Secret Service official. "CS advance is very
difficult. You could see [the technician] running around like a madman."
Double standard. Morale in the service is plummeting, many agents say, in
part because of a widely perceived double standard. Agents who enjoy close
relationships with Secret Service executives in Washington are given more
favorable assignments and other treatment than those who don't, many in the
service say. In the sometimes arcane parlance of the Secret Service, these
agents have what is known as a "hook" with headquarters. The Secret Service
has also had long-standing management difficulties with its Uniformed
Division, the officers and technicians who are at the front line of defense
at the White House and at foreign missions. They include members of the
elite Counter Sniper teams, the Emergency Response Team, and the K-9 bomb
squad units. Many of these officers complain of being treated as
second-class citizens. Plainclothes agents sometimes refer to uniformed
officers as "box creatures," because they stand watch in the little white
booths around the White House grounds. Sources say that some officers who
transferred and became plainclothes agents found anonymous notes soon after
taking up their new duties saying, "once a guard, always a guard." Many of
the uniformed officers are overworked, with even supervisors forced to put
in an enormous amount of overtime. Since last October, the Secret Service
has lost more than 256 Uniformed Division officers, according to internal
statistics provided to U.S. News; if current trends continue, the total
could rise as high as 400 by year's end, nearly a third of the Uniformed
Division's workforce. The personnel drain throughout the service has led to
a decrease in the number of officers and agents available to protect the
White House. "They cut posts around the White House before 9/11," says one
source. Secret Service executives have had to shift officers who train
cadets at the Beltsville, Md., academy to the White House complex. Officers
assigned to guard foreign missions around Washington have also been shifted
to stand post at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Valued members of the Secret
Service's technical staff are also departing in significant numbers,
including telephone and computer experts and highly trained encryption
specialists.
Pressure cooker. The numbers alone are alarming, many inside the Secret
Service say, but they also translate into a worrisome loss of experience
among those who remain. When veteran trainers and supervisors leave, they
take with them years of institutional knowledge and practical, hands-on
experience that often cannot be taught by less experienced personnel.
Agents and former Uniformed Division officers tell U.S. News that they fear
that the enormous pressure to quickly hire and train new agents, combined
with the lower hiring standards that were implemented in recent years, may
further compromise security, if the wrong people are brought on board. In
the past, Secret Service job applicants who had used any drugs, including
marijuana, cocaine, and heroin, were automatically disqualified and sent on
their way. But now, sources say, an applicant who has stayed clear of
marijuana for just 36 months and smoked it only 10 times can still qualify.
And the Secret Service will consider candidates with cocaine or heroin
useas long as it was before their 21st birthday. The service now
classifies such activity as a "youthful indiscretion."
In meetings with members of Congress, Treasury Department overseers, and
White House officials, Secret Service executives have sought to downplay
the extent of personnel problems. But they have also had little to say
publicly about their new approach to guarding high government officials and
their families. Director Stafford and his deputies have committed very
little information about the new protective-methology procedures to paper,
several agents say. These agents worry that there has not been the kind of
rigorous training, testing, and lesson planning based on the new protective
theory, as has been the case with traditional protective methods. Agents
and officers interviewed for this article expressed concern that if
something goes wrong, there is so little on paper about the
protective-methodology procedures that line agents and officers may be held
accountable for decisions made by higher-ups. "Congress," says one veteran
agent, "is going to grill our behinds, barbecue our backsides when, not if,
but whensomething happens." Adds another agent: "All you're doing is
counting the days and hours you've been lucky."
Some key causes of concern:
The Secret Service is so hard pressed to find trained Mag officers to
screen people attending public functions with the president, vice
president, and other top officials that it has had to reduce the number of
such officers at some events. When heads of Secret Service details request
Mag officers, they are often told that none is available; when they turn in
security advance plans to headquarters, approved plans often come back with
the number of Mag officers reduced, even for the president's detail,
sources say. Detail heads have been forced on some occasions to pull agents
from other posts to fill in near X-ray machines to scan crowds or even to
use hand-held devices to screen attendees. One source says agents assigned
to Cheney always make sure they are "vested up," have their bulletproof
vests on, when they don't get magnetometer support and worry that a
terrorist or a deranged person might sneak a gun into an event.
Because of concerns in part over excessive cost, Secret Service officials
have declined to install ballistic glass in front of windows of hotels or
other venues where key protectees have been scheduled to appear. "They
won't put up ballistic glass," says an agent, "because they have to pay
money to bring in a truck with a hydraulic lift to roll the glass in."
Supervisors also frequently nix requests from agents for camouflaged
armored sheets of steel used at outdoor events or in hotels to guard
against sniper fire.
Agents say the Secret Service has failed to adjust its post-9/11 security
procedures to address the potential threat of an aerial attack. The
service, sources say, must demand more aggressive vetting of small aircraft
by local police and other government agencies in advance of public events
involving the president and vice president. Agents say they are especially
worried about charter planes, because they receive virtually no security
screening and their flight paths are typically not monitored. "It raises
concerns," says one agent, "about how to reassure those who are under our
protection about their safety, when really, we can't."
Security precautions taken for the first lady, some agents say, are often
dangerously inadequate. In Washington, Laura Bush's motorcade does not even
get the benefit of "intersection control"coordinated traffic lights, a
basic security measure accorded many high-risk visiting foreign
dignitaries. And agents say they are concerned about the security of the
vice president's wife, Lynne.
When her father was president, Chelsea Clinton was regularly assigned a
two-man Counter Assault Team, in addition to her regular detail, after she
received threats when she was a Stanford University student. The Bush
daughters briefly were assigned similar teams after September 11, sources
say, but they have since been pulled back.
Added to the loss of experienced agents and officers, many in the Secret
Service believe executives remain skeptical of the value of some elite
special units like Counter Assault, Counter Surveillance, and Emergency
Response teamsthe Pentagon-trained Uniformed Division officers who protect
the White House. These sources say that many senior supervisory agents in
the field and officials at headquarters are philosophically at odds with
using these techniques. "They think we are cowboys," says a former veteran
Emergency Response Team member, "and that it's overkill." This former
officer and other sources say there's a kind of generation gap, due in part
to the fact that many senior officials never went through the specialized
training now required of the Secret Service's most elite units. Training is
a key measurement. Many agents and officers describe the training of new
recruits as excellent, but others say the Secret Service is behind the
curve. "These guys think old school," says one former officer who came to
the Secret Service from the military. The specialized teams train to
respond to multiple threats, like the September 11 attacks, and to rocket,
chemical, and biological assaults. But most officers not on the elite teams
and nonspecial team agents are still trained on a "single cycle" threat,
such as that posed by a lone gunman. Some of these agents believe that
after 9/11, the service should have modified its training curriculum to
focus more on responding to multipronged attacks.
"Standing down." Paramount among the Secret Service's high-priority
protective missions, of course, is the White House and its inhabitants.
Despite the agency's ability to scramble and redeploy agents and officers
from other responsibilities over the past year, the challenge is only
likely to grow, agents and officers say. More than five years ago, special
operations experts from the elite military counterterrorism unit Delta
Force conducted a threat assessment of the White House and found numerous
vulnerabilities. Secret Service executives have implemented only a few
minor changes since that study, sources say. The threats are varied and not
easy, in some cases, to counter. Veteran Secret Service officers worry, for
example, about the long-standing custom of "standing down" when members of
Congress come to call at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. One former officer says
he requested a congressman's voting card to double-check the member's
identification and was "reamed out" by his supervisor after the congressman
complained. Officers who spoke with U.S. News for this article say they
have been forced time and again to allow members of Congress to enter the
White House complex without identification because they have complained
loudly when challenged. The worries, these sources say, are not misplaced.
In April 1994, at the funeral reception for former President Richard Nixon
at his library in Yorba Linda, Calif., a middle-aged man using fake
identification papers sauntered through the VIP-congressional area and
approached then President Clinton and former President George Bush. He
attempted to engage them in conversation before he was finally detained,
arrested, and charged with trespassing. "There's no way we can know even a
quarter of these people," says one officer. "Yet we are supposed to allow
them onto the ground without a picture ID. You can buy congressional pins
or congressional license plates off eBay."
The Secret Service has a long and proud history of meeting difficult
challenges and beating them. Many agents and officers, still intensely
loyal to the agency, say they believe that with the right leadership and an
influx of new blood, the service can handle whatever new demands it is
required to meet. But others worry that the double whammy of personnel
losses and increased responsibilities may be impeding the ability of the
agency to function at the high levels expected of it. For some in the
Secret Service, that challenge comes down to a decidedly personal level. "I
hate to say this, but I couldn't have cared less," says one officer who has
left the service. "If someone tried something, I probably would have missed
it, because I just did not care."
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