Zero fail, p.54
Zero Fail, page 54
But conservative political views were more accepted at the Service than others, staffers groused after the meeting. Some in the Service were so overwhelmingly pro-Trump that supervisors had raised no complaint or concern when agents openly joked about bleeding-heart liberals and displayed “Make America Great Again” hats on their desks, a seemingly clear violation of the Hatch Act, which prohibits supporting candidates in the workplace. The Black employees now felt angry that the flexibility on political speech seemed to flow only one way.
Many minority officers felt Vadala’s fire hose proposal reflected a deeper racism within the agency. One staffer asked why agents and supervisors who made racist comments had been promoted. Chief Operating Officer George Mulligan said racist and sexist behaviors were corrosive to the teamwork necessary to accomplish the agency’s mission and, when reported, were thoroughly investigated. Carolyn McMillon, the head of the agency’s Office of Equity and Employee Support Services, said the agency carefully vetted candidates for promotion to supervisor and considered any worrisome past conduct.
Several Black employees left the nearly two-hour town hall feeling moved by some of the conversation, but skeptical that things would change.
“The main people who needed to hear this message [weren’t] on the call,” one Black agent told some fellow agents.
“If this conversation isn’t continued in the field, nothing changes,” another responded.
“Dude in my office will still have his MAGA hat on his desk,” said a third. “Glad I’m not easily intimidated.”
* * *
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SO MANY IN the Service felt worn down as Trump’s time in office neared its final months. Few of the deep reforms prescribed after the security failures of 2014 had been fully implemented. The forty-fifth president was using the Service as a political weapon and shield, in his single-minded and failed quest for reelection. Quite the opposite of apolitical, the Service had become a presidential pawn once more. The new director, Jim Murray, had built a reputation for standing up for his staff, but President Trump had made that nearly impossible. Trump installed the head of his detail, Tony Ornato, in a temporary political position in the White House as his deputy chief of staff, making the president’s political goals the central mission for a Secret Service employee. And while Ornato and Murray were close, the arrangement meant Ornato effectively outranked the director. Though the lethal coronavirus arriving on American soil in January 2020 had been declared a national emergency in March, the president insisted on continuing to host rallies to energize his supporters and boost his own ego. Ornato had arranged for the Service to enable the president’s authoritarian march across Lafayette Square on June 1 and coordinated the forceful removal of people protesting George Floyd’s killing. Ornato had also been a key organizer of the president’s campaign rallies out of town, putting the president’s wishes ahead of the security of the people who protected him.
Trump’s decision to travel—and his preference that his own staff not wear masks—would put not only him in danger. It would also increase the health risk for hundreds of Secret Service agents and officers who had to help secure his visits to Oklahoma, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Florida, and even the White House’s Rose Garden—for events that would later be deemed “superspreaders.” Over the course of the year, roughly three hundred agents and officers would test positive for the virus, often infecting their family members, or have to quarantine following contact with an infected co-worker. President Trump contracted the virus, a security failure as well, and, after a short hospitalization and an experimental antibody treatment at Walter Reed National Medical Center, recovered.
No one in Secret Service management had blocked the frequent trips out in public on the grounds that they were unnecessarily risky for the president or for staff. Not even when an infected Donald Trump insisted his agents drive him to the street bordering Walter Reed so he could wave to supporters. The manipulation of the Service for political ends, which previous directors had warned against as the worst possible fate for the agency that protects democracy, had never been more brazen.
In the inner circle of the presidential detail, many agents were cheering for Trump’s reelection. When election night finally came, Trump claimed the early lead but fell far behind by morning, with Biden the projected winner and Trump disputing it and alleging fraud. Four days later, on Saturday, November 7, Biden emerged the clear victor as final vote counts showed he won the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania and the networks declared him the presumed next president. Still, the Secret Service leadership declined to authorize the full protection detail that had always been provided to presidents-elect, a level of security approaching that of the president’s own. The director and his team took their lead from the White House, where Trump had blocked the normal peaceful transition of power, a feature of American democracy that had long been the envy of other nations. Because of the president’s insistence that he was the victim of some inexplicable fraud, Biden did not immediately receive the protective shield of a specially equipped armored car, a twenty-four-seven counterassault team, and a beefed-up detail with more veteran agents. The Service spread the word to confused agents that they simply had to wait until the results were truly official—when Trump conceded or when the votes were certified by the Electoral College. But many agents said this delay ignored the agency’s own security training: Once he became the presumptive president-elect, Biden was automatically a bigger target for assassination.
A former Secret Service official who oversaw candidate protection said many agents leaned Republican, as he did, but they never let personal politics shape security choices. He called the delay disturbing: “If I were in charge, he’d get it all and Trump could fire me if he wanted. We don’t do politics.” Said another former presidential protector: “It appears the Service for some reason is picking a side. I don’t know how the Service recovers from crossing this line.”
The decision to withhold this extra security only compounded the Biden camp’s fears that Trump had corrupted this elite band. What few realized was that clusters of agents, including some on Trump’s detail, were openly rooting for Trump, a fact hiding in plain sight. On Facebook and other forums, some of these public servants who promised to be above party were promoting Trump’s debunked conspiracy theories about rigged voting machines tossing Trump votes and a stolen election. Their views would harden over the coming weeks and shock colleagues, as they cheered a president trying ever more desperate plots to overturn the results.
* * *
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ON JANUARY 6, the forces pulling the country apart erupted in violence on the Capitol grounds. That day, the president egged on his angry supporters gathered for his speech on the National Mall, urging them to march on Congress and block lawmakers from certifying a “stolen” election. “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” Trump said, telling his chanting followers they were all going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol to give Republican lawmakers a message. “We’re going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.” The mob did as he asked. Thousands marched to the Capitol and quickly broke through the police barricades on its west lawn. After another hour of battling the police in their path, hundreds broke through the Capitol’s windows and doors, in a chilling scene that resembled newsreels from a third world country. Inside the Senate chamber, where lawmakers had gathered to certify the election, a small Secret Service detail whisked Vice President Pence off the floor to a hideaway office. Only seconds later, an offshoot of the mob, chanting that Pence was a traitor, rushed up to a second-floor landing where Pence and his agents had just passed.
Despite the heroism of their brothers in arms that day, some Secret Service personnel again took to social media in the days after January 6, empathizing with and defending the mission of the armed rioters who breached the Capitol—the same ones who had endangered the Pence agents and pummeled Capitol Police officers with metal pipes and bats. One Secret Service officer called the armed protesters “patriots” seeking to undo an illegitimate election, and falsely claimed to her friends that disguised Antifa members had started the violence. One presidential detail agent reposted a popular anti-Biden screed that criticized Democrats for their relentless attacks on Trump. It read: “I tolerated #44 (Obama) for 8 years and kept quiet. Here is my issue with the whole, ‘let us all be a United States again’ that we heard from Joe Biden. We remember the 4 years of attacks and impeachments. We remember the resistance and ‘not our president’. We remember the president’s spokesperson being kicked out a [sic] restaurant….We remember that we were called every name in the book for supporting President Trump.”
Others shared the commentary of pro-Trump conspiracy leaders criticizing Democrats. One agent reposted the image of an upside-down American flag, a military signal for extreme distress, with the words of right-wing activist Raheem Kassam: “In less than 12 months they closed our businesses, forced us to wear muzzles, kept us from our families, killed off our sports, burned down our cities, forcibly seized power, and shut down our speech. Then they accused *us* of the coup.”
Given all the ways the Secret Service had enabled Trump in the last year—from enabling his authoritarian march across Lafayette Square to the murmured support in the ranks for overturning Biden’s election—it was understandable that the president-elect and his aides had doubts. Was the agency entrusted with Biden’s life fully committed to the assignment? So serious was this concern about Trump’s corrosive hold on the Secret Service that Biden transition advisers urged that the agency swap out all members of the Trump presidential detail before Biden’s inauguration. Headquarters agreed to a compromise. They would bring back some of the senior agents whom Biden knew well from his vice presidential detail and make them supervisors on his new presidential team. Biden advisers, meanwhile, laid plans to replace Murray in the first half of 2021. The incoming team was disturbed by a director who would allow the Service to be used in an authoritarian photo op and in campaign events that jeopardized the public and their own workers’ health, and let a top official cross over to a political role in the White House. When Trump lost reelection, Murray had even returned Ornato to the Secret Service fold, as he was not yet eligible for retirement, and promoted him to be an assistant director.
“The biggest tragedy is that Trump politicized a part of the Secret Service, who pride themselves on being apolitical,” one newly departed agent explained. “That’s the Trump effect.”
Trump gave the Secret Service a parting gift on his way out, a result of him fomenting the armed insurrection at the Capitol and stoking alt-right extremists’ dreams of overthrowing the government. The protection agency spent the final two weeks of his administration scrapping and rapidly rewriting its months of security plans for the inauguration of the forty-sixth president. Newly bracing for another violent assault, the Service directed a massive lockdown of the city unlike any other in modern history. Their effort, coordinated with the Pentagon, the FBI, and numerous law enforcement agencies, would encase the Capitol, the White House, and many of the monuments of the National Mall in eight-foot-tall black fencing, topped by razor wire in key spots near where Biden would pass. For several days before the inauguration, security teams blocked traffic from entering more than 350 square blocks of downtown Washington and adjoining neighborhoods, and later shuttered thirteen subway stations in the city’s core. More than fifteen thousand National Guard soldiers were deployed to help secure an emblematic American ceremony, an event that was typically attended by hundreds of thousands of cheering spectators and now had to be treated as an active target of domestic terrorists.
* * *
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ONE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION official who oversaw the agency and studied the Service’s vulnerabilities up close regretted the political stain Trump had left but was more disturbed at how Trump and several presidents before him had let the agency down. The person told me it wasn’t the staff’s fault that sensors on the White House fence line didn’t work, that the full replacement of an outdated White House fence hadn’t been completed nearly six years after a humiliating breach, that overworked detail agents had to use their own cars for lack of a reliable government fleet, that their leaders hadn’t fully equipped them for a bioweapon attack or a multilayered assault on the White House.
“I still firmly believe they have to modernize—and not just when it comes to resources,” the official told me. “Technology is the first thing. If anyone has seen the television show 24, they would die if they saw what the Secret Service has. It’s a joke. They would die.”
Today, the Service remains spread dangerously thin. In addition to protecting a president and vice president and their families, and key senior leaders, the Service also protects hundreds of foreign leaders who visit the United States every year, investigates a broad range of financial crimes, assesses and investigates violent threats whether they are made in bars, in written letters, or on Twitter, researches the traits of school shooters to help communities prevent future attacks, helps local police track down missing and exploited children, and much more. This official told me they and their fellow senior national security advisers revere the commitment of so many of the Secret Service’s soldiers on the front line, but they remain haunted that the agency hasn’t been given the money, staff, or tools to do all its jobs. This neglect creates an opening for a serious attack on our democracy.
“Someone in the near future needs to sit down and figure out: What is their mission? Because they can’t do the mission they have now,” the person said. “These people are patriots. We’re letting them down and we’re leaving the country at risk.”
It should haunt us all.
FOR MY HUSBAND, JOHN, AND MY DAUGHTERS, ELISE AND MOLLY
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First and foremost, I must thank the Secret Service agents and officers, past and present, who have given so much to our country over the decades and continue today to sacrifice their comfort and personal lives so that our democracy remains safe. I have watched them guard their post for hours in the falling snow, serve as the lone beacon of calm when a true crisis hit, and generally hold themselves to a superhuman standard. This book charts some of the agency’s stumbles and struggles, but those events do not diminish the phenomenal, enduring contribution that the thousands of men and women of the Secret Service have made to the nation.
I am indebted to a group of security professionals who committed themselves so deeply to their mission that they dared to call out their agency’s weaknesses to make it stronger and keep future presidents safe. In speaking to a reporter, they risked being fired at worst and vilified at best. My profound thanks to agent Bill Gage and so many other current agents and officers who still cannot be named. Each sought to help the Service remain true to its motto, to be “Worthy of Trust and Confidence.” The American public owes them thanks as well.
I am grateful to the dozens of former agents who gave the Secret Service some of their best years and then graciously entrusted me with their memories to help create a more complete history. Special appreciation to the late Win Lawson and Bob DeProspero, who schooled me in the tension between a politician’s desire to shake every voter’s hand and an agent’s need to assume each one holds a gun. I’m so much wiser thanks to the insights of Tony Ball, Gerald Blaine, Clint Hill, Tim McCarthy, Tim McIntyre, Ray Moore, Larry Newman, Joe Petro, Robin Philpot-DeProspero, and so many more. Thanks to Catherine Milhoan and Larry Berger for their professionalism to ensure each voice was heard. My deep thanks to former Secret Service director Julia Pierson, who had reason to turn me away after my stories about security blunders on her watch contributed to her firing. Instead, she was a rigorous analyst who pinpointed for me some causes for the agency’s decline over her thirty-year career, including the insular culture that resisted her reforms and worked to conceal rather than fix what was broken.
On a personal note, I thank the centerpieces of my life. First to John Reeder, I could not have done this work or arrived here without your pep talks, forbearance, and love. You have been both my immovable rock and my gentle guide, depending on what I needed most. Elise and Molly, I set out to do this work for you, my smart daughters. But I marvel now at the support you have provided me, and the role models you have become with the exceptional standards you set for yourselves. Thank you for the joy and pride you have given your father and me.
To my mom, thank you for telling me I could do anything, and for being the best cheerleader. To Brooke and Henry, for knowing me the best and always being in my corner. To my late father, Harry, for teaching me the joys of hard work. To my extended Reeder and Reno clans, my bonus families.
My heartfelt thanks to good friends, who cheer and inspire me and make this whole ride a lot more fun. Thank you especially to Michelle Dolge, Julie Maner, Lisa Resch, Lisa Rosenberg, Kristi Teems, Liz Weiser, Kristin Willsey—and your big-hearted husbands. Thanks to my ornament group, book club, and college customs group for all the laughter and wisdom you’ve given me. Special gratitude for Mary Elizabeth DeAngelis and Paige Williams, friends and role models I was lucky to land alongside in my first reporting job.
