Protecting the Presidents, a book

[Murph]

A little behind the scenes look at the real man in the office. Fits about what you'd figure. I work with the Secret Service regularly on counterfeit money, and this squares with what I have been told. Agents protecting Hillary HATE her, and can't wait to get off her detail, or just plain quit.


Former Secret Service agent opens window into private lives of presidents
October 14th, 2009
Jamie Weinstein

In his In the President’s Secret Service: Behind the Scenes with Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents they Protect, journalist Ronald Kessler gives us a peek inside the intimate lives of our presidents. Through interviews with over 100 secret service agents from the past and present—dating all the way back to John F. Kennedy—Kessler paints a picture of what our presidents are like when no one is looking.
Theyre always watching.

We learn from the agents Kessler interviews that John F. Kennedy was a serial adulterer (big surprise) and that Lyndon Johnson was essentially a serial adulterer and a lunatic. “If Johnson weren’t president, he’d be in an insane asylum,” said one former secret agent who sometimes was on Johnson’s detail. Secret Service agents found Richard Nixon strange and unsociable. Agents described Gerald Ford as friendly but cheap, often tipping caddies at exclusive country clubs a dollar if anything at all. But the president subject to the greatest scorn is Jimmy Carter.

Carter is portrayed as a phony according to the agents interviewed by Kessler. Carter would put on a show for the public to convey himself as a common man, but it was never anymore than an act. For instance, we are told that when Carter would make a point of carrying his own luggage in front of the press, he was really carrying empty bags. He expected others to carry his real luggage. Unfriendly, Carter “didn’t want the police officers and agents looking at him or speaking to him when he went to the [Oval]office,” explained an assistant White House usher. “The only time I saw a smile on Carter’s face was when the cameras were going,” one former agent told Kessler.

After his presidency, Kessler reports that when Carter would stay at a townhouse maintained for former presidents in D.C., he would take down pictures of other presidents and put up more pictures of himself! “The Carters were the biggest liars in the world,” one agent told Kessler of the Carter era.

Carter, not surprisingly, denied to Kessler through a lawyer many of the allegations in the book.

The man who sent Carter packing from the White House could not have been more different according to accounts from agents. Ronald Reagan would constantly interact with his secret service agents and other staffers who worked for him. He was apologetic when he would take secret service agents away from their families on holidays. While Carter would make secret service agents pay for any leftover food they consumed after White House parties, we are told Reagan would insist the secret service eat leftover food (without charge, of course).

George H.W. Bush also comes across as eminently decent. The Bushes, for instance, would stay home on Christmas Eve so that the agents could spend at least some time with their families. “Both [President Bush] and Mrs. Bush are very thoughtful, and they think outside their own little world. They think of other people,” one agent commented to Kessler.

Bush’s successor President Clinton comes across fairly well if sometimes inconsiderate, while Hillary Clinton is depicted as a monster. “Hillary did not speak to us,” one agent told Kessler. “We spent years with her. She never said thank you.”

Vice President Al Gore was exceedingly obnoxious to his agents according to Kessler. When scolding his son for not doing well in school, Gore chastised him by warning that “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.” The “guys” Gore was referring to were his secret service agents!

President George W. Bush is painted as an affable character behind the scenes. “He does not look comfortable in front of a microphone,” one agent explained to Kessler. “With us, he doesn’t talk like that, doesn’t sound like that. He’s funny as hell.” Bush 43 was also depicted as “down to earth” and “caring.”

While many conservatives may bristle at the domestic and foreign policies of current President Barack Obama, judged by the way he treats his secret service agents it is fair to conclude that Obama is personally a decent man. One agent who protected Obama on the campaign trail says that Obama twice invited agents to dinner at his home.

Kessler’s book does raise a serious question. Should those charged with protecting the president be chatting about what they saw behind the scenes, especially when the protectee is still alive, or worse, still in office? If presidents have to worry about their secret service agents squealing about them to the press at every turn, it will make our presidents want to put as much distance as possible between them and their agents and thus ultimately compromise presidential security. This is not a desirable outcome to say the least.

On the other hand, secret service agents have a unique view of history and there is something to be learned about our presidents from the stories agents tell. It may be argued that the agents owe a duty to history to tell us what they saw on their watch so we can get a fuller understanding of those who lead us, foibles and all. This argument is especially compelling after a president has passed away, or at the very least, left office.

These are difficult issues to wrestle with, but the fact is that the book has been written. What’s done is done. Might as well take a peek inside.

http://www.northstarnational.com/200...es-presidents/

[Brains]

I've heard it often said, and always felt it to be true - the true mark of a person's character can be seen in how they treat their waiter. This just steps it up a notch.

[donlfaulkner]

Not trying to get political, but none of these surprised me other than obummer. I still think he's a phony.

Very good article, Thanks.

[Brains]

Nah, Obama is a charmer - that's how he got elected. He's just having trouble using that charm to push some of his programs now. Obamacare, for example - I bet it's confusing the pants off him why people are rejecting it on both sides of the partisan line.

[Truckman]

What was said about George H.W. Bush coincides with what was told about him to me by one of my former customers who was assigned to the President after he left the White House...He and his partner both said their assignments were dream jobs because Mr. and Mrs. Bush were always nice and always asked about their families...They also said he let them do their jobs without interference because he knew that kept everyone safer...Ben

[Murph]

I work with the Secret Service regularly and this squares with what I have been told as well. Agents lined up in droves to be on the Bush 41 and Bush 43 details. They liked Clinton, but despised Hillary. I see the Secret Service agents at least twice a month for counterfeit money we pick up, and am the point of contact for them with my agency.

Two of the guys I worked with on a regular basis just left to go to the VP detail. One of our former agents went to the Hillary detail, and I was there when he called another agent asking to be rescued from "Hillbilly hell". He got to transfer to the Biden detail after Hillary lost her detail when she took over SecState and DSS took up her protection. All USSS agents have to do a detail, and so you get the "war stories" from the guys. I REALLY like the USSS guys, they are just a joy to work with on cases. In the USSS to get promoted to the higher levels you have to be on one of the "Big Two" (POTUS/VPOTUS) detail, which is a 4-5 year commitment. They like the Obamas, and they have worked the campaigns where they interact with the candidates, and Obama got a detail early due to threats by nut jobs against him. San Antonio is somewhat of a retirement office.

[kimberley]

funny observation all the democrate are painted in a bad light while all the republicans are saints...hummm

[MHampton]

You might want to read that again Kimberley. Nixon (rep) did not fare well, nor did Ford (cheap). Bill Clinton and President Obama (both dems) came out as very good guys.

[Hanky]

Originally Posted by kimberley

funny observation all the democrate are painted in a bad light while all the republicans are saints...hummm

None of them are saints.

[Patti Edens]

Originally Posted by kimberley

funny observation all the democrate are painted in a bad light while all the republicans are saints...hummm

I think the Washington Post felt as if it was slanted to the right as well. Here's their review as on Amazon.com


From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com

A few blocks from the White House, on the busy corner of H and 9th streets, stands a bland, unnamed, nine-story office building. On a wall in the lobby, large silver letters spell out the words "Worthy of Trust and Confidence." That is the motto of the Secret Service, and the anonymous tan-brick building is the agency's headquarters. "The phrase," said former director Lewis C. Merletti, "is the absolute heart and soul of the United States Secret Service. . . . And it must never be compromised."

Lest they forget, all agents have the motto emblazoned on their IDs. But in light of an odd decision by the current director, Mark Sullivan, the motto should be changed to "Have You Heard This One?" During the Bush administration, hoping for some good, ego-enhancing publicity, Sullivan broke with his agency's long-standing policy of absolute silence and allowed Ronald Kessler to get an earful.

The chief Washington correspondent for Newsmax.com, which bills itself as "the #1 conservative news agency online," Kessler had written very positive books about CIA Director George Tenet, first lady Laura Bush and President George W. Bush, and Sullivan was probably hoping for the same treatment. Hearing that Sullivan had given Kessler his blessing, scores of current and former agents -- Kessler claims more than 100 -- agreed to talk to him. But rather than use that wealth of information to write a serious book examining the inner workings of the long-veiled agency or the new challenges of protecting the first black president, the author simply milked the agents for the juiciest gossip he could get and mixed it with a rambling list of their complaints.

Trashing their motto, these agents seem to relish throwing dirt on their former protectees, especially Democrats. But it is all boring and familiar. Agents Chuck Taylor and Larry Newman, like tattling schoolboys, breathlessly rant about JFK's escapades more than 40 years ago, in particular one with secretaries nicknamed Fiddle and Faddle wearing T-shirts in the White House pool. "You could see their nipples," snickers Taylor. Other agents tell of Lyndon Johnson's "stable" of women and how he liked to get drunk at his ranch and then "whiz out on the front lawn."

Even Vice President Spiro Agnew, according to another agent, was escorted to various hotels for affairs. "We felt like pimps," he said. But the best he could offer for proof was that "he looked embarrassed." Richard Nixon was "the strangest modern president," say Kessler's agents, and his successor, Jerry Ford, was nice but "cheap." Former agent Robert B. Sulliman Jr. was angry because Jimmy Carter would get to the office about 6 a.m. and "do a little work for half an hour, then close the curtains and take a nap" without informing the press of his breaks.

The busy, self-important agents also disliked tardiness, which is one reason they couldn't stand Bill Clinton or Al Gore. Former agent Dave Saleeba waited impatiently for Vice President Gore one day, only to discover him "eating a muffin at the pool." The book's inane and endless anecdotes never rise much higher. A conservative lot, the agents found President Ronald Reagan "a down-to-earth individual;" his successor, George H.W. Bush, "a great man, just an all around nice person"; and George W. Bush "down to earth, caring." Agents, Kessler says, loved to "chop wood" with the younger Bush and appreciated "the fact that Bush is punctual." Otherwise, apparently, they might have been forced to fire him.

Kessler never asks the agents anything substantive, such as if they had any insights into how the Bush White House involved the country in the Iraq war. Throughout the book, many of the current and former agents come across as little more than disgruntled rent-a-guards, complaining about their shifts, their assignments and their pay while traveling on Air Force One and walking the halls of the West Wing.

They also have larger issues. They complain that on occasion, such as during campaigns, staff members order metal detectors shut down to accommodate large crowds -- tens of thousands of people sometimes -- surging into stadiums and other large venues to hear candidates. They fail to see how close we have already come to a fortress society and that candidates occasionally choose to assume the risk as the price of democracy. The agents complain that they, too, are put at risk. But for all their talk of danger, there are few jobs in law enforcement as safe as that of a Secret Service agent. None have been killed during an assassination attempt in more than half a century, and few have been wounded. It is far more hazardous to put on a Bureau of Indian Affairs or Park Police badge. What is truly dangerous is the kind of National Enquirer-style gossip in Kessler's book.

In the future, without "trust and confidence" in their agents, presidents will want to keep them at a distance, out of spying range -- and out of safety range, when split seconds may count. And with President Obama, such concerns may be especially acute. "Once Obama became president," Kessler says, "the Secret Service experienced a 400 percent increase in the number of threats against the president, in comparison with President Bush." Two weeks ago, outside an Obama town hall meeting in Maryland, a man held a sign reading "Death to Obama" and "Death to Michelle and her two stupid kids." And last week, at an Obama event in Phoenix, a dozen gun-toting protesters -- including one with an AR-15 assault rifle on his shoulder and a handgun in his holster -- lingered nearby.

Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

[Murph]

Do you expect anything else from the arch liberal rag the WaPo? In dignitary protection, timing and scheduling are everything. Why should Kessler ask about policy, the book is NOT ABOUT policy, it's about protecting the Man.

[Patti Edens]

Originally Posted by Murph

Do you expect anything else from the arch liberal rag the WaPo? In dignitary protection, timing and scheduling are everything. Why should Kessler ask about policy, the book is NOT ABOUT policy, it's about protecting the Man.

I don't know if you mean me or just in general, but I didn't expect anything else. I just put it in there to be "fair and balanced" as my favorite TV station says. I had to crack up when they suggested that Kessler should have asked a SS agent, "if they had any insights into how the Bush White House involved the country in the Iraq war". How absurd and totally ridiculous.

I plan to pick up a copy of the book. There were some other interesting reviews at Amazon.

[Jake]

Originally Posted by donlfaulkner

Not trying to get political, but none of these surprised me other than obummer. I still think he's a phony.
.....

You're not very good at "not trying to get political"

[Daniel Bates]

Thread closed due to political content.