Ronald Kessler - In the President's Secret Service

Just then, Barbara Bush—code named Tranquility—came along and told George, son of Jeb Bush, to get off the court.

“When we went down and saw the president’s grandson, there was no question he should be the one playing on the court,” Newman says. “But Mrs. Bush saw it and just plucked him off. She really sent the message not only to staff but to family as well that you remember your manners.”

“Bush 41 is a great man, just an all-around nice person,” an agent says. “Both he and Mrs. Bush are very thoughtful, and they think outside their own little world. They think of other people.”

Bush “made it clear to all his staff that none of them was a security expert, and if the Secret Service made a decision, he was the one to sign off on it, and they were never to question our decisions or make life difficult,” Dowling says. “So consequently it was kind of a moment in time, because all the entities really worked well together to make his protection and the activities that he participated in successful.”

Bush was so considerate of the agents who protected him that he would stay in town on Christmas Eve so agents could spend it with their families. Then he would fly to Texas the day after Christmas. The Secret Service’s only complaint about Bush is that, to this day, he is hyperactive.

“He can’t sit still,” an agent says. “He is in perpetual motion.”

In every hotel, the Secret Service had to make sure Bush had an exercise bike in his suite. If the hotel did not have one, the agency rented one.

“He can’t read a book,” the agent says. “He has to be on a treadmill or StairMaster. It’s go, go, go. For the Secret Service, that meant more work. The tennis court, horseshoes, the golf course, the boat. Always something.”

Early on, Bush chafed at protection.

“Most people have difficulty adjusting to having protection,” says former Secret Service deputy director Danny Spriggs. “These folks do it because it goes with the job. However, it’s nothing they embrace initially. You infringe on their private lives. Even though I did it for twenty-eight years, I can’t imagine what it would be like to be told I can’t go to a movie or amusement park whenever I want, or to be told that friends I have known for years must submit their name, Social Security number, and date of birth before they can visit me.”

One week, with motorcycle sirens screaming, the motorcade twice took him to events just a few blocks from the White House. Bush fussed about the precautions and wanted to know why he couldn’t simply walk to the events. His protective detail decided to play a joke on him. While the president’s limousine and backup are driven by agents, other Secret Service vehicles in the motorcade are driven by what are called physical support technicians. Billy Ingram, one of these drivers, was a grizzled Korean War veteran.

“He always had a cigarette dangling from his lips with ashes dropping all over,” says Joe Funk, an agent who was on Bush’s detail. “His personal car was twenty years old and dented. It reeked of cigarette smoke.”

Agents affixed the presidential seal and American flag to Ingram’s car. When the president came out for the next motorcade ride, his limousine was nowhere in sight. Instead, Ingram’s car was at the head of the procession.

“He looked at it,” Funk says. “He turned to Barbara and said, ‘What’s going on?’”

“Well, you’re always complaining about the limos. Let’s go,” the first lady said.

Bush got into Ingram’s beat-up car and said to the agents, “You win.”

“They drove him to the gate, and that’s where the presidential limo was,” Funk says.

Despite warnings from his detail, Bush had a habit of leaving the Oval Office through the door to the Rose Garden and greeting tourists lined up along the fence on Pennsylvania Avenue. The detail assigned agents to rush to the fence as soon as an alarm notified them that Bush had opened the door to the outside. Soon, The Washington Post ran a story reporting that onlookers were delighted at their unexpected greetings from the president. Right after that, when Bush again greeted fans at the fence, agents spotted what agent Glenn Smith calls a “textbook” possible assassin.

“The man had on a coat in the summer, he looked disheveled, and his eyes were darting in all directions,” Smith says. “We patted him down, and it turned out he had a nine-millimeter pistol on him and probably intended to use it on the president.”

The head of the detail pointed out to Bush that by greeting people spontaneously, he was not only endangering himself but his agents. After that, “Bush would give us time to set up a secure zone at the fence.”

As a courtesy, Secret Service agents try to preset the radio in the limousine to the stations the president or vice president likes. Bush is a country-western fan, so agents preset the radio to country-western stations in whatever town they happened to be in.

“One time, Bush 41 got into the limo and turned on the radio, and, of course, a country-western station came on immediately, and one of his favorite songs was playing,” Albracht says. “He started singing along with it. The agent who was driving looked up in the rearview mirror and saw Bush.”

“Larry, what do you think?” Bush asked the driver.

Without hesitation, Larry answered, “Don’t give up the day job, boss.”

Secret Service agents are instructed to ignore any conversations that take place in their presence, but of course they hear everything. At one point, the Secret Service was driving President Bush and Barbara Bush, along with two of their children, who were in the backseat of the limo.

“They were engaged in a deep conversation about something, and suddenly they were distracted,” Albracht says. “When they asked each other what they had been talking about, they couldn’t remember, and the agent who was driving said ‘Y’all talkin’ about Social Security’”

That was a violation of Secret Service protocol, and the supervisor in the right-front seat later reprimanded the agent. The agent’s tenure in the transportation section was about to end, but Bush liked him. When he hadn’t seen him for a while, Bush asked the Secret Service to assign him as his driver. That did not sit well with supervisors.

When Bush was president, the Secret Service obtained intelligence that a Colombian drug cartel had put out a contract on his family. As a result, Secret Service agents began protecting future president George W. Bush, his children, and his sister and brothers.

“He [George W. Bush] had just bought a new Lincoln, and we were following him closely,” former agent John Golden says. “He stopped quickly when a traffic light turned yellow. We plowed into his car, but it turned out there was no damage.”

Because Bush’s entire family would converge on his summer home in Kennebunkport, agents referred to it as Camp Timberwolf Because the home is on the water, the Secret Service enlisted the military to search for underwater explosives and patrolled the ocean in boats.

“Our cigarette boat at Kennebunkport was faster than his boat, but if we told him that, he would go out and buy a faster boat,” says Andrew Gruler, who was on the president’s detail.

At one point, Bush and Barbara flew to their Kennebunkport home in the winter. It was freezing cold, and the president and his wife came out for a walk.

“I had a hat on, and two of the other agents had hats on, but the one agent assigned to the first lady didn’t bring a hat with him,” says former agent Sullivan, who was on the president’s detail. “So the president came out with Mrs. Bush, and we started to walk.”

“Where’s your hat?” Mrs. Bush asked the hatless agent.