Ronald Kessler - In the President's Secret Service

In her book Living History , Hillary Clinton wrote of her gratitude to the White House staff. The truth was, says a Secret Service agent, “Hillary did not speak to us. We spent years with her. She never said thank you.”

Agents found that Clinton’s vice president, Al Gore—code-named Sundance—was cut from the same cloth. Every agent has heard that when Gore was bawling out his son, Al Gore III, over poor performance at school, he warned him, “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.”

Gore motioned toward the agents protecting him.

“Sometimes Gore would come out of the residence, get into the car, and he wouldn’t even give the guys the coachman’s nod. Nothing,” former agent Albracht says. “It was like we didn’t exist. We were only there to facilitate him to get from point A to point B.” As professionals, Albracht says, “We do not have to like you to protect you, but it can make the long hours a bit more tolerable.”

In contrast to Gore, his wife, Tipper, was so friendly with agents that she would play pranks, spraying them with water from a spritzer bottle she used after running. However, “She always insisted on male agents,” says former agent Chomicki, who was on Gore’s detail. “She didn’t want any female agents on the protection squad.”

Like Clinton, Gore was often late. One time he showed up an hour late for a dinner with the mayor of Beijing. Another time a Secret Service helicopter that was to shadow him in Las Vegas almost ran out of fuel because Gore was so late coming out of his hotel.

“The schedule would call for him to leave the vice president’s residence at seven-fifteen A.M.,” former agent Dave Saleeba says. “At seven-thirty A.M, we would check on him, and he would be eating a muffin at the pool.”

Gore “wouldn’t come out of the vice president’s residence on time,” Chomicki says. “He’d have an appointment at the White House, he’d get into the car and say, ‘Could you speed it up, but don’t use the lights and sirens? Get me there as fast as you can.’”

The Secret Service was not about to speed in traffic without lights and sirens. But agents quickly came up with a solution.

“The special agent in charge would come on the radio and say, ‘Yeah, let’s move as quick as we can but safely’” Chomicki says. “He’d do it just for the entertainment of the vice president.” Without pressing the button to transmit, another agent would pretend to say into the radio, “Hey, let’s go, speed it up,” Chomicki says. “That would satisfy Gore in the backseat.”

Gore never carried money with him and would borrow from Secret Service agents when he needed some. One of Gore’s daughters was graduating from high school, and Gore attended a reception with a cash bar at Old Ebbitt Grill for the families of the graduates.

“So Gore goes up and tries to get a glass of wine, and they want money,” recalls Chomicki.

“How much money you got?” Gore asked Chomicki.

Jokingly, Chomicki said, “I do real good. I’m a special agent. I make a lot of money.”

Gore explained that he had to pay for drinks.

“What do you need, twenty dollars?” Chomicki asked.

“That’ll work,” Gore said.

Chomicki handed a twenty-dollar bill to Gore, who later paid him back.

“I think he always thought, ‘I’m the vice president. I don’t have to pay for anything,’” Chomicki says.

Gore would insist on low-calorie healthy food, but whenever he saw food, he would grab some. “We used to laugh at that,” Chomicki says. “Usually, when they have a holding room, it’s standard that wherever you go, the host is always going to put something out just to be courteous. Al Gore couldn’t pass on a cookie. There wasn’t a cookie he didn’t like. He’d work hard at trying to keep his weight down. You saw after he got out of office how he bulked up.”

As part of his health kick, Gore arranged to have bottled water delivery and a refrigerated dispenser at the residence. As part of routine security precautions, the Secret Service would test the water at the vice president’s residence. “They’ve got this phenomenal water purification system in both the White House and the vice president’s residence,” says former agent Chomicki. “We would test the water once a month, and the technical security guys used to come up and take samples from all the sinks and taps.”

But Chomicki, a Secret Service supervisor, noticed that the bottled water was not being tested. After he suggested that it be tested as well, the Secret Service sent samples of the water to the Environmental Protection Agency for testing. Two days later, EPA called Chomicki. A shocked technician told him the water at the vice president’s residence was laced with bacteria.

“He said the EPA had to expand its graph to be able to count the number of bacteria,” Chomicki recalls. “The water could cause headaches, diarrhea, and stomachaches.”

As a result of the test findings, the EPA confiscated huge batches of water from the bottled water company.

AFTER 9/11, THE Secret Service faced a double whammy. On the one hand, in a reflexive effort to show that the government was doing something to improve security, President George W. Bush and Congress created the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), an amalgam of twenty-two agencies with 180,000 employees. On March 1, 2003, the Secret Service was transferred from the Treasury Department to the new agency. After being a star at the treasury, the Secret Service became a stepchild competing for funds with other agencies, which were often dysfunctional.

On the other hand, demands on the Secret Service grew exponentially. As outlined in my book The Terrorist Watch: Inside the Desperate Race to Stop the Next Attack , al-Qaeda’s goal is to deal a devastating blow to America, preferably with nuclear weapons. After 9/11, that threat meant that protection of the president and vice president needed to be much more extensive and robust.

In response to the attacks, President Bush roughly doubled the number of individuals given Secret Service protection to twenty-seven permanent protectees, plus ten family members. Another seven were protected when traveling abroad. By executive order, Bush provided protection to individuals such as his chief of staff and national security adviser. Others, such as the secretaries of the treasury and of homeland security received protection because they are in the line of succession to the presidency. As such, they are authorized to receive protection as decided by the secretary of homeland security. Some officials received only partial protection, such as when traveling to and from work.

The Secret Service’s expanded protective duties came in addition to protecting visiting heads of state and their spouses and other official guests, an enlargement of Secret Service duties authorized by Congress in 1971. Under the Presidential Threat Protection Act of 2000, the Secret Service was also charged with planning and implementing security arrangements at “special events of national significance.”

The winter Olympics in Salt Lake City in 2002 was the first such event under the act. Prior to that, under a directive issued by President Clinton in 1998, some events such as the president’s State of the Union address had a similar designation. Other so-called national special security events are the United Nations General Assembly, presidential inaugurals, the Democratic and Republican nominating conventions, the Super Bowl, G8 summits, and a major visit such as Pope Benedict XVI’s trip to the United States in 2008. The state funerals of Presidents Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford were also designated national special security events. At these events, the Secret Service is the lead law enforcement agency and coordinates all security arrangements.