Ronald Kessler - In the President's Secret Service

A team of only two men “cannot do all of those tasks, on top of communicating to the protective detail a status report detailing number of attackers, number of good guys or bad guys killed or captured, and then requesting direction from the detail leader about the next course of action,” the agent says.

William Albracht, a founding member and four-year team leader of the counterassault teams, could not believe that the Secret Service now cuts corners by reducing the team in many cases to only two agents.

“CAT team members are comprised of highly trained and extremely motivated agents,” Albracht says. “All are volunteers, and after an exhausting selection process, those that qualify are hand-picked for the assignment. The counterassault team itself is organized as a coordinated unit.”

Albracht, who taught new agents, says a counterassault team cannot operate with only two agents. “When an attack initiates, one team deploys immediately, tries to flank and go to the actual source of the attack,” he says. “The other lays down a base of fire. Once the counterassault team achieves fire superiority, the second prong of the counterattack moves in.”

If the team is cut to two members, “It’s not a team,” Albracht says. “Then it would be just two guys with submachine guns.”

Similarly, Reginald Ball, who was on the counterassault team for three years, says, “The team is always at least five members. Otherwise, the concept does not work.”

When first daughter Barbara Bush was in Africa in 2004 and 2005, a majority of the CAT team leaders and assistant team leaders signed a letter to the then assistant special agent in charge (ASAIC) of CAT, conveying their concerns over the fact that her CAT had been cut to two agents.

“The ASAIC responded by denying there was any problem and saying we should do the job we are tasked with, whether it is a full team or a two-man element,” an agent who was on the trip says.

Besides cutting CAT teams, since its absorption by DHS, the Secret Service has cut back on protection of the U.N. General Assembly. When the General Assembly is in session, every spare agent is assigned to guard the more than one hundred thirty heads of state and the sixty-three spouses they bring to New York City. High-level protectees receive a full detail, with both counterassault and counter-sniper teams.

But the Secret Service now assigns lower-level protectees what is called a dot formation—only a detail leader and two agents working twelve-hour shifts. In many cases, agents are reassigned from protecting the president and vice president or from being on their CAT teams to go to New York. During this period, an agent is not allowed to take annual leave unless he has a death or major illness in his immediate family.

Before the Secret Service became part of DHS, it would make sure lower-level protectees had adequate protection by assigning officers from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms; Customs and Border Protection; or the U.S. Marshals Service to supplement each detail.

“The dot formation is a joke and simply window dressing that allows us to accomplish our taxi service mission,” an agent detailed to protect heads of state at the U.N. General Assembly says. “Any attempt on a protectee would in all likelihood be successful.”

While U.N. coverage and CAT teams have been cut, in-service training, time for workouts, physical fitness and training, and firearms training and qualification also have been slashed.

“Every six weeks, you are supposed to cycle out to training for two weeks,” says an agent. “For two solid weeks you should be training, shooting. These are the agents that are assigned to protect the vice president and the president. But I’ve been on the detail for nineteen months, and I’ve gone to Beltsville [the Secret Service training facility] once. Instead, you’re told you have an assignment to go sit for the grandchildren of the vice president.”

“Most law enforcement agencies require anywhere from forty to a hundred twenty hours per year of in-service training for its officers,” says an agent on one of the top protective details. “Do you know how many days of protective training I’ve had in the last two years? Zero. No review of legal rulings, interview techniques, investigative trends, protective intelligence investigations, or advance protection work. No constant training in ambush response, emergency medicine scenarios, or emergency vehicle operation.

“Training is almost nonexistent, and it shows,” says the agent. He cites one training scenario where a motorcade is ambushed. The shift leader is supposed to identify where the attack is coming from. Based on that, the agents know how to deploy and go after the attackers.

“What we saw was just an absolute embarrassment, people running around in circles, not knowing where to go, what to do, couldn’t identify where the attack was coming from,” the agent says. “They would have all been killed within a matter of seconds had that been an actual attack. We’d have lost everybody and the protectee.”

According to Secret Service policy, “We are supposed to be given three hours a week just for physical training,” another current agent says. “Well, that’s never going to happen.”

Secret Service rules require agents based in Washington to qualify with a pistol once a month and with long guns every three months. But, in contrast to years past, many agents find they are given time to take the qualifying test for long guns only once or twice a year.

“I’ve had conversations with special agents in charge who say they are not able to get the requalification training in they would like because of the operational demands they have,” says Danny Spriggs, who retired from the Secret Service as deputy director in 2004. In previous years, “We never sacrificed training,” he says.

Agents who have left the Secret Service to join other federal law enforcement agencies report that, in many cases, training in firearms and counterterrorism tactics in those agencies far exceeds the quality of what the Secret Service offers.

“They actually encourage training here rather than making up excuses for not training,” one of those agents says.

Unlike the FBI, the Secret Service has no use for outside education.

“If you wanted to go out and get a master’s degree or a doctoral degree, it’s on your own, and they won’t work around your schedule,” a Secret Service agent says. “The FBI will give you sabbatical time.” The bureau also will pay for outside education if it is related to an agent’s field of work. “Management’s mentality at the Secret Service is that the agent doesn’t need to know that. The agent just needs to do his job and shut up.”

Standards are so lax that agents are actually handed blank evaluations for possible promotions and fitness ratings and asked to fill them in themselves. According to agents, those who have “juice” or “hooks” with management because they play golf with someone receive good evaluations. Agents who don’t have hooks are told, “You’re getting a rating of forty-six out of fifty, no matter what.”

“You are supposed to do your physical training test quarterly, but I haven’t done one in two, three years,” an agent says. “When you do, you enter your scores yourself on a form and hand it in.” In fact, the agent says, “I’m one of the PT instructors. And because the service takes physical training so lightly, I don’t take it seriously either. Just give me a sheet, and I trust that what the agent says he did is accurate.”

A third agent estimates that 98 percent of the agents provide their own scores for the PT test. “You fill out a form, hand it to the guy, he enters it in, and he doesn’t know if you did your PT test or not,” he says. “You test yourself.”