Ronald Kessler - In the President's Secret Service

Jenna taught inner-city children in Washington and later in Baltimore. Barbara maintained her interest in helping people afflicted with AIDS. Over time, the twins became more mature and demonstrated that they appreciated their detail.

“Around the Fourth of July, Jenna had a whole bunch of steaks delivered to our command post,” an agent says. “Around Christmas, she gave us all another order of steaks and hot dogs and stuff like that. It’s got to be tough being the kid of a president. I can’t imagine it.”

Asked if Barbara, Jenna, or Henry Hager had any comment, Sally McDonough, Laura Bush’s press secretary in the White House, said, “I am making a formal request that you do not include any of this nonsense in your book.”

Like Jenna and Barbara, Susan Ford Bales, the daughter of President Ford, tried to evade her Secret Service detail. Eighteen when her father became president, Susan—code-named Panda—had a reputation for romantically chasing Secret Service agents. After her father left the White House, she married Charles Vance, a Secret Service agent who was guarding the former president in California. They later divorced, and she remarried.

“In my career, Chelsea Clinton did it the best,” says an agent familiar with both her detail and the Bush twins’ details. “Treated the detail right, told them what was going on, never gave problems that I knew of.”

In recent memory, the brattiest offspring of a president was Amy Carter, who was nine when her father became president.

“Amy Carter was a mess,” says Brad Wells, an Air Force One steward. “She would look at me and pick up a package of [open] soda crackers and crush them and throw them on the floor. She did it purposely. We had to clean it up. That was our job.”

Secret Service agents guarding Amy—code-named Dynamo—at school often found themselves in the middle when Amy wanted to play with friends after school instead of going home to the White House to do her homework, as she was supposed to do. When agents told her she had to go home, “Amy would call her father and hand the phone to the agents,” Dennis Chomicki, who was on her detail, remembers. “The president would say to take Amy anywhere she wants to go. Amy just had her father wrapped up.”

Since Amy would often stay at a friend’s house through the evening, agents wound up working longer hours than if they had taken her directly to the White House. As a result, says Chomicki, “The detail would always try to get Mrs. Carter, the first lady, on the phone, because she would say, ‘Nothing doing. She’s coming home; she’s got her homework to do.’”

Of all the presidential children guarded by the Secret Service, Carter’s second oldest son, James Earl “Chip” Carter III, was one of the least liked. Twenty-six when his father won the presidency, Chip had helped campaign for him in 1976 and again gave speeches on his behalf when Carter ran for reelection in 1980.

“He was outrageous,” a Secret Service agent says. “Chip was out of control. Marijuana, liquor, chasing women.” Separated from his wife, Chip would “pick up women in Georgetown and ask if they wanted to have sex in the White House. Most of them did. He did it as often as he could,” the agent says.

At one point, Rosalynn Carter told the press that all three of her sons had “experimented” with marijuana. Their oldest son, John William “Jack” Carter, had been discharged by the navy for smoking weed.

Carter told the Secret Service that Rosalynn objected to agents and uniformed officers being armed inside the White House. According to Carter, Rosalynn cited the fact that guns made Amy “uncomfortable.” The Secret Service explained that in the event of an attack, agents would be useless if unarmed. President Carter relented.

WHEN ASSIGNING CODE names to protectees, the Secret Service starts with a random list of words, all beginning with the same letter for each family. The code names were once necessary because Secret Service radio transmissions were not encrypted. Now that they are, the Secret Service continues to use code names to avoid confusion when pronouncing the names of protectees. In addition, by using code names, agents prevent people from overhearing the subject of their conversations.

Produced by the White House Communications Agency, the list of code names excludes words that are offensive or may be easily mistaken for other words. However, those under protection may object to a code name and propose another. Thus, Lynne Cheney, a prolific author, asked for and was given the Secret Service code name Author. Dick Cheney, an avid fisherman, got the code name Angler.

George W. Bush objected to Tumbler, the code name he was initially assigned. Perhaps it reminded him of his drinking days. Instead, he chose Trailblazer. Bush’s chief of staff Josh Bolten chose Fat Boy referring to the model of his silver and black Harley-Davidson. The code name was one word, “Fatboy.” His predecessor Andy Card had been Patriot, a code name the Secret Service chose when Card said he did not like his assigned name, Potomac.

“My Secret Service detail loved the code name—even the female agents, who end up getting called Fatgirls,” Bolten tells me.

When Clinton was president, the press claimed that his brother Roger Clinton was code named Headache, presumably because he replaced Billy Carter as the black sheep of the first family. But because he was not protected by the Secret Service, Roger Clinton had no code name.

Besides those entitled by law to Secret Service protection, the president may extend protection to others by executive order. By executive order, Bush ordered coverage for Cheney’s two daughters and his six grandchildren.

Besides the vice president’s residence, the Cheneys have homes in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. After the Cheneys bought the house on the Eastern Shore, they would go there almost every weekend on a marine helicopter. The Secret Service outfitted each home with alarm systems and surveillance cameras. Looking ahead to when he would leave the vice presidency, Cheney also bought a home in McLean, Virginia.

In Cheney’s case, when Bush extended protection to his children and grandchildren, the Secret Service did not add additional agents. Instead, the agency made do by extending hours and paying overtime to agents on his detail, borrowing agents from field offices, and allowing virtually no time for the required refresher training, physical fitness, and firearms practice.

“Instead of saying, ‘Well, we’ll be glad to take care of his grandkids, but let’s just do the right thing and get some more people over here so we can cover all these added assignments,’ Secret Service management said to the president, ‘No problem, sir. We’ll take care of it,’ without giving us any more people,” says an agent who was on the vice president’s detail.

“You end up working twelve-hour days sitting in a cul-de-sac,” says another agent on the detail. “That’s why you don’t get the training, because you’re having to fill in these assignments. You’re fighting battles on a multitude of fronts, because you’ve got the protectees you’re trying to make happy, and you turn around and see people we work for who don’t care about us at all. It leaves you with feelings of hopelessness, and that’s why people want to leave.”

Before the Cheneys’ daughter Mary—code-named Alpine—had a child, the Secret Service provided full protection to only her older sister, Elizabeth, since she had kids. Mary received partial protection: Agents drove her to and from work. But Mary seemed to feel competitive.