Ronald Kessler - In the President's Secret Service

“She got all up in arms because we sat outside her sister’s house all night long. She said, ‘Well, I think I should have that, too,’” an agent says.

Mary also complained about the Secret Service vehicle assigned to her.

“She saw that her sister had a brand-new Suburban,” an agent who was on her detail says. “Mary had an older vehicle. She was like, why can’t I have one? Next thing you know, within a day or two, she has a brand-new Suburban from the Secret Service sitting out there in front of her house.”

When her Suburban sustained some damage, the Secret Service chauffeured her in the older vehicle until the new one could be repaired.

“When she saw her old vehicle was brought back to use as her limo, she threw a fit,” an agent says. “She called bosses demanding her Suburban be brought back immediately, not realizing that it takes time to make repairs on a damaged vehicle.”

Mary objected to agents standing post overnight at the back of her home. She said they disturbed her dogs.

“I don’t even know what the back side of her house looks like because she won’t let us walk around the back because of the dogs,” an agent who was on her detail says. “Her dogs start barking. It gets them all upset if we go back there. So [we had] some cameras angled back there. But your hands are tied. It’s a thankless job anyway but then you’ve got protectees who mandate how you’re going to do your job.”

When Mary demanded that the Secret Service shuttle her friends out to restaurants, her detail leader objected. She had the agent removed from her detail.

Asked for comment, Mary Cheney said, “These stories are simply not true, and I have nothing but the utmost respect for the men and women of the Secret Service. I am deeply appreciative of everything they have done to keep my family safe over the last eight years.”

Often, protectees think of Secret Service agents as personal servants, there to act as gofers. When he was running for president, Edmund Muskie demanded that the Secret Service carry his golf bags.

“He took vacations in Kennebunkport,” a veteran agent says. “He would play eighteen holes of golf every day. He would cheat and kick the ball into the hole with his foot and pick it up and put it in. An agent would not carry his golf bags [after Muskie asked him to]. It reduces our effectiveness.”

But with a gracious woman like Lynne Cheney, agents happily offered to help with her bags. “To her credit, she shops a lot, and she’ll come out with all kinds of bags, and she’s never once that I know of ever asked us to help,” says an agent on her detail. “Probably because she doesn’t ask us, we go ahead and volunteer.”

Like the Bushes, Dick and Lynne Cheney were always on time and were well-liked by the Secret Service. The Cheneys invited agents and their families to the Christmas party they gave every year and took photos with them.

“I remember that I was probably the one hundred sixtieth click that afternoon, but when my kids walked up, Mrs. Cheney acted like we were the first picture of the day,” an agent who was on the vice president’s detail says. “She squatted down and reached out and hugged my little girl, and it really meant a lot to me.”

As with the Cheneys, agents thought highly of most members of Bush’s staff and Cabinet.

“Karl Rove loved the counterassault team,” says an agent. “He would always come by and talk to us. He took photos with us. Any time he saw us in the CAT truck, he would come over and say hello. Always smiling, always joking, a real nice man.”

“Karl Rove has a phenomenal reputation within the service, taking care of the guys,” another agent says. “Andy Card, same thing.”

In general, agents found the Bush administration to be much more friendly and appreciative of what agents do than most other administrations. In the Bush administration, there were two exceptions: Treasury Secretary John Snow and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. Agents considered Ridge the cheapest protectee they had ever known. On weekends, he would return to his home in Erie, Pennsylvania. So he would not have to pay for his own plane ticket, he would insist that agents drive him—a trip of more than six hours, one way.

“The guy would make them motorcade to Erie, Pennsylvania, almost every other weekend, or every weekend, because he didn’t want to pay for a plane ticket,” an agent who was on his detail says. “If the guy found a free meal, he was there. His reputation in the service was he was the biggest cheapskate ever.”

Instead of buying a newspaper at hotels, Ridge would ask agents for their copy of the paper.

“If somebody said, ‘Hey Mr. Secretary, appreciate it. Meal’s on us,’ Ridge would go back there the next night to the same restaurant and see how long he could milk a free meal from this place,” an agent says.

Agents liked John Snow because he loved to chat and joke with them.

“John Snow was kind of a pretty cool protectee, in that he knew every guy on the detail,” an agent says. “He’d sit in the back of his limo, and he’d talk with you. It was like a group of guys hanging out.”

But Snow, a former chairman and chief executive officer of CSX Corporation, had what agents on his detail believed was a mistress in Richmond where he and his wife lived. While Snow rented and later bought an apartment in Washington, he would travel back to his hometown almost every weekend, incurring huge expenses for taxpayers because the Secret Service had to drive him the two hours to Richmond and stay in hotels.

The Secret Service gave the woman the unofficial code name Area 51, after the supersecret air force testing ground that gives rise to conspiracy theories.

Now chairman of Cerberus Capital Management, which owns 80.1 percent of Chrysler Corp., Snow commented through his Richmond lawyer Richard Cullen, a former Virginia state attorney general and personal friend of the Snows for more than twenty-five years:

“John Snow did not have an affair…. The agents who refuse to identify themselves in making this accusation are simply and sadly very wrong.”

Agents who were on Snow’s detail say otherwise. Snow “was messing around quite a bit, and it was pretty disturbing to the guys on the detail, because we knew we were away from home for the express purpose of him to meet up with his mistress,” says a former agent who was on his detail.

When the woman’s husband was out at church on Sunday mornings, “The secretary [Snow] would say, ‘Oh, I’ve got to drop a book at their house,’” an agent recalls. Or Snow would say he had just found an article in the Richmond paper he would like to give them.

“That was grating on us, because we had to spend every weekend in Richmond, and during the week he was traveling pushing Social Security reform, so we were on the road all week,” a current agent says. “We were never home. And it pissed us off no end to realize that the only reason we were in Richmond was for the secretary to mess around.”

One morning, another agent was walking by the front window of Snow’s house in Richmond and saw Snow and the alleged mistress kissing. She would also fly to Washington to see Snow at his rented apartment near what agents refer to as the Hinckley Hilton, the Washington Hilton.

“She knew all of us by name,” the former agent says. “She’d just come out of the woodwork out of nowhere and say, ‘Hey guys!’ We’d go on hikes, and they’d be there. She was always around.”

“He really thought he had us fooled on that one,” another agent says. “She would show up at like a hotel in New York, and he would act like, ‘Oh, look who it is!’”

Early on, after Snow was appointed treasury secretary in February 2003, he would travel to Richmond with his Secret Service detail on Saturdays and return on Sundays.