Ronald Kessler - The First Family Detail

Throughout Nixon’s career, Pat Nixon managed to hide from the public the fact that she was a smoker. She died of lung cancer in June 1993.

An agent describes Nixon’s daughter Julie as “a princess, the sweetest girl you would ever want to meet in your life.” On the other hand, Nixon’s daughter Tricia was “a little eccentric. If she went out and shook hands, she would go nuts when she got back in the car to try to clean her hands off.”

Agents could never figure out what Julie saw in her husband, David, the grandson of former president Dwight Eisenhower. While he treated agents well, they considered David Eisenhower to be the most clueless person they had ever protected. One day, the Nixons presented their son-in-law with a barbecue grill as a Christmas present. With the Nixons inside his house, Eisenhower tried to start the grill to char some steaks. After a short time, he told Agent Wunderlich that the charcoal would not light.

“He had poured most of a bag of briquets into the pit of the grill and lit matches on top of them, but he had not used fire starter,” Wunderlich says.

“Do you know anything about garage door openers?” Eisenhower asked another Secret Service agent. “I need a little help. I’ve had it two years, and I don’t get a light. Shouldn’t the light come on?”

“Maybe the lightbulb is burnt out,” the agent said.

“Really?” David said.

The agent looked up. There was no bulb in the socket.

When David Eisenhower was going to George Washington University School of Law in Washington, because of increasing threats against his father-in-law, agents gave him what they call loose surveillance. One time when he came out of a class, Eisenhower drove his red Pinto to the Safeway in Georgetown.

“He parks and buys some groceries,” an agent says. “A woman parks in a red Pinto nearby. He comes out in forty-five minutes and puts the groceries in the other Pinto. He spent a minute and a half to two minutes trying to start it. Meanwhile, she comes out, screams, and says, ‘What are you doing in my car?’”

“This is my car,” he insisted. “I just can’t get it started right now.”

The woman threatened to call the police. He finally got out, and she drove off.

“He was still dumbfounded,” the former agent says. “He looked at us. We pointed at his car. He got in and drove off like nothing had happened. Our attitude was, this guy doesn’t even know his own goddamn car.”

Subsequently, Eisenhower bought a new Oldsmobile. He planned to drive it from California to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to see his grandmother Mamie Eisenhower. Agents remember President Eisenhower’s widow, code-named Springtime, as prim and proper.

“We would say we are going to the Mamie Eisenhower Finishing School,” an agent who was on her detail says. “Everything had to be correct and proper. She would never raise her voice. The car had to be driven correctly. Manners at the table had to be correct.”

Afraid of flying, Mamie traveled overseas by ship. She graciously invited the wives of her Secret Service detail on the trips, paying for fares.

David Eisenhower was driving the new car across the country to see her when it broke down in Phoenix. He called a local dealership, which said it would fix the car the next morning. After staying overnight in a motel, Eisenhower arrived at the dealership, where the car had been towed. The dealership told him the problem had been fixed: The car had run out of gas and needed a fill-up.

David Eisenhower again figured in a Nixon drama when the former president and Pat were having dinner at Julie and David’s home in California.

“They’re eating, and we’re keeping an eye on them through a window,” a former agent says. “All of a sudden, Nixon gets up and comes outside and says to the agents, ‘Let’s go. Get the car. I’m leaving.’”

“Okay, where is Mrs. Nixon?” an agent asked.

“She’s not coming. She’s staying.”

A few days earlier, a Nixon aide had accused agents of stealing a case of wine, infuriating them. But driving back to Nixon’s home in San Clemente, Nixon said triumphantly to the agents, “Well, I know who took the wine.”

“Mr. President, you discovered where it went?” an agent replied.

“Yes, David! Goddamn kid, he could’ve told me. He could’ve had it if he wanted it. He doesn’t know how to ask.”

“Nixon got so mad, he left,” the agent says.

“Nixon was a strange guy,” a former agent says. “Politics was his whole life.” Despite the way he disgraced the presidency, Nixon “had his fingers on a lot more with the Republican Party than most people know,” a former agent says. When Ronald Reagan was running for president, “Reagan called him just about every day,” the former agent says. “Reagan wanted him to go out and support him on the campaign trail.”

Nixon said it would be the “kiss of death” if he supported Reagan publicly. “But you’ll have all the money you need,” Nixon told Reagan. “I still control the purse strings of the Republican Party.”

In 1985, Nixon dropped Secret Service protection when the press started trying to find out how much his protection cost.

“He wanted to get away from press inquiries and Freedom of Information requests,” an agent on his detail says. “He said, ‘It’s nobody’s goddamn business how much time I spend and what I do.’”

Nixon was “very private, and he hated the press,” an agent says. “He hated to divulge anything.”

After the election of Barack Obama, threats against the president soared by 400 percent. Most came from racists who had no political affiliation. Many of the comments appeared on white supremacist websites.

Even before Obama decided to run, Michelle Obama told her husband of her concern that a black presidential candidate could be in jeopardy because of his race. The threats have since leveled off to about ten a day, about the same number George W. Bush received on average while in office.

The threats come in by letter, e-mail, phone, and fax. Lately, they have even been tweeted. They vow to kill the president, the first lady, or their kids.

The Secret Service investigates each threat, and if the culprit can be located, the Protective Intelligence and Assessment Division places the suspect into one of three categories. Those considered Class III threats are the most dangerous. They appear to have a serious intention of carrying out an assassination and have the means to do it. For example, they may have had firearms training.

Close to a hundred people are on the Class III list. These individuals are constantly checked on. Courts have given the Secret Service wide latitude in dealing with anyone who may be an immediate threat to the president.

“We will interview serious threats every three months and interview neighbors,” an agent says. “If we feel he is really dangerous, we monitor his movements almost on a daily basis. We monitor the mail.”

If the president is traveling to a city where a Class III threat lives, Secret Service agents will show up at his door before the visit. Intelligence advance agents will warn him to stay away from the president during his visit. They will ask if the individual plans to go out and, if so, what his destination is. They will then conduct surveillance of his home and follow him if he leaves.

Nothing is left to chance.

“If they aren’t locked up, we go out and sit on them,” former agent William Albracht says. “You usually have a rapport with these guys because you’re interviewing them every quarter just to see how they’re doing, what they’re doing, if they are staying on their meds, or whatever. We knock on their door. We say, ‘How’re you doing, Freddy? President’s coming to town, what are your plans?’ What we always want to hear is ‘I’m going to stay away.’”