Ronald Kessler - The First Family Detail

In an e-mail to supporters, Biden proclaimed himself the “new sheriff in town.” He said that “particularly at a time when we’re facing tough decisions about reducing our deficit, it’s a no-brainer to stop spending taxpayer dollars on things that benefit nobody.”

Yet besides spending a million dollars on personal trips to Delaware and receiving an annual salary of $230,700 as vice president, Biden has free use of the vice president’s residence on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Observatory. At least five Navy stewards attend to every personal need of Biden and Jill, including cooking, shopping for food, cleaning, and doing the laundry.

As a U.S. senator, Biden proudly publicized the fact that he commuted daily by train from his home in Delaware to Washington during the week. Amtrak named the newly renovated Wilmington station the Joseph R. Biden Jr. Railroad Station. But after taking office as vice president, a Secret Service agent says Biden began the pattern of commuting to his Delaware home on Air Force Two.

While Secret Service agents say flying is the most secure way for Biden to make the trips, the question is why the sheriff who is supposed to cut out government waste thinks it is appropriate to take such frequent trips for personal reasons, even flying back and forth to Andrews on the same day to play golf with Obama. They note that Biden has continued the trips despite the fact that government employees have seen their salaries cut because of the sequester and its budget reductions.

Among themselves, Secret Service agents assigned to Biden’s detail and officers of the 89th Airlift Wing, which flies the planes, express outrage at what they consider an abuse. Given the fact that Biden’s job is in Washington, where the government provides him with a luxurious mansion, they say there is no justification for charging the government for such frequent trips back home. They refer derisively to Biden’s practice of constantly flying back and forth as the “Wilmington shuttle.”

“The Air Force Two guys pull their hair out over this,” says a Secret Service agent who deals with the crew. In contrast to Biden, Obama reserves personal trips on Air Force One for occasional vacations, Air Force officers point out.

While agents personally like the potential 2016 presidential candidate, “that doesn’t mean we don’t see the waste, abuse, and risk-taking,” a current agent says, referring to Biden’s insistence that his aide with the nuclear football remain separated from his motorcade in Delaware.

Today the President’s Protective Detail consists of three hundred agents, including those protecting the president’s family, and assigns twenty-five to forty agents to the president per shift. The Vice President’s Protective Detail consists of one hundred fifty agents. In all, the Secret Service has thirty-five hundred special agents, compared with three hundred in John F. Kennedy’s day

As the president moves about in public, six agents surround him. They include a shift supervisor and a detail leader.

“The detail leader is right on him or very close,” an agent says. “He’s literally right behind him, probably with his hand on his back or maybe even holding on to his belt, so that if he had to pull him or pivot him, he could do that right away.”

When the president is advancing, the agents form a box configuration, and if he’s moving down a narrow corridor, they form a diamond configuration. Other agents stand post at access points.

After 9/11, 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. President Obama has increased the number under protection to forty-five, including aides such as Valerie Jarrett.

When Kennedy was president, the Secret Service conducted little advance work before a presidential visit. Today, ten days before a presidential visit out of town, the Secret Service dispatches eight to ten agents to conduct advance planning.

An advance team includes a lead agent, a transportation agent, an airport agent, agents assigned to each event site, a hotel advance agent, one or two logistics agents, a technical security agent, and an intelligence agent. As part of advance preparations, a team of military communications personnel from the Defense Department’s White House Communications Agency is dispatched to handle radios and phones. They ship their equipment and additional personnel on Air Force C-130 cargo planes. Depending on how much exposure the president will encounter, members of the Uniformed Division’s countersniper team and the counterassault team from the Secret Service’s Special Operations Division may go along on an advance.

Before the president is checked in, an entire floor of a hotel is reserved, plus the two floors below. Agents sweep the area for explosives, bugging devices, and radioactive material or other contaminants. They check carpeting for concealed objects. They examine picture frames that could be hollow and conceal explosives. They install bulletproof glass on windows, and they plan escape routes from every room that the president might enter.

“In the hotel, if the president will stay overnight, we secure the suite and floor he will stay on and make it as safe as the White House,” an agent says. “We seal it off. No other guests can be on the floor. If the floor is huge, we will separate it [with guarded partitions]. But no outside people will be on the floor, guaranteed.”

The Secret Service checks the backgrounds of employees who prepare food for the president and other members of the first family during a trip. If an employee has been convicted of an assault or drug violation, agents will ask the dining establishment to give the employee a day off. To ensure that no one slips poison into food served the president at a hotel or restaurant, an agent randomly selects from the prepared dishes the one to be served to the president and watches as it is brought out to him. Employees who have been cleared are given color-coded pins to wear. On overseas trips, Navy stewards might prepare dishes for the president. With food prepared at the White House, the Secret Service is not directly involved.

“You can’t watch everything,” a Secret Service agent says. “But the majority of stuff is checked. We have lists of the suppliers. We check the employees once and go back randomly and check them again to see if anyone has been added.”

In contrast to the cursory look the Secret Service gave to John F. Kennedy’s planned Dallas parade route, its Forensic Services Division now creates virtual three-dimensional models of buildings along a motorcade route so that agents will know what to expect and can plan what to do at spots where the motorcade may be more vulnerable to attack. The division also produces slide shows of the floor plans of buildings where the president will speak.

“We’re doing things now that are so much more advanced than what they would have done before 9/11,” an agent says. “The work that we do now is just so much more comprehensive and detailed.”

During the advance for a presidential trip, the Secret Service picks out safe houses, such as fire stations, to be used in case of a threat. It plots the best routes to local hospitals and alerts the hospitals of an impending presidential visit.

As many as twenty-five vehicles could comprise the president’s motorcade. A helicopter hovers overhead, and no aircraft are allowed in the area.

For an overseas trip, military cargo planes airlift in more than fifty support vehicles. Fighter jets fly overhead so they can intervene quickly if a plane gets too close to the president’s location on the ground. As many as six hundred people could be included on an overseas presidential trip, including military personnel and up to fifty Secret Service agents. Including the White House doctor and other administration personnel, a domestic presidential trip entails two hundred to three hundred people.