Ronald Kessler: The First Family Detail

Every second counts. By the time the command center establishes communication with the president or vice president through the nuclear football, nuclear missiles from a submarine may have already wiped out New York City. While the country’s ballistic missile defense system may counteract other incoming missiles, a retaliatory strike is essential to disable the enemy’s military capability and prevent further strikes. That, in turn, depends on the president and vice president discharging their most important responsibility by making sure the military aide with the football is near them at all times. The Pentagon does its part by staging regular practice drills to verify that the military aide is able to execute his job of giving the president or vice president immediate access to the football.

Without the football and the appropriate codes, it “doesn’t matter if we’ve got a thousand missiles verified inbound to the United States, we would be unable to launch a retaliatory strike,” General Hugh Shelton, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote in his book Without Hesitation: The Odyssey of an American Warrior . “If our survival depended on launching a preemptive strike, without the president’s having [the football and authentication codes], such a strike would be impossible.” He adds that it is “crucial” that they “remain within very close proximity to the president at all times.”

Agents believe Biden insists on only two vehicles in his motorcade in Delaware because he wants to maintain his image back home as a regular Joe. But besides rendering the country potentially defenseless in the event of a nuclear attack, “he is making the agents vulnerable by not respecting what they need to do and making him more vulnerable in case of an attack on him,” an agent says. “If the bad guy knows that they’re rolling up there short and there’s only two vehicles, it’s easy to spot, and it’s easy to take him out. He would be a sitting duck.”

Thus, according to Secret Service agents, Biden seems to care more about his image than carrying out the only significant responsibility required of him as vice president: to launch retaliatory strikes in the event of a nuclear attack. That dwarfs the only duty the U.S. Constitution assigns to him—choosing whether to vote in the Senate to break a tie.

Yet despite the obvious danger to the country, no one in Secret Service management has blown the whistle on Biden.

“We drive the vehicle with the military aide,” an agent says. “If the president goes down and we can’t locate the military aide to take military action, that’s on us. We don’t have the backbone to say, ‘Mr. Vice President, we can’t separate the control vehicle with the military aide and the doctor from you.’”

As a result, “unfortunately what’s going to happen is either you’re going to have a dead vice president in Delaware or you’re going to have agents killed in Delaware because Secret Service management refused to stand up to the vice president and say, ‘No sir, we can’t roll with this many assets short,’” an agent notes. “He wants to be Joe, and he does not want the vehicles around him. The situation is alarming, but the culture of Secret Service management is to go along, in hopes of getting a high-paying job in the private sector.”

If Biden’s actions are irresponsible, his behavior with agents is equally telling about his character. Unlike Hillary Clinton, Biden treats agents with respect and goes out of his way to spend time with the agents’ kids when they visit the White House. Jill Biden—code-named Capri—is equally gracious with agents. But routinely, the vice president thoughtlessly decides to go to Wilmington or elsewhere without giving agents any advance notice.

“Biden or his staff continually change the schedule, and that’s a grueling four years for agents to be assigned to his detail because of travel back and forth to Delaware, last-minute movement, and no set schedule,” an agent says. “Sometimes he gives literally a few minutes’ notice that ‘Hey, we’re going to Wilmington.’”

Because Biden is so unpredictable and his personal trips so frequent, the Secret Service rents more than twenty condominiums in Greenville for agents who must accompany him when he returns to his home state.

“It’s tough on people’s family lives and marriages,” an agent says. “Because of the fluid schedule, we don’t have the manpower to allow any time for firearms requalification or physical fitness training.”

Behind the scenes, Biden’s behavior is even more bizarre. The vice president’s residence is a handsome 9,150-square-foot, three-story mansion overlooking Massachusetts Avenue NW. Complete with pool, pool house, and indoor gym, the white brick house was built in 1893 as the home of the superintendent of the Naval Observatory. In 1974, Congress turned it into the official residence of the vice president and gave it the address One Observatory Circle.

Biden’s seven-thousand-square-foot home in Greenville, the hometown of many Du Pont family descendants, sits on four acres on a lake. Like the vice president’s home, it has a pool. Biden also owns a small carriage house on his property, where his widowed mother, Jean, lived until she died in 2010. The Secret Service now rents it from Biden for $2,200 a month.

Agents say that, whether at the vice president’s residence or at his home in Delaware, Biden has a habit of swimming in his pool nude. Female Secret Service agents find that offensive.

Because of Biden’s lack of consideration as evidenced by that habit and his refusal to give agents advance notice of his trips back home, being assigned to his detail is considered the second worst assignment in the Secret Service after being assigned to protect Hillary Clinton.

“Biden likes to be revered as everyday Joe, and that’s his thing,” an agent says. “But the reality is no agents want to go on his detail because Biden makes agents’ lives so tough.”

If Joe Biden is inconsiderate with Secret Service agents, Hillary Clinton can make Richard Nixon look like Mahatma Gandhi. When in public, Hillary smiles and acts graciously. As soon as the cameras are gone, her angry personality, nastiness, and imperiousness become evident.

During the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, a Secret Service uniformed officer was standing post on the South Lawn when Hillary arrived by limo.

“The first lady steps out of the limo, and another uniformed officer says to her, ‘Good morning, ma’am,’” a former uniformed officer recalls. “Her response to him was ‘F— off.’ I couldn’t believe I heard it.”

Everyone on her detail recalls the fate of Christopher B. Emery, a White House usher who made the mistake of returning Barbara Bush’s call after she had left the White House. Emery had helped Barbara learn to use her laptop. Now the former first lady was having computer trouble. Twice, Emery helped her out. For that, Hillary Clinton fired him. Emery, the father of four, could not find another job for a year.

According to W. David Watkins, a Clinton presidential assistant in charge of administration, Hillary was also behind the mass firings of seven White House Travel Office employees. The move had been initiated by Catherine A. Cornelius, a third cousin of Bill Clinton’s who wanted herself placed in charge of the Travel Office, and by Bill Clinton friends who had been seeking the travel business for themselves, according to a General Accountability Office report.

In a memorandum intended for Thomas F. McLarty, who was the White House chief of staff, Watkins wrote of the firing that “we both know that there would be hell to pay” if “we failed to take swift and decisive action in conformity with the First Lady’s wishes.”