Ronald Kessler: The First Family Detail

With my twentieth book, it seems appropriate to reflect on the person who made it all possible, my wife, Pamela Kessler. Back in 1985, Pam strongly supported my risky decision to leave the Washington Post and write books.

A former Washington Post reporter and author of Undercover Washington: Where Famous Spies Lived, Worked, and Loved , Pam pre-edits my book manuscripts, accompanies me on visits to sites such as the Secret Service training center to write vivid descriptions, and shares her wise judgment throughout. My partner in writing books, she is the love of my life.

My children, Greg Kessler, a New York artist, and Rachel Kessler, an independent New York public relations consultant, are a source of pride and support. My stepson, Mike Whitehead, is an endearing part of that team.

Robert Gottlieb, chairman of Trident Media Group, has been my literary agent since 1991 and has been a source of support, great ideas, and friendship.

I am fortunate to have Mary Choteborsky as my editor on this book and to have had her as my editor on my three previous books. I value her brilliant editing suggestions and astute publishing judgment.

The current and former Secret Service agents who contributed to this book did a service by informing the public about the true character of our presidents and vice presidents, about their own courageous work as agents, and about the risk to themselves and to presidents and vice presidents posed by Secret Service management’s practice of undercutting protection by cutting corners.

THE SECRETS OF THE FBI

IN THE PRESIDENT’S SECRET SERVICE

THE TERRORIST WATCH

LAURA BUSH

A MATTER OF CHARACTER

THE CIA AT WAR

THE BUREAU

THE SEASON

INSIDE CONGRESS

THE SINS OF THE FATHER

INSIDE THE WHITE HOUSE

THE FBI

INSIDE THE CIA

ESCAPE FROM THE CIA

THE SPY IN THE RUSSIAN CLUB

MOSCOW STATION

SPY VS. SPY

THE RICHEST MAN IN THE WORLD

THE LIFE INSURANCE GAME

In The Secrets of the FBI , Kessler reveals the FBI’s most closely guarded secrets and the secrets of celebrities, politicians, and movie stars uncovered by agents during their investigations. From Watergate to Waco, from congressional scandals to the killing of Osama bin Laden, The Secrets of the FBI presents headline-making disclosures about the most important figures and events of our time.

Secret Service agents, acting as human surveillance cameras, observe everything that goes on behind the scenes in the president’s inner circle. In In the President’s Secret Service , Kessler reveals what they have seen, providing startling previously untold stories about the presidents. Only tight-lipped Secret Service agents know the real story about our nation’s leaders, and Kessler is the only journalist to have won their trust.

Drawing on unprecedented access to FBI and CIA counterterrorism operatives, The Terrorist Watch presents the chilling story of terrorists’ relentless efforts to mount another devastating attack on the United States and of the heroic efforts being made to stop those plots. Kessler takes you inside the war rooms of this battle—from the National Counterterrorism Center to FBI headquarters, from the CIA to the National Security Agency, from the Pentagon to the Oval Office—to explain why we have gone so long since 9/11 without a successful foreign terrorist attack and to reveal the many close calls we never hear about.

In this unprecedented account, Kessler draws back the curtain on this famously reserved woman in the only biography of Laura Bush to be written with White House cooperation. Based on interviews with her closest friends and confidantes from childhood to the present, as well as family members and administration heavyweights like Condoleezza Rice and Andrew Card, Kessler paints a portrait of a First Lady who, even as she ascended to the heights of political fortune and power, never lost touch with the bedrock American values she absorbed in her youth.

Available wherever books are sold .

Copyright © 2014 by Ronald Kessler

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Crown Forum, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

www.crownpublishing.com

CROWN FORUM with colophon is a registered trademark of Random House LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available upon request.

ISBN 978-0-8041-3921-2

eBook ISBN 978-0-8041-3922-9

Jacket design by Michael Nagin

Front jacket photographs: (top to bottom) “Obamas Walk to Church” © Pool/Getty Images, “Nixon Family Riding in Convertible Limo” © Wally McNamee/Corbis, “Bill Clinton Jogging” © Wally McNamee/Corbis, “Jackie Kennedy, with Apparent Secret Service Men” © Bettmann/Corbis/AP Images, “U.S. President George Bush and Family Return to White House” © Mannie Garcia/Reuters/Corbis Back jacket photograph: © AFP/Getty Images

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