Ronald Kessler: The First Family Detail

At the front of the motorcade were two identical presidential limousines. Each of the twin 2009 Cadillacs is known as the Beast. Built on a GMC truck chassis, they are armor-plated, with bulletproof glass and their own oxygen supply. The doors are eighteen inches thick, the windows five inches thick.

The Beasts are equipped with state-of-the-art encrypted communications gear and are shielded against electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapons that an enemy could employ to disable the car’s engine and knock out communications. Each car has a remote starting mechanism and a self-sealing gas tank. The vehicle can keep going even if its tires are shot out. It can take a direct hit from a bazooka or a grenade. A planned new model will have larger windows and greater visibility than the current Cadillac models, first used by President George W. Bush for his January 2005 inauguration.

Often, the first limousine in the motorcade is a decoy. The second limousine is called the spare limousine, a backup in case the first one breaks down. However, the president could actually be riding in the second limousine, or for that matter in any vehicle in the motorcade. Indeed, when a threat is perceived, the Secret Service may take the precaution of moving the president from one vehicle to another while the motorcade briefly stops under an overpass. On the night of the correspondents’ dinner, Obama—code-named Renegade—and his wife, Michelle—code-named Renaissance—were in the first Beast in the motorcade.

While an agent drives the limousine with the president, a Secret Service special officer drives the spare. Referred to as an SO, a special officer takes care of duties such as managing the Secret Service’s fleet of vehicles or protecting Bill Clinton’s home in Chappaqua when he and Hillary are away. While special officers carry weapons, they do not have arrest authority. Regardless of the type of vehicle transporting the president, agents call it “the limo,” and it is code-named Stagecoach.

As a security precaution, when not in use, both copies of the Beast are kept in the underground garage at Secret Service headquarters on H Street at Ninth Street NW in Washington. Secret Service employees clean and polish the vehicles. Any other vehicles to be included in the motorcade, such as press cars and even Secret Service Suburbans carrying agents, must undergo a sweep by canine units when they arrive at the South Lawn entrance of the White House.

On the night of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, to ensure that no unscreened vehicles got near the president, the Secret Service blocked the main entrance to the Hilton on Connecticut Avenue. Celebrities swanned onto the grounds of the Hilton after being dropped off at the curb. Only vehicles of other protectees were permitted to enter the circular driveway. But before entering, those vehicles were swept for explosives. In fact, even Secret Service vehicles driven by agents were swept.

With one exception.

Secret Service agents were shocked and disgusted to receive orders from a high-ranking agency official in New York to let in as a personal favor the unscreened vehicle of movie star Bradley Cooper. A photographer snapped a picture of the actor, who achieved fame with his roles in The Hangover, The A-Team, The Place Beyond the Pines , and Silver Linings Playbook , as he emerged from his vehicle, which was parked on the off-limits driveway.

An agent points out that Cooper’s driver or anyone else who had had access to the vehicle could have loaded it with explosives or biological or chemical weapons. While Cooper arrived before Obama did, agents found the episode a stunning breach of security and flouting of the rules for a presidential visit.

“Normally when you come through that checkpoint, a canine team would inspect the vehicle,” an agent says. “The canine goes around the vehicle. Your team would look underneath the vehicle and in the compartments of the vehicle and search it before it enters. Bradley Cooper was not subject to the same requirements that apply to me as an agent. I can’t drive into the White House complex or the vice president’s residence at the Naval Observatory without getting my own vehicle inspected. Even if it was my work truck, it would still be swept there before I drove it into the Hilton driveway. If my Secret Service vehicle has been sitting outside all night long, I don’t know who’s come by and loaded it with explosives.”

In the case of the movie star, “somebody in Bradley Cooper’s security can call the Secret Service and bypass what everybody else has to go through,” the agent says. “Agents were told not to sweep the car. Just let it in and don’t give Cooper any problems. Bradley Cooper had a free pass to come through the main entrance and drive right up to the front of the hotel. Everyone else, including all the celebrities, stopped on Connecticut Avenue, exited their cars, and then walked up the circular entrance into the front of the Hilton. The agents were blown away when they were told to forget everything they were told to do. And this was two weeks after the terrorist attack on our soil in Boston.”

Ironically, the security breach occurred at the same hotel where John W. Hinckley Jr. shot President Reagan, press secretary James Brady, Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy, and D.C. police officer Thomas Delahanty on March 30, 1981.

Asked how Cooper managed to be dropped off at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in the secure restricted driveway at the entrance to the Washington Hilton, Cooper’s publicist at WKT Public Relations in New York did not respond.

Obama’s performance at the Hilton came off without a hitch, to much laughter and applause.

“And of course, the White House press corps is here,” Obama said to the journalists and their celebrity guests, mainly from Hollywood. “I know CNN has taken some knocks lately, but the fact is, I admire their commitment to cover all sides of a story, just in case one of them happens to be accurate.”

As is the case with journalists, Secret Service agents like Barack and Michelle Obama, who treat them with respect.

“Twice Obama invited agents to dinner, including a party for a relative, both at his home,” says an agent who was on Obama’s candidate detail.

“On the night of the Super Bowl, Obama had several guys up in his house in the Hyde Park part of Chicago,” an agent says. “They made sure that we all rotated through to serve us chili.”

Michelle Obama, who is protected by twenty agents, insists that agents call her by her first name.

“Michelle is friendly—she touches you,” an agent says. Like Michelle, her mother, Marian Robinson, who lives with the first family in the White House and receives Secret Service protection outside the White House, goes out of her way to be friendly with agents.

One Father’s Day, Michelle gave Father’s Day cards to the agents who are dads to thank them for working their shift that day.

Unlike Bill Clinton, Obama makes an effort to be on time, and he usually is. If Obama is running late, Michelle gets on his case, saying he is being inconsiderate of his agents. Obama will “acknowledge you when you’re there and seems appreciative and respectful to all the agents around him,” a current agent notes.

As for the Obamas’ children, Malia (code-named Radiance) and Sasha (code-named Rosebud): “I think they’re great kids, from what I’ve seen,” an agent says. “They are very respectable young ladies.”

Still, agents have been dismayed to overhear Michelle Obama push her husband to be more aggressive in attacking Republicans and to side with blacks in racial controversies. Examples were when Obama said Trayvon Martin, the black teenager who was shot to death in Florida, “could have been me thirty-five years ago,” and when he claimed Cambridge police acted stupidly when a white police officer arrested a black Harvard professor who was being obstreperous during an investigation of a report of a possible break-in.