Ronald Kessler: The First Family Detail

Chappaqua is a picturesque hamlet that recalls towns of the 1950s. Its tiny downtown center is full of mom-and-pop stores where owners greet customers by name. Here among the rolling wooded hills thirty-five miles north of Manhattan, Bill and Hillary Clinton bought a five-bedroom Dutch Colonial home for $1.7 million in 1999.

The nine thousand residents of this Westchester County town adhere to an unofficial code of conduct: When you drive past the white house on Old House Lane, don’t rubberneck, slow down, or pull over to the side of the road. Protected by Secret Service agents and by a tall white security fence, sensors, and surveillance cameras, the house seems almost as secure as the White House.

With one exception.

A Secret Service agent recalls that when he was first assigned to guard Bill Clinton at Chappaqua, a supervisor walked him around the complex, showing him all the security posts and describing how to work each one.

“At the front post, where there is a guard booth, I was instructed on what to do when a visitor drives up,” the agent says. “Gather, collect, and maintain a picture form of ID, log them into the visitors’ book, and make sure they’re on the list to come in,” he says. “If they weren’t, there’s someone you could call. There’s a certain protocol you go down, and it was scripted with everything you do. And as I was being instructed by the supervisor, he told me, ‘Except there’s one that you don’t log into the book: the blonde.’”

Smiling, the agent asked, “What do you mean?”

“Well, you’ll know,” the supervisor said. “She’s maybe in her forties, attractive, blond, tan.” He said she lived nearby and drove an SUV.

“When she comes in, you don’t log her in,” the supervisor instructed. “You don’t take her ID.”

Nor, he said, should the agent run her name, date of birth, and Social Security number through the criminal databases the Secret Service uses to check on arrests, outstanding warrants, and other potential problems. No other exceptions were to be made, whether they were landscapers, Clinton staffers, or relatives. Only the president and vice president are exempt from such security checks.

“If we know about it ahead of time, we’ll call you and let you know to open the gate for her,” the supervisor said. “You don’t stop her, you don’t approach her, you just let her go in.”

When the newly assigned agent began talking with other agents at the command post located over the Clintons’ detached garage, he learned his fellow agents’ unofficial code name for the woman: Energizer.

The code name beginning with “E” followed Secret Service protocol: In assigning code names to a protectee’s family, the Secret Service chooses names that all start with the same letter. Thus, Bill Clinton is Eagle. When she was protected, Chelsea Clinton was Energy. As a former first lady who is protected by the Secret Service, Hillary Clinton has the code name Evergreen. During the years when Hillary was secretary of state, the Diplomatic Security Service protected her during the day, but Secret Service agents protected her at night.

An agent describes Energizer as a very attractive, gracious lady who regularly brings homemade cookies to agents. “Her figure looks great, but her bust doesn’t fit the rest of her figure; it is rather endowed,” the agent says. Explaining, he says, “She brought us cookies when I was up there. I was in my booth and approached the passenger door. She reached over with a plate of cookies.”

“Here, Agent, I brought these for you,” she said.

“She had to lean over to see me through the window and hand me the cookies, so it was very easy to see her cleavage,” the agent recalls. “It was a warm day, and she was wearing a low-cut tank top, and as she leaned over, her breasts were very exposed. They appeared to be very perky and very new and full. They didn’t go along with her face. There was no doubt in my mind they were enhanced.”

Whenever Hillary leaves town, Energizer arrives.

“It was kind of funny,” says another agent who was assigned to Chappaqua. “She [Hillary] would leave, and the mistress would arrive just a few minutes later. Obviously, someone has made a phone call.”

“The mistress would show up sometimes moments after Hillary had left,” a third agent says.

“I let her in many times at the front gate,” another agent says. “Normally, we held a driver’s license or other form of picture ID when visitors were in the residence. The ID was kept at the main gate’s guard booth we manned 24/7. Not so in her case.”

“I would log in John Doe, the lawn maintenance contractor, or his staff members, and check them out, but you’ll never see a record of Energizer anywhere,” the first agent says. “At one point, I’m walking back from one post to the other, and former president Clinton is sitting there with Energizer, drinking lemonade on his swing right at the back of the residence. Hillary was away. It was during the week, and Energizer stayed most of the week.”

If Hillary is heading back home unexpectedly, agents on her Secret Service detail notify her husband’s detail so they can warn the former president.

“The bosses of each detail call each other to make sure she’s gone ahead of time,” a current agent says. “They warn, ‘Hey, we’re wheels down at LaGuardia. You’ve got about forty-five minutes to make sure she’s gone.’”

Thus, Bill Clinton is assured that the likely next Democratic presidential candidate never surprises him when he is with Energizer. A fourth agent says that on one occasion, agents assigned to Hillary neglected to give her husband’s agents enough warning that she was about to arrive home when his mistress was there.

“The agents had to scramble to get Energizer out of there so there wasn’t some kind of a big confrontation,” he says.

Bill Clinton did not respond to a request for comment.

The duplicity goes back to when he and Hillary were in the White House. As in the movie Dave , they would emerge from the Marine One helicopter holding hands. Once inside the White House, they would start screaming at each other. At night, the Clintons’ loud arguments could be heard throughout the White House residence.

Hillary Clinton charms audiences and often speaks of her compassion for the little people. But Secret Service agents, who provide lifetime protection for presidents and their spouses, know the real story about the nation’s leaders and their families. Required to sign confidentiality agreements, they are sworn to secrecy, but they opened up for this book. What they reveal spotlights the true character of presidents and presidential candidates. In the end, that may be the deciding factor in the success or failure of a presidency. At the same time, the agents expose Secret Service corner cutting that they say endangers the lives of presidents, vice presidents, and their families.

“You can easily judge the character of others by how they treat those who can do nothing for them or to them,” publisher Malcolm S. Forbes once said.

In Hillary Clinton’s case, because she is so nasty to agents and hostile toward law enforcement officers and military officers in general, agents consider being assigned to her detail a form of punishment. In fact, agents say being on Hillary Clinton’s detail is the worst duty assignment in the Secret Service.