Mike Lawson: The Inside Ring

This year Montgomery and the President had decided to do a little fishing in Georgia, on the Chattooga River. The dates of the trip – July 14 to July 17 – had been established long in advance as is necessary with a president’s schedule, but according to Banks the location of the trip wasn’t finalized until late May. Naturally, a host of people knew about the trip and the number of potential leaks was almost infinite.

Banks had received the warning letter four days before the President was scheduled to depart for Georgia and the first thing he did was call Patrick Donnelly, director of the Secret Service. Donnelly told Banks it was damn unlikely that an agent had sent the letter. In fact, he found it amusing that Banks had given the letter any credibility at all – not an attitude the general appreciated.

Banks pointed out to Donnelly that the letter had been printed on Secret Service letterhead, placed in a Secret Service business envelope, but most important, it had been delivered via the department pouch. The pouch was a mailbag delivered by armed courier and used to transport classified documents between Secret Service headquarters on H Street and Banks’s office on Nebraska Avenue. Only personnel inside Secret Service headquarters, a secure facility, had access to the pouch and it was delivered directly to Banks’s executive assistant.

Then there was the jargon in the note: Eagle One and the inside ring. ‘Eagle One’ was the President’s code name. The ‘inside ring’ was those agents closest to the President whenever he was on the move. The outside ring was the agents guarding the perimeter: agents in the crowd, on rooftops, manning strategic control points. If the outside ring was penetrated, the inside ring was to die protecting the Man.

Donnelly still claimed the letter was a hoax. Maybe an agent had sent it – a lot of his people weren’t happy with changes Banks had made since taking over Homeland Security – but that still didn’t mean there was any truth to the letter. Then Donnelly, a master of the bureaucratic full nelson, dared Banks to call up the President and ruin his long-awaited vacation based on an unsigned note that claimed he was at risk from his own bodyguards. Banks didn’t make the call, but he did keep the warning letter.

Seven days later Philip Montgomery and a Secret Service agent were killed and the President was wounded. After the assassination attempt, Banks was racked with guilt, terrified the note had been authentic and that he had failed to act upon it. He called Donnelly and told him that he was sending him the warning letter. He wanted it analyzed for fingerprints and DNA in saliva on the envelope seal, and for Donnelly to make an effort to find out who had put it in the pouch.

Donnelly tried his best to talk Banks out of having the letter analyzed. He told him if he sent the letter to a lab and started questioning people, the contents of the letter would be leaked to the media within hours. Absolutely the last thing they needed, Donnelly said, was to give birth to a preposterous theory that the Secret Service could have been involved in the assassination attempt. But Banks insisted. Donnelly may have been a presidential appointee but Banks was still his boss.

The next day Donnelly came to see Banks. Although he categorically dismissed the possibility of Secret Service complicity, he did take steps to convince Banks that the warning letter was bogus. First, he told Banks, in accordance with standard Secret Service procedures for incidents like this, all the agents at Chattooga River were given polygraphs to see if they were involved. All the agents had passed as would be expected. And if this wasn’t good enough, there was the timing of the note and its relationship to the men assigned to the inside ring.

At Chattooga River the outside ring consisted of more than sixty agents. The cabin where the President had stayed was selected not only because it was located near several good fishing holes but also because it was in an isolated area with limited access. Three days before the President’s arrival the Secret Service sent a large advance team to the area, drew an imaginary circle five miles in diameter around the cabin, then blocked off all roads and trails into the area and manned these entry points with agents. Following this, they searched the area inside the circle by air and on foot to make sure no one was there. All people entering the area before the President’s arrival were escorted through to make sure they left, and after the President arrived, people were not allowed to enter at all. Periodic surveillances of the area were conducted by helicopter during the entire time the President was visiting.

Confident the perimeter was secure, and in keeping with the President’s explicit direction to minimize the number of on-site guards, the inside ring at Chattooga River consisted of only four agents: Billy Mattis, Robert James – the agent who was killed while covering the President with his own body – Richard Matthews, and Stephen Preston.

The inside ring had been selected on July 5th and the warning note was sent to Banks five days later, July 10th. At the time the letter was sent agents Matthews and Preston had not been assigned to the Chattooga River detail. Two other agents had been assigned but those two men, who carpooled together, were in a traffic accident on the Beltway on July 12th and Matthews and Preston were last-minute substitutes. Thus, explained Donnelly, whoever wrote the note couldn’t have been referring to Matthews or Preston. Banks argued that maybe one of the two agents who had been originally assigned had compromised the President’s security before the traffic accident, and that the accident had been a ruse to avoid being at Chattooga River the day of the shooting. Donnelly said this was damned unlikely since the accident had involved a head-on collision with a cement mixer.

The third agent was the man who was killed: Agent James. Donnelly ruled him out based on his distinguished record, the fact that he had served the Secret Service for twenty-five spotless years – and that he died saving the President’s life. Banks, however, countered Donnelly’s logic, suggesting that maybe the assassin had shot Agent James to silence him. Donnelly said that idea was absurd; it was clear from the video of the shooting that the first shot hit Montgomery by accident, the second shot winged the President but didn’t kill him, and the third shot had been aimed at the President but missed and hit the agent. Banks had to agree with him.

This left a single agent: Billy Ray Mattis. Mattis also had an impressive record, but since he hadn’t been killed like Agent James or assigned after the warning letter had been sent like the other two agents, Donnelly couldn’t rule him out as definitively as the other three men. But the main problem with Mattis, Banks told DeMarco, was that he looked hinky on the video. Hinky.

The next day, while Banks was still stewing over what to do about the warning letter, the body of Harold Edwards was found along with the suicide note that said he’d acted alone. Donnelly called Banks shortly after the discovery of Edwards’s body and said that the lab had drawn a blank on the warning letter: no fingerprints, fibers, saliva, anything. He also said that he’d personally talked to the courier who’d delivered the pouch to Banks’s office and the courier had no recollection of any agent giving him a letter for delivery to Banks.

But Banks still wasn’t happy.

Most people had left the art gallery cafeteria immediately after Christine’s quartet finished playing. A cleanup crew was now stacking chairs and clearing off tables, and the man in charge was giving Emma and DeMarco looks encouraging them to leave. Emma was impervious to the looks.