Zero fail, p.17
Zero Fail, page 17
When Richard Nixon won the election, DeProspero joined Vice President–elect Spiro Agnew’s detail. Each day he drove from north Virginia to Annapolis at dawn and returned home late at night. “I believe I drove many times in an unsafe condition,” he said of his career. “I would have to pinch myself, do whatever to keep myself awake. There are times I would tell Pat, ‘I don’t remember the last part of my trip home.’ ”
As he rose to supervisory jobs, DeProspero earned a reputation as a tough, no-exceptions kind of boss. He didn’t ask more of his team than he did of himself. He would counsel his shift agents on problems they’d overlooked on a rope line or in their advance plan—but he did it privately, so as not to embarrass them in front of their peers. He would go to bat for his advance agents when White House staffers resisted their hard-and-fast rules. He had a formal style, often calling people Mister. He avoided becoming chummy with agents. He wanted to judge them on their work and not be clouded by friendship.
Bobby D tried to be candid in assessing his own weaknesses, too. “I am not overly intelligent,” DeProspero once said. “I am certainly not the most suave person. I don’t have the greatest personality. But I think I have the ability to lead men.”
By the time he joined President-elect Reagan’s detail as the number two in command of his safety, he had spent the vast majority of his sixteen-year career in the grueling work of protection details. It was more than any other agent at the time, and likely since.
Simpson had heard DeProspero agitating for a more rigid circle of flesh around the president whenever he left the White House. He visibly bristled whenever the White House political staff resisted his demand for proximity. They argued it would look unfriendly to the public, or ruin a photograph the news media would use of the event. White House staff had dubbed DeProspero Dr. No or Agent No behind his back. He was one of the few detail leaders who told their protectees they couldn’t do something.
On one of Nelson Rockefeller’s first days as Ford’s vice president, he walked out of his second-floor office in the Old Executive Office Building as if he were touring the grounds of his Tarrytown mansion. He announced casually to DeProspero, his detail leader, that he wanted to walk over to visit staff in the new executive office building. Door to door, the distance might have been two blocks across Lafayette Square.
“I’ll get the limo ready,” DeProspero said.
“Oh, I’ll walk over,” the vice president said, not wanting to make a fuss.
“No, sir,” DeProspero said calmly. “We’ll get the car.”
The vice president shrugged, a little surprised.
“Okay, Bobby.”
Tom Quinn, one of the shift agents on duty, blinked in amazement. He had told the vice president no!
“We’d never heard a supervisor say that to a principal,” Quinn recalled.
DeProspero was about to get a lot of opportunities to say no—to the president of the United States.
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ON THAT ANXIOUS Monday night after the Hilton shooting and Reagan’s surgery, nurses wheeled the president to a large trauma recovery bay around 6:30 p.m. Agents had set up impromptu screens to separate him from other patients. DeProspero took over the watch, relieving Parr after his tumultuous day. The deputy stood guard four feet behind Reagan’s right shoulder as he lay in his hospital bed, until about nine o’clock the next morning.
DeProspero watched the president regain consciousness that evening, full of questions. His doctors explained to the president that he had been shot, a bullet had been removed, and now he was doing fine. Because Reagan couldn’t talk through his oxygen tube, a nurse brought Reagan a pencil and a pink scratch pad to scribble notes. Every now and again that night and in the wee hours of the morning, the president would tilt his head back toward DeProspero to signal that he had written a new message.
More often than not, the president of the United States wanted to share a joke: “Can we take that scene over?” Reagan wrote. “Does Nancy know about us?” he wrote to a nurse who came in during the night to check his vital signs.
He also jotted down a question DeProspero couldn’t bear to answer: “Was anyone else hurt?” the president wrote.
“You need to get some rest, Mr. President,” the agent said. “Let’s not talk about that now.” Later that day, tears would run down Reagan’s cheeks as he learned of Brady’s permanent brain damage. He quietly cursed, “Oh damn. Oh damn.”
Around 3 p.m., a medical team moved the president to a bare room in the intensive care unit. DeProspero took up the same position, looking over Reagan’s shoulder and facing the door. When morning came and his unique midnight shift ended, DeProspero had been awake for twenty-eight hours. The president had to have either Parr or DeProspero with him at all times now that he was away from the White House. But Parr had been temporarily relieved of duty in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, so DeProspero felt compelled to stay. Finally, he let another agent spell him. Despite his weary bones, he headed home to his wife and children with a sense of relief. Doctors checking the patient that morning gave Reagan a thumbs-up. The president was going to make it.
For the rest of Reagan’s twelve-day convalescence at GW, DeProspero took regular turns at Reagan’s bedside. One day, Reagan awoke fuzzy-eyed from the sedation of painkillers. He struggled to orient himself, then saw the familiar serious, line-creased face at the foot of his bed.
The president’s first words surprised the agent. DeProspero had weeks earlier advocated that the president wear a bulletproof vest. Reagan had preferred not to unless there was some special reason, a clear danger.
“Bobby, I’ll wear that vest whenever you tell me to,” he said quietly.
* * *
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PRESIDENT REAGAN RETURNED to the White House on April 11, a rainy Sunday. Vice President and Barbara Bush, along with a crowd of 250 friends and staff, stood under umbrellas on the South Lawn to welcome him back. Reagan lifted his left arm to wave. Deaver glanced at him and felt a chill up his back. It was the same pose the president had struck just before he was shot.
The president and the First Lady never faulted the Secret Service for the shooting. Mrs. Reagan thanked Parr repeatedly for “giving me my life back,” by which she meant saving her Ronnie. But his brush with death transformed her. She instantly became a fierce, anxious voice in the ears of Michael Deaver and the Secret Service detail leaders.
“He’s seventy,” she told them repeatedly. “He can’t survive this happening again.”
Deaver had two dueling fears as Reagan returned to the White House: First, he had to get the president back out in public, to show he was in the saddle again and ably running the country. Second, he had to deliver on his promise to Mrs. Reagan that no harm would come the president’s way.
In the wake of the shooting, he saw DeProspero as a new and critical ally. The two men—who had bickered only the day before the shooting over the danger the president faced on a city street—became partners in the same project.
Deaver called a meeting in the West Wing for the Tuesday after Reagan’s return. He wanted top Secret Service leaders, White House staff, and military officials to brainstorm on their new top priority: tightening up security around the president. DeProspero brought a typed, three-page, single-spaced list of thirty-four new security measures he wanted the White House team to consider. Truth be told, he wanted them all adopted on the spot, but he didn’t say that.
That day, DeProspero proposed steps that would be taken for granted and viewed as obvious in another decade. But at that point, they weren’t standard procedure at all.
The shooting at the Hilton had left the president exposed on a city street for too long. From now on, DeProspero said, the president should arrive and depart from buildings under the cover of a tent whenever possible. This would obscure and shield him from possible shooters in buildings nearby. If that was not possible, his limo should deliver him to a building’s garage or loading dock.
DeProspero wanted the armored limo or some other defensive shelter to be near the president at all events—a place agents could whisk him to in case of attack. He wanted the president to stand behind an armored podium at every speech in public. He wanted two agents within arm’s reach of the president at all times, and he said he didn’t care if staff wanted agents out of camera range for the all-important photo. The bodyguards had to be close enough to move him within a few seconds. Hinckley had shot at the president six times in 1.7 seconds. “Don’t have 20 seconds,” DeProspero wrote of how little time the president could be out in the open at first sign of a threat. “Have less than 2.”
DeProspero’s top priority, though, centered on stopping the guns from getting close in the first place. He wanted to add a security tool that had been around for years, and that agents had been talking about using for some time. The White House had always resisted it as too radical and unfriendly. But Hinckley’s success made it necessary, the agent explained.
DeProspero wanted to screen all guests at presidential events for weapons by having them walk through metal detectors. “We’ve talked about it,” DeProspero told the group. “Now we need to do it.”
Several White House advance staff were aghast. Metal detectors would ruin the warm feeling that was the very point of having the president gather with the public. The White House didn’t want guests and voters to feel like criminal suspects. Nor did they want to make the president’s big-dollar donors and VIP allies wait in long lines.
The argument grew more urgent and heated in a countdown meeting May 11—the week before Reagan would make his first public appearance outside the White House since the shooting. The White House was secretly arranging for Reagan to give a commencement speech at Notre Dame on May 17. His appearance would reassure the public and score sentimental points, too. Reagan had portrayed “the Gipper”—Notre Dame football player George Gipp—in a movie about the university’s legendary coach Knute Rockne.
“I understand you have some problem with this trip, Bobby,” Chief of Staff Jim Baker said at the top of the May 11 meeting.
DeProspero reiterated his concern about hidden guns. The Service had gotten some intelligence from the British government about people sneaking guns into events that were supposed to be screened and secure, he said.
“What do you want to do about it?” Baker asked.
“I think it’s time we used magnetometers when the president is away from the White House,” he said. “It’s just too dangerous for him to make this trip unless we do more thorough screening.”
Baker went around the room, letting Deaver, the White House advance staff, the military aide, and the White House physician offer their opinions. Then it was time to hear from Joe Canzeri, the president’s director of scheduling and senior advance man. Canzeri jokingly called himself the highest-paid bellhop in America, but he enjoyed the president’s trust. He didn’t hold back.
“That’s absolutely ridiculous!” Canzeri said. “People are going to think the president is afraid. People are going to be quite frankly insulted we’re questioning their integrity. It’s going to cause big time delays. We can’t have people waiting outside to go through a magnetometer.”
DeProspero said the Service could find ways to reduce the time waiting in lines.
Canzeri said the delays would be inevitable. An estimated fifteen thousand graduates, family members, university teachers, staff, and friends were expected at the Notre Dame commencement ceremony.
DeProspero said the risks of a gun slipping through were too great.
“Well, if it’s that bad, maybe the president shouldn’t go to Notre Dame,” Canzeri boomed.
“Yes!” DeProspero said, raising his voice. “If we can’t have magnetometers, maybe he shouldn’t go!”
Baker tried to cool down the dispute. “Hold it, guys,” he said. “We’re not making this trip right away, we still have time. Let’s table this until a later date.”
Two days later, fate helped make the Secret Service agent’s case. On Wednesday, May 13, an escaped Turkish convict shot Pope John Paul II four times. The gunman approached the pontiff during his weekly general audience as he passed through St. Peter’s Square in an open car. He began shooting his semiautomatic pistol in the pope’s direction. The bullets ripped into Pope John Paul’s left hand and abdomen, causing severe blood loss. The pope was rushed to the hospital and eventually recovered. Authorities later found evidence that the shooter was part of a larger KGB plot.
The day after the assassination attempt, staff met in Baker’s office as scheduled to discuss security at the Notre Dame trip. The room was quiet as they took their seats. Before Baker had time to say a word, Canzeri turned to face DeProspero and raised his hands in surrender.
“I give. You win!” he cried. “We’ll use magnetometers!”
The Secret Service’s best methods, agents often say, are developed in the wake of a crisis, a teachable moment that exposes a weakness. Every assassination attempt or attack reshaped the agency’s tactics and shored up its defenses against a threat the Service had previously failed to foresee or address.
After Kennedy was shot and killed, agents adopted a raft of changes. They focused on every potential line of sight to the president, and on creating barriers that blocked anyone from having a clear shot at him. They began checking the security of buildings along motorcade routes to prevent sniper fire. Though President Johnson carped about it, agents also pushed presidents to give up riding in open-top convertibles. The Service moved for the first time into the computer age, using technology to keep track of thousands of suspicious and mentally ill people who could pose a threat to the president. Congress doubled the agency’s budget and let the Service hire two hundred new agents.
After Wallace was shot, the Service imposed new routines for rope lines. They practiced over and over how to move the president quickly from one end of a line to the other without confusion. Agents stepped up their studying of crowds of people, like a lifeguard surveying a pool for signs of trouble. For the Service, it might be a raised arm, a quick movement, or a strange look in the eyes. “I taught my agents to pick certain sectors, to keep their eyes open, trust nobody,” Parr wrote in a 1981 report. “You look for eyes that glitter with hatred—that set of eyes that’s hostile, angry. Most people are curious, expectant, happy. But every once in a while you catch a pair of eyes.”
After Reagan was shot, the Service added or tweaked more than two dozen other security measures. The most important was the addition of magnetometers for all events the president attended.
“The Secret Service methodology is born of blood,” said Jonathan Wackrow, a former agent on President Obama’s protection detail. “You can only protect for what you know. Every time the Service is tested, it gets better.”
Rick Ahearn, who was Reagan’s White House advance staffer at the Hilton, had watched the Service react and adapt to attacks for two decades before that fateful day in 1981. He began working presidential advance in 1968 after Bobby Kennedy’s assassination, had watched three men standing next to him drop to the ground outside the Hilton, and would later advise advance teams working the chaotic campaign rallies for Donald Trump. “The Secret Service changed policies and protocols after every shooting incident,” Ahearn said. “After Kennedy’s assassination, we don’t have any open-top limousines anymore. After the George Wallace shooting, when he just waded into a crowd…that led to the use of more [uniform] rope lines to control the crowd. And after March 1981, you couldn’t get within handgun range of the president without being magged.”
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IN ADDITION TO adding magnetometers after Reagan’s brush with death, the Service also shifted to adopting other ideas DeProspero had pushed. That included the new tactic of “covered arrivals,” having the president’s limo enter a concealed garage or loading dock. These hotel and convention center loading areas were low on glamor, but great for concealing the Man from gunmen or attackers.“We spent those years really advancing security to a new level,” said Joe Petro, who succeeded DeProspero as special agent in charge of Reagan’s detail in 1985.
One day, Petro opened the limo door for President Reagan so he could step out into a hotel loading dock and give a speech inside. Reagan joked that he noticed this particular security enhancement the most.
“I would think I was in the wrong place if I didn’t smell garbage,” the president quipped.
CHAPTER 9
NIGHT OF THE LONG KNIVES
The director of the Secret Service, Stu Knight, had many reasons to feel proud of his work and secure in his position. The nation had suffered a shock in the attempted assassination of Reagan, but everyone from Tip O’Neill, Speaker of the House, to Sam Donaldson, ABC News anchor, cheered the Secret Service for averting a national tragedy. Knight could take some comfort in knowing that his investment in agent training had helped save the president’s life.
Unbeknownst to many in Congress and the public, however, the arrival of Reagan and his political staff had put Knight’s job in danger. The Secret Service’s senior leadership had split into two dueling camps. In the aftermath of a frightening close call, the two sides escalated their battle for control of the Secret Service.
One camp backed Director Knight, a deep thinker and apolitical manager credited with helping wipe away the ethical stain President Nixon had left on the Service. Knight had emphasized professionalizing the Service for its many missions, including protection. But he didn’t believe the Secret Service could shield the president with brawn and bravery alone. He wanted to mine intelligence to intercept potential assassins. He encouraged agents to develop investigative, financial, and management expertise as well.
