and other administration personnel, a domestic trip entails two hundred to three hundred people. An overseas trip could involve as many as six hundred people, including military personnel. In 2008 alone, the Secret Service provided protection on 135 overseas trips. On such trips, the Secret Service relies on local police even more than it does in the United States. But when Richard Nixon was vice president, local police disappeared as an angry mob descended on Nixon and his wife, Pat, at the Caracas, Venezuela, airport on May 13, 1958.
“The police were supposed to provide protection at the airport,” recalls Chuck Taylor, one of the Secret Service agents on the detail. “We noticed the police started to leave the motorcade. They were afraid of the mob, and so the police deserted their security arrangements.”
As stones and bottles were being thrown at the couple, agents formed a tight ring around them and quickly escorted them into the president’s bulletproof limousine. Along the route to the American embassy, protestors had erected a roadblock. Wielding clubs and pipes, a crowd swarmed the car.
“They had firebombs, and they were bent on killing everybody in the party,” Taylor says. “In some cases they put small kids out in front of the car, so we’d run over the kids. We appraised that situation and decided to walk the car through.”
The crowd tried to pry open the doors and then began to rock the limo and try to set it on fire. But as long as the agents were facingdown the insurgents, they seemed afraid to approach too closely. The agents managed to get Nixon safely to the American embassy where more angry insurgents confronted them.
“They wanted to burn down the embassy” Taylor says. “We went ahead and put these sandbags around, and we jerry-rigged a radio system so that we were able to talk to Washington. I understand they had cut the transatlantic cable, and we weren’t able to communicate normally. We were able to radio the president and tell him what the story was. The president sent the Sixth Fleet out to evacuate everybody.”
Now on domestic trips, each motorcade includes a car for the Secret Service counterassault team armed with submachine guns. Another Secret Service car, known as the intelligence car, keeps track of people who have been assessed as threats and picks up local transmissions to evaluate them. If necessary, it jams the communications of anyone who presents a threat. Normally, a helicopter supplied by the Park Police or local law enforcement hovers overhead.
For a motorcade, local police on motorcycles block access from side streets and leapfrog from intersection to intersection. Agents check out offices along the route. Before President Ford visited Conroe, Texas, Agent Dave Saleeba was told that one office in a building along the motorcade route could not be opened. Checking further, he learned that the building was owned by the heirs of a local lawyer.
Back in 1915, the lawyer had become heartbroken when his son, who’d been riding to see him, fell off his horse, hit his head on a well, and died. The lawyer never entered his office again and directed that his heirs never open it. However, at Saleeba’s request, the lawyer’s granddaughter agreed to open the office. Saleeba found the man’s desk covered with dust. A brown bag on top of the desk looked as if it had contained his lunch, now disintegrated.
Secret Service agents believe that simply being there, scanning crowds with a ferocious look, often wearing sunglasses, deters would-beassassins. Agents are looking for signs of danger—people who don’t seem to fit in, have their hands in their pockets, are sweating or look nervous, or appear as if they have mental problems. Agents lock in on movements, objects, or situations that are out of place.
“We look for a guy wearing an overcoat on a warm day,” says former agent William Albracht, who was a senior instructor at the Secret Service’s James J. Rowley
“The police were supposed to provide protection at the airport,” recalls Chuck Taylor, one of the Secret Service agents on the detail. “We noticed the police started to leave the motorcade. They were afraid of the mob, and so the police deserted their security arrangements.”
As stones and bottles were being thrown at the couple, agents formed a tight ring around them and quickly escorted them into the president’s bulletproof limousine. Along the route to the American embassy, protestors had erected a roadblock. Wielding clubs and pipes, a crowd swarmed the car.
“They had firebombs, and they were bent on killing everybody in the party,” Taylor says. “In some cases they put small kids out in front of the car, so we’d run over the kids. We appraised that situation and decided to walk the car through.”
The crowd tried to pry open the doors and then began to rock the limo and try to set it on fire. But as long as the agents were facingdown the insurgents, they seemed afraid to approach too closely. The agents managed to get Nixon safely to the American embassy where more angry insurgents confronted them.
“They wanted to burn down the embassy” Taylor says. “We went ahead and put these sandbags around, and we jerry-rigged a radio system so that we were able to talk to Washington. I understand they had cut the transatlantic cable, and we weren’t able to communicate normally. We were able to radio the president and tell him what the story was. The president sent the Sixth Fleet out to evacuate everybody.”
Now on domestic trips, each motorcade includes a car for the Secret Service counterassault team armed with submachine guns. Another Secret Service car, known as the intelligence car, keeps track of people who have been assessed as threats and picks up local transmissions to evaluate them. If necessary, it jams the communications of anyone who presents a threat. Normally, a helicopter supplied by the Park Police or local law enforcement hovers overhead.
For a motorcade, local police on motorcycles block access from side streets and leapfrog from intersection to intersection. Agents check out offices along the route. Before President Ford visited Conroe, Texas, Agent Dave Saleeba was told that one office in a building along the motorcade route could not be opened. Checking further, he learned that the building was owned by the heirs of a local lawyer.
Back in 1915, the lawyer had become heartbroken when his son, who’d been riding to see him, fell off his horse, hit his head on a well, and died. The lawyer never entered his office again and directed that his heirs never open it. However, at Saleeba’s request, the lawyer’s granddaughter agreed to open the office. Saleeba found the man’s desk covered with dust. A brown bag on top of the desk looked as if it had contained his lunch, now disintegrated.
Secret Service agents believe that simply being there, scanning crowds with a ferocious look, often wearing sunglasses, deters would-beassassins. Agents are looking for signs of danger—people who don’t seem to fit in, have their hands in their pockets, are sweating or look nervous, or appear as if they have mental problems. Agents lock in on movements, objects, or situations that are out of place.
“We look for a guy wearing an overcoat on a warm day,” says former agent William Albracht, who was a senior instructor at the Secret Service’s James J. Rowley
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