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On March 17, 2016, Lara Trump, the wife of Trump’s son Eric, was in the kitchen of the couple’s apartment on Central Park South in New York when she opened a letter just before seven p.m. To her horror, white powder spilled from the envelope onto the kitchen table.
Fearing for her life, Lara grabbed her keys and Charlie, the couple’s miniature beagle, and ran the three blocks to Eric’s office on the twenty-fifth floor of Trump Tower. By 7:15 p.m., New York City police and Emergency Services teams were swarming Eric’s office. They seized Lara’s clothing and sent a team to their apartment to confiscate the envelope for testing. A note inside warned, “If your father does not drop out of the race, the next envelope won’t be a fake.”
Trying to develop leads, Secret Service agents joined the detectives as they interviewed Lara, as well as Eric, who is executive vice president of the Trump Organization, and Lynne Patton, then a vice president of the Eric Trump Foundation and senior assistant to the Trump family.
The powder turned out to be harmless, and the perpetrator was never found.
Typically, Trump gets six to eight threats a day, about the same number as Presidents Obama and George W. Bush received. The threats come in by letter, email, phone, tweet, and fax as well as on social media sites that Secret Service agents monitor. The Secret Service investigates each threat, and if the culprit can be located, the Protective Intelligence and Assessment Division places the suspect into one of three categories. Those considered Class III threats are the most dangerous. They appear to have a serious intention of carrying out an assassination and have the means to do it. For example, they may have had firearms training.
Close to a hundred people are on the Class III list. These individuals are constantly checked. Courts have given the Secret Service wide latitude in dealing with anyone who may be an immediate threat to the president.
“We will interview serious threats every three months and interview neighbors,” an agent says. “If we feel he is really dangerous, we monitor his movements almost on a daily basis. We monitor the mail.”
If the president is traveling to a city where a Class III threat lives, before the visit Secret Service agents show up at the perpetrator’s door. Intelligence advance agents warn him to stay away from the president. They ask if the individual plans to go out and, if so, what his destination is. They then set up surveillance of his home and follow him if he leaves.
“If they aren’t locked up, we go out and sit on them,” former agent William Albracht says. “You usually have a rapport with these guys because you’re interviewing them every quarter just to see how they’re doing, what they’re doing, if they are staying on their meds, or whatever. We knock on their door. We say, ‘How’re you doing, Freddy? President’s coming to town, what are your plans?’ What we always want to hear is ‘I’m going to stay away.’ ”
Class II threats come from suspects whose intentions are serious but who may not be capable of carrying out an assassination. Often, they are in jail or mental institutions.
“He may be missing an element, like a guy who honestly thinks he can kill a president and has made the threat, but he’s a quadriplegic or can’t formulate a plan well enough to carry it out,” an agent says.
A Class I threat may be someone who blurts out in a bar a desire to kill the president and, after interviewing the suspect and investigating his or her background, the Secret Service concludes that the individual was not serious.
“You interview him, and he has absolutely no intention of carrying this threat out,” an agent says. “Agents will assess him and conclude, ‘Yeah, he said something stupid. Yeah, he committed a federal crime. But we’re not going to charge him or pursue that guy.’ You just have to use your discretion and your best judgment.”
In most cases, a visit from Secret Service agents is enough to make anyone think twice about carrying out a plot or making a public threat again.
When a suspicious call comes in to the White House, operators are trained to patch in a Secret Service agent. The agent may pretend to be another operator helping out.
“He is waiting for the magic word [that signifies a threat to the president],” a Secret Service agent explains. “He is tracing it.”
The Forensic Services Division matches a recording of the call with voices in a database of other threat calls. No threat is ignored. If it can locate the individual, the Secret Service interviews the suspect and evaluates how serious a threat he may be. Agents try to differentiate between real threats and speech that is a legitimate exercise of First Amendment rights.
“If you don’t like the policies of the president, you can say it. That’s your right,” a Secret Service agent assigned to the vice president’s detail says. “We’re looking for those that cross the line and are threatening: ‘I’m going to get you. I’m going to kill you. You deserve to die. I know who can help kill you.’ Then his name is entered into the computer system.”
Since 1917, threatening the president has been a federal crime. As later amended, the law carries a penalty of up to five years in prison and a fine of $250,000, or both. The same penalty applies to threatening the president-elect, vice president, vice president-elect, or any official in the line of succession to become president.
When assigning code names to protectees, the Secret Service starts with a random list of words, all beginning with the same letter for each family. The code names were once necessary because Secret Service radio transmissions were not encrypted. Now that they are, the Secret Service continues to use code names to avoid confusion when pronouncing the names of protectees. In addition, by using code names, agents prevent anyone overhearing their conversations from recognizing the subject.
Generated randomly by a White House Communications Agency computer, the list of code names excludes words that are offensive or may easily be mistaken for other words. However, those under protection may object to a code name and propose another.
Both Donald Trump and Melania came up with their own code names. The president chose Mogul, while the first lady chose Muse. Priebus came up with Badger after his home state of Wisconsin. Vice President Mike Pence is code-named Hoosier for his home state of Indiana, while his wife, Karen, is Hummingbird.
After she was sent a suspicious white substance, Kellyanne Conway began receiving Secret Service protection. As the winner of the 1982 New Jersey Blueberry Princess pageant, Conway chose Blueberry as her Secret Service code name. In addition to receiving the white substance, Conway received threats.
“Most of them are online,” she says, “and most of them are very explicit and graphic, and they’re sometimes people who have a history of following through but for whatever reason weren’t prosecuted.” However, she is no longer under protection.
While not protected by the Secret Service, Sean Spicer accepted the agency’s proposed code name of Matrix, which Sarah Huckabee Sanders inherited after Spicer left. Even though they are not under Secret Service protection, the White House press secretary and cabinet officers, who may be protected by their own agency’s security details, are assigned Secret Service code names to assist in maintaining continuity of government and coordinating protection of those in the line of succession to the presidency.
Unlike Hillary Clinton, who is so nasty to her Secret Service agents that being assigned to her detail is considered a form of punishment, both Trump and his wife treat agents with respect and consideration. In that way, they emulate Barack and Michelle Obama, who would sometimes invite agents to parties or to share meals with them.
The President’s Protective Detail consists of 300 agents, including those protecting the president’s family, and assigns twenty-five to forty agents to the president per shift. There are 150 agents on the Vice President’s Protective Detail.
As the president moves about in public, six agents surround him. They include a shift supervisor and a detail leader. When the president is advancing, the agents form a box configuration, and if he’s moving down a narrow corridor, they form a diamond configuration. Other agents stand post at access points.
As with the president and vice president, agents allow the first lady and first kids a comfort zone: Agents do not sit in on classrooms, for example, but will station themselves around a school and down the corridor from a classroom. In the same way, agents are not stationed in the residence portion of the White House. However, as with the president and vice president, agents accompany the first lady and first kids wherever they go—to soccer practice, to friends’ houses, and to vacation spots.
If a president’s child is going to a birthday party in a private home, agents scout out the house beforehand. Given that the host vouches for the young guests by inviting them, agents will not screen them with magnetometers or conduct background checks. During the party, agents station themselves in an adjoining room or the basement and sit outside in Suburbans. If an event is an “off-the-record movement” where no one knows that the president’s children will be attending, agents likely will not check out the premises beforehand.
While the president makes the last call on his protection, the Secret Service advises him if it believes a venue is unsafe. That happened when Trump wanted to attend the Congressional Baseball Game after a gunman attacked Republican players at their practice and gravely wounded Representative Steve Scalise from Louisiana. Instead, Trump sent a video message.
Before the president stays at a hotel, an entire floor is reserved, plus the two floors below. Agents sweep the area for explosives, bugging devices, and radioactive material or other contaminants. They check carpeting for concealed objects. They examine picture frames that could be hollow and conceal explosives. They install bulletproof glass on windows, and they plan escape routes from every room that the president may enter.
As many as twenty-five vehicles could compose the president’s motorcade. A helicopter hovers overhead, and no aircraft are allowed in the area. For an overseas trip, military cargo planes airlift in more than fifty support vehicles. Fighter jets fly overhead so they can intervene quickly if a plane gets too close to the president’s location on the ground. As many as six hundred people could be included on an overseas presidential trip, including military personnel and up to fifty Secret Service agents. Including the White House doctor and other administration personnel, two hundred to three hundred people travel on a domestic presidential trip.
Often, the first limousine in the motorcade is a decoy; the second limousine is a backup. The president could actually be in a third limousine or in any other vehicle in the motorcade. The number of cars in the motorcade depends on the purpose of the trip. For an unannounced visit to a restaurant, seven or eight Secret Service cars, known as the informal package, make the trip. For an announced visit, the formal package of up to forty vehicles goes out, including cars for White House personnel and the press.
When Trump boards Air Force One, the military aide carrying the nuclear football can be seen trailing him. The nuclear football is a leather-covered titanium business case weighing forty pounds. Secured with a cipher lock, it contains a variety of secure phone capabilities and options for launching nuclear strikes that the president may authorize.
The president authenticates his identity with codes found on a small plastic card he carries with him. An identical nuclear football is assigned to the vice president to be used in case the president is incapacitated or has died.
Contrary to the lore, the football does not operate like an ATM, with the president or vice president inserting the authenticator card and punching in launch codes to authorize a strike. Instead, along with written options, the nuclear football contains a secure phone to open up communications with the National Military Command Center at the Pentagon. During a conference call, the president or vice president reads the codes from the authenticator card to verify his identity. Military leaders and White House national security advisers then brief the president or vice president on the nature of the threat and the options for retaliating.
“As part of the conference call, the president is told how many seconds or minutes remain if the president would wish to respond, before he might not be able to do so because nuclear weapons will hit the White House or his current location,” says retired Navy vice admiral John Stufflebeem, who was the military aide to President George H. W. Bush and later oversaw the top secret program himself when he was deputy director for global operations assigned to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
If the president or vice president wants to consult the written options, he may do so. If he then chooses a retaliatory option or options, his command is read back to him. When he confirms it, the command center uses the military’s launch authorization codes to release nuclear missiles.
Since Trump or Pence would likely have fifteen minutes or less to respond to an impending attack from a country like China, Russia, or North Korea before the United States could be wiped out by nuclear-tipped missiles, the military aide who carries the satchel is supposed to accompany the two leaders wherever they go. Staying over at hotels, the military aide sleeps in a room adjoining the president’s or vice president’s room.
When Secret Service agents script an arrival or departure from a hotel or office building, they make sure the military aide rides the elevator with the protectee. In motorcades, the military aide travels in the vehicle right behind the president’s or vice president’s limo. In the event the president or vice president comes under attack during a public appearance, Secret Service agents have standing instructions to evacuate the military aide together with the protectee.
Unlike Joe Biden, Trump never allows the military aide with the nuclear football to get more than a few feet away from him. As vice president, when Biden visited his home in Wilmington often several times a week, he would order the limo with the military aide to keep a mile behind his motorcade. The reason was that Biden wanted to preserve his image as a regular Joe and did not want to be seen with a long motorcade. But if Obama had been taken out and the United States was about to be obliterated by a nuclear attack, even with no traffic, the military aide with the nuclear football could not have caught up to Biden in time for him to unleash a counterattack. For Biden, his image came first.