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THE SECRET SERVICE began protecting Barack Obama on May 3, 2007, eighteen months before votes for president were to be cast. It was the earliest point at which the Secret Service had ever protected a presidential candidate. In contrast, in the 2004 election, John Kerry and John Edwards began receiving protection in February of that year, eight months before the general election. Michelle Obama began receiving protection on February 2, 2008. It would turn out to be the longest and most demanding presidential campaign in history.
Strapped for agents and facing rising attrition rates, the Secret Service began planning for the campaign in January 2005. In February of that year, the service asked most of its 3,404 agents for their preferences on types of candidate protection assignments. For example, agents can ask to join a general protection shift, operations and logistics, or transportation details. Agents were given special training at the Rowley center so that members of each detail to be assigned to a future candidate would get used to working together. Agents who would drive candidates were given refresher courses. The campaign also would require the support of twelve hundred Uniformed Division officers.
By law, the Secret Service provides protection of major presidential and vice presidential candidates and their spouses. The secretary of homeland security determines who the major candidates are after consulting with an advisory committee consisting of the speaker and minority leader of the House, the majority and minority leaders of the Senate, and one additional member selected by the other members of the committee.
The secretary of homeland security also decides when protection begins. Protection of spouses starts a hundred twenty days before the general election, unless authorized before that by DHS or by executive order. To protect a presidential candidate, the Secret Service spends an extra thirty-eight thousand dollars a day beyond agents’ existing salaries. That includes airline tickets for agents and for advance personnel, rental cars, meals, and overtime.
At one point, based on the public record, the Secret Service counted fifteen potential presidential candidates. As it turned out, three presidential candidates received protection. As a former first lady, Hillary Clinton already had Secret Service protection.
While Obama never received a specific threat before his protection started, agents on the Secret Service’s Internet Threat Desk picked up a number of vaguely threatening and nasty comments, mostly directed at the fact that he is African American. Many of the comments appeared on white supremacist websites and said Obama would be assassinated if he took office. Even before Obama decided to run, Michelle Obama expressed concerns to her husband that a black candidate for president could be in jeopardy because of his race.
In the end, says Steven Hughes, deputy special agent in charge of the dignitary protection division, “We really picked him up because he asked for the protection, and then it goes through a whole process of whether we will protect him or not, and it’s really not driven by the Secret Service. It’s something that he asked for, and the secretary of homeland security and the president ultimately said he is a viable candidate, and it’s a go for protection.”
As Hughes speaks, he checks a text message on his BlackBerry It’s a report from the Protective Intelligence and Assessment Division of a threat against a candidate.
“I’m getting them all day long, updates on whether someone on the Internet says something or someone that’s drunk says something,” Hughes says. “Whether it’s very minor or very major, they’re going to send it to me, so I can’t say I didn’t know that was happening.”
Asked if he ever gets any sleep, Hughes says, “With the U.N. coming up next week, where we have an incredible amount of protectees, yeah, we don’t have time to sleep now.”
By August 2008, the Secret Service had arrested Raymond H. Geisel in Miami after he made a threat against candidate Obama in a training class for bail bondsmen. Two members of the class heard Geisel say, “If he gets elected, I’ll assassinate him myself.” When arrested, Geisel had a loaded nine-millimeter handgun, knives, dozens of rounds of ammunition, body armor, a machete, and military-style fatigues in his hotel room. He was charged with threatening a presidential candidate.
In Denver, a group of men with guns and bulletproof vests made racist remarks about Obama and talked of gunning him down as he gave his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in August. They were high on drugs and not capable of carrying out a plot.
Four days before the convention, one of them was pulled over for drunk driving in the Denver suburb of Aurora after a patrol officer spotted the man’s rented Dodge Ram truck swerving erratically. Inside, the officer found two high-powered rifles, a silencer, a bulletproof vest, camouflage clothing, and three fake identification cards. The truck contained enough drug-making equipment to be considered a mobile meth lab. While the Secret Service kept tabs on the case, the men were prosecuted locally on gun and weapons charges.
Chatter among white supremacists on the Internet increased throughout the campaign. As Obama was giving his acceptance speech on November 4, 2008, Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke was rallying white supremacists in a call to action, saying Obama’s election represented a “night of tragedy and sadness.” In an audio message broadcast on a radical website, Duke said, “Barack Obama has a long history of antagonizing white people.” He added, “We as European Americans have to rally for our survival.”
Just before the election, two skinheads in Tennessee were charged with plotting to behead blacks across the country and assassinate Obama while wearing white top hats and tuxedos. In both cases, the Secret Service determined the men were not capable of carrying out their plots.
The day after the election, one of the most popular white supremacist websites got more than two thousand new members. One posting on the site said, “I want the SOB laid out in a box to see how messiahs come to rest. God has abandoned us, this country is doomed.”
Five days before Obama’s inauguration, Secret Service agents arrested Steven J. Christopher in Brookhaven, Mississippi, for allegedly saying on the Internet that he intended to kill Obama. His entries on a website devoted to government conspiracies and unexplained phenomena included racial and anti-Semitic remarks. In one entry, Christopher wrote, “Yes, I have decided I will assassinate Barack Obama. It’s really nothing personal about the man.” He added that he had no way to travel to Washington.
“I don’t own a gun, so maybe someone can give me one,” he said, according to the Justice Department.
Media reports claimed that someone yelled “Kill him,” referring to Obama, at two Republican rallies. But Secret Service agents on the scene and videotapes played afterward revealed no such comments. At a rally for Governor Sarah Palin at Clearwater, Florida, a man yelled “tell him” or “tell them” rather than “kill him,” the Secret Service concluded.
Despite the ranting by racists, throughout the campaign the Secret Service saw no spike in credible threats.
John McCain did not initially request protection and claimed he did not need it. After a congressional hearing on April 7, 2008, revealed that he was not under protection, McCain was urged by both his staff and members of Congress to accept Secret Service protection. He then agreed to it, and his protection began on April 27.
The Secret Service worked with the campaigns so it would know ahead of time who the vice presidential nominees would be and when their names would be announced. It then chose a time on the day of the announcement when protection would begin.
Thus, by the time Sarah Palin—code-named Denali—and Joe Biden—code-named Celtic—were nominated for vice president at their respective conventions, they and their spouses were already under protection. Palin’s husband, Todd, was code-named Driller, and Biden’s wife, Jill, was code-named Capri. Protection for the Bidens began on August 23, 2008 and for the Palins on August 29, 2008.
Before protection began, Secret Service director Mark Sullivan and his team met with each candidate. Like nearly all the Secret Service’s twenty-two directors, Sullivan came up through the ranks. A native of Arlington, Massachusetts, Sullivan graduated from Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire. He began his Secret Service career in 1983 as an agent assigned to the Detroit field office.
In 1996, Sullivan became an assistant supervisory agent in charge within the Office of Protective Operations. He later became deputy special agent in charge of the Counterfeit Division. In 2002, he became deputy special agent in charge of the vice presidential protection division. After briefly serving as deputy director, Sullivan was sworn in as director on May 31, 2006.
While the backgrounds of Sullivan and the deputy director are on the Secret Service website, unlike the FBI, the agency does not announce the names of other Secret Service officials when they are appointed.
When Sullivan talks about growing up in “Aah-lington” (Massachusetts) and playing “haah-ky” he speaks with the typical pahk-the-cah-in-Hahvad-yahd accent. His ice hockey team beats the FBI’s team every year. It’s gotten so Director Bob Mueller jokingly accuses Sullivan of hiring for hockey talent.
Sullivan has a corner office on the eighth floor of Secret Service headquarters on H Street at Ninth Street in Washington. The objects in his office underscore his jock status: a framed photo of hockey great Bobby Orr on the ice, an aerial view of Fenway Park, a cluster of Red Sox caps and signed baseballs and signed footballs.
The traces of a Boston Irish accent fade quickly when Sullivan starts to talk about the job. There are twenty-two hundred working investigations, he says. As he speaks, his brow rises and furrows over his large wide-set brown eyes, and it stays furrowed in a persistent intensity. He leans forward in his chair, his meaty hands slapping his knees for emphasis. He throws himself into things physically. He sits with his legs crossed, his calves massive from all the years of skating.
Besides starting earlier than any other presidential campaign, candidates were taking more overseas trips, Sullivan notes. As a candidate, Obama took a six-day trip to Jordan, Israel, Germany, France, and Great Britain. Before that he went to Afghanistan and Iraq. McCain traveled to Canada, Colombia, and Mexico.
“The type of crowds we see in the earlier time frame of the campaign are larger than historically we’ve seen for that time frame,” Sullivan says. While the campaign was the longest in history, “I think that our people have reacted to it very, very well,” Sullivan says. “I’ve been very proud of the way they’ve reacted to it.”
In the summer of 2008, the Secret Service asked for and received an extra $9.5 million to cover unexpected costs of protecting the candidates, in addition to the $106.7 million already budgeted. In all, the Secret Service protected the candidates on 5,141 travel stops. More than 2.8 million people passed through thirty-five hundred Secret Service magnetometers.
That did not include screening 1.5 million people at events attended by the president and other protectees, or screening at the two national conventions, in Denver and in Saint Paul. The Secret Service oversaw security arrangements for the two conventions and set up an off-site communications center at each. The center coordinated the efforts of a hundred representatives from seventy entities ranging from the FBI and local police to local hospitals and utility companies. Manned twenty-four hours a day, each center had tiered seats as in a stadium so those in attendance could easily monitor the screens on the walls.
Every security concern, down to a car being broken into, appeared on a screen with the action being taken to resolve it. At the Republican convention, the Saint Paul Police Department and the Ramsey County sheriff’s office arrested eight hundred protesters. They included three hundred self-described anarchists, most of them affiliated with the RNC Welcoming Committee.
The Secret Service considered the local law enforcement efforts a model of how to handle such threats. Thirteen months earlier, Sheriff Bob Fletcher had organized an intelligence group that infiltrated the Welcoming Committee. A few days before the convention, sheriff’s deputies arrested eight of the group’s leaders and executed search warrants that obtained their plans, maps, and weapons. The group allegedly had planned to barricade bridges, spray delegates with urine, and possibly kidnap delegates. They were charged with conspiring to cause a riot as part of a terrorist act.
At the convention itself in the Xcel Energy Center, several Code-Pink protestors interrupted speeches by Senator McCain and Governor Palin with heckling. As they approached the stage, they revealed pink slips they were wearing. While delegates or the press may have given them guest passes, they also could have obtained them through others who received them from the original recipients. As long as the protesters did not threaten anyone, the Secret Service considered the matter one for the convention’s security force to handle.
“We screen everybody coming in,” an agent says. “If they had posed a threat, we would have addressed it. If they had rushed the stage, if they had tried to get to the protectees, if they had yelled some sort of threat, we would have been involved. But that wasn’t the case.”
Convention security personnel escorted the protesters out, and the Republican National Committee did not press charges.
“They were voicing their First Amendment right to what they had to say, and they were escorted out by the host committee there, so that really wasn’t a Secret Service issue,” Hughes says.
Agents say both Barack Obama—code-named Renegade—and Michelle Obama—code-named Renaissance—treat them with respect, as does Biden.
“Twice Obama invited agents to dinner, including a party for a relative, both at his home,” says an agent who was on his candidate detail. Michelle Obama insists that agents call her by her first name.
“Michelle is friendly—she touches you,” an agent says.
Obama makes an effort to be on time and usually is. If Obama is running late, Michelle gets on his case, saying he is being inconsiderate of his agents. Biden “gets a kick out of shmoozing with agents,” says an agent. “The Bidens buy agents food and are getting to know everyone by name.”
On April 4, 2008, just before Obama’s pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., spoke at the National Press Club, Obama secretly met with Wright at Wright’s home. So that they would not be noticed, agents made a point of driving Obama in a minivan instead of the usual Suburban. They parked their other vehicles a block away. Obama spent an hour with Wright and then left.
No doubt Obama wanted Wright to fade into the woodwork, but in his press club speech, Wright only confirmed that he thought America created the AIDS virus to kill off blacks. After that, Obama severed ties with him.
After Obama was elected president, Barbara Walters asked him if he worries about his safety. He said he never thinks about it.
“Part of it is because I’ve got this pretty terrific crew of Secret Service guys that follow me everywhere I go, but also because I have a deep religious faith and faith in people that carries me through the day,” he said.
Contrary to Obama’s repeated claims that he is quitting smoking, he has continued to smoke regularly, agents say. A week after being sworn in as president, Obama told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that he hadn’t had a cigarette on the White House grounds. That left open the possibility that he smokes on the Truman Balcony and in the White House residence and West Wing. Agents say he smokes outside the White House as well.
Unlike Obama, Secret Service agents say McCain—code-named Phoenix—was irritable, impatient, and displayed his famous temper over trivial annoyances.
“McCain’s really hard to work with,” an agent says. “He’s always complaining, just making comments. We knew from the start that he wasn’t a big fan of ours. We get in his way. We impede his ability to meet the people.”
On the other hand, Cindy McCain—code-named Parasol—was a pleasure to work with and has a good sense of humor, agents say.
After Obama was elected president, his two children—Malia, code-named Radiance, and Sasha, code-named Rosebud—began receiving Secret Service protection. The Secret Service also began protection of Joe Biden’s children, grandchildren, and mother. As with protection of Cheney’s daughters and granddaughters, rather than bringing in additional agents, the Secret Service expected agents to work longer hours to cover much of the extra load and to skip firearms training, physical fitness training, and tests. In fact, because of Biden’s constant travel as vice president—including to his home state of Delaware—the burden on agents became so great that the Secret Service stopped all training on the vice president’s detail. Nonetheless, agents on both his detail and the president’s fill in forms claiming that they have taken and passed all tests, when they have not, creating a dishonest culture.
“We have half the number of agents we need, but requests for more agents have fallen on deaf ears at headquarters,” an agent says. “Headquarters’ mentality has always been, ‘You can complete the mission with what you have. You’re a U.S.S.S. agent.’”
The inauguration of the first African American president and the unprecedented crowd size made the event a high-value target. Once Obama became president, the Secret Service experienced a 400 percent increase in the number of threats against the president, in comparision with President Bush. While most of the threats were not credible, each had to be checked out and adjudicated. Because the Secret Service thinks calling attention to threats gives people ideas and generates more threats, the agency never publicly characterizes their frequency.
Since the inauguration was a special national security event, the Secret Service was the lead agency in charge of security. The security precautions were unprecedented. Under the Secret Service’s plan, a large section of downtown Washington was cordoned off. Personal vehicles were banned from Potomac River bridge crossings to D.C. Interstates 395 and 66 leading into Washington were closed to personal traffic as well.
As with previous inaugurations, the Secret Service arranged to block with concrete barriers or police cars every street in Washington leading to the motorcade route. Since the 9/11 attack, crowds must now pass through magnetometers before entering the area along the motorcade route. Coolers, backpacks, and packages were banned.
Secret Service agents and military explosives experts inspected manholes and underground tunnels along the motorcade route. Manhole covers were spot-welded shut. Mailboxes and trash cans were removed from the street. If an item could not be removed, it was inspected and taped shut. If anyone tampered with it, the special tape—which varies in color with the event—would deteriorate.
Bomb-sniffing dogs inspected buildings, garages, and delivery trucks. Employees in offices along the route and hotel guests were often checked for criminal records. Agents made sure they had access to every office and hotel room with master keys kept by building or hotel managers. They taped shut utility rooms or electrical circuit boards. They stationed agents or police officers on top of buildings.
More than a dozen countersniper teams were deployed at the most vulnerable points along the parade route. Helicopters hovered overhead, other aircraft were kept away, and high-resolution surveillance cameras scanned the crowds. A $350,000 loudspeaker system using sonar technology was installed to give instructions in the event of an emergency.
“Every window must be closed when the motorcade passes,” a supervisory agent says. “We have spotters looking at them with binoculars. For the most part they comply. If they don’t, we have master keys to all those doors. We ask them why they are there and opening the windows.”
If agents encountered a problem, they called for an ID team. Named for the Intelligence Division, the ID team travels with the president and vice president. It is usually composed of a Secret Service agent and a local police officer. At the inauguration, most of the ID teams consisted of Secret Service agents. Several times, the teams interviewed suspicious individuals.
In all, the Secret Service coordinated the work of at least forty thousand officers and agents from ninety-four federal and local law enforcement, military, and security agencies. Police departments from across the country contributed officers, many wearing plain clothes. The total force was double that of Bush’s second inauguration.
Just past noon on January 20, Obama placed his left hand on the Lincoln Bible, a velvet-bound volume purchased by a Supreme Court clerk for the Great Emancipator’s swearing in on March 4, 1861. Obama raised his right hand and took the thirty-five-word oath of office administered by Chief Justice John Roberts.
Twice, Obama and his wife, Michelle, left their limousine to walk along Pennsylvania Avenue and wave to the crowds. Jimmy Carter was the first president to do this, spontaneously leaving his limousine without clearing it with the Secret Service. Since then, the Secret Service has scripted where the president should walk, providing extra security along the way.
Intelligence officials picked up information that people associated with a Somalia-based group, al-Shabaab, might try to travel to the United States with plans to disrupt the inauguration. The information had limited specificity and uncertain credibility.
In the end, nearly two million people packed the outside of the Capitol, the parade route, and the National Mall. The inauguration went off without a hitch. Yet even as Obama took the oath of office, the Secret Service took risks by cutting corners. Contributors who raised three hundred thousand dollars or more for the inauguration were never asked to show identification to pick up tickets, including VIP passes allowing them and their guests to meet privately with him. Others who were screened before sitting in a ticketed area near Obama during his swearing-in mingled with crowds that were not screened. They were never again checked for firearms or explosives.
More than a hundred VIPs were told to gather for a security screening outside the Renaissance Hotel before boarding “secure” buses that would take them to Obama’s podium at the Capitol. But after passing through the magnetometers, they were told to walk on a public sidewalk and find their way to buses waiting in a convention center parking lot. They were not screened again or asked for identification.
One donor who handled contributions for the inauguration told The Washington Post that he was shocked at the difference between Secret Service security during Bill Clinton’s inaugurations and Obama’s.
“The lack of security was absurd,” he said.
As usual, the Secret Service claimed some security measures are not visible.
“We take a layered approach to security and don’t rely on any one countermeasure to ensure that a site is safe,” spokesman Ed Donovan said.
Yet for all the mumbo jumbo about layered security, the fact is that by failing to properly screen spectators, the Secret Service exposed the new president to possible danger.