Transcripts For CSPAN2 Carol Leonnig Zero Fail 20220824

Brief bio give you a very brief by you. She has worked at the Washington Post since 2000 and see previous of reported the philadelphia inquirer, the Charlotte Observer and last but not least the bryn mawr haverford scholar news. [laughing] as as a former college newspapr personon myself, i want to pay tribute to that. [applause] the 2015 Pulitzer Prize among many other accolades for her work on misconduct inside the secret secret servicl be discussing today, and in addition to this book, zero fail the rise and fall of the secret service, we will be discussing today, she is w also written two other books, a very stable genius donald j. Trumps testing of america come with her colleague philip rucker, and also i alone can fix it donald j. Trumps catastrophic final year. So please give her a warm tucson welcome. Thank you. [applause] so, thank you so muchg here today your book captures the systemic Management Issues inside the secret service as well as the individual heroism of agents when lives are on the line and its such a rich topic for discussion. And i wanted to start by asking. You having been covering the secret Service Since 2012 . Did you . When did you think this would be such a rich topic of discussion for a book . Oh, well first off i want to say im so delighted. Im being questioned by a lawyer who used to be a journalist, i grew up in a family of lawyers, and im the only one that took this particularly at the time very on lucrative bath. Its turned out okay so far, but i i have a lot of respect for lawyers, and im so delighted daves my interviewer and i very grateful to you for mentioning the bryn mawr have afford news because i wouldnt have been a journalist if the editor of that paper at the time hadnt sort of grabbed me by the scuff of the knack and enlisted me to write a story about something that ill tell you more about later but really captivated me about journalism and what you can find when you start to dig and you have time to answer the question on the table. This is a funny story and im not normally viewed as very funny in my delivery. Hey answer my question right now. So the funny story is that i was writing. Like all rate reporting threads and especially investigative reporting threads this lifelong nearly lifelong obsession with the secret Service Began really by accident. I have a register of voice. Thats kind of like either. A big sister or a friendly friend and i am trustworthy but i especially am ben the beneficiary of sounding trustworthy. And so when there was this insane and at the time considered the most humiliating episode in secret Service History in 2012. Dozen agents, we find out are being flown back on ceremoniously from cartagena in colombia and i always mispronounce cartagena even though its the start of everything cartagena and my great investigative reporting partner David Nakamura broke that story in 2012 and he he and his editor called me the next morning and said we got a lot of agents. We got a call. We got a lot of people we have to call we have to find out how this happened. What the heck these agents were flown back because they were caught with their guns and their security plans in their hotel rooms drunk off their and forgive me. My mom doesnt want me to use that word and with prostitutes during a time when they were supposed to be preparing and securing basically the entire city for president obamas arrival. So what the heck happened i get a call from david and the his editor saying can you help us out because what its going to involve is getting on the phone and convincing a lot of people that dont talk to the press to tell me what happened. Um you all may be old enough to remember. Im just going to take a guess. The shampoo commercial, you know, you called you tell two friends. You tell two more friends blah. So these agents basically said this womans calling around. She seems to know what happened. And each of these two friends would essentially tell another two friends answer her questions, you know, listen to her. She sounds like she really wants to get to the bottom of it. The thing is agents. This is a really long answer. Im so sorry. Um, the thing is agents can lose their jobs for talking to the press the secret service uses that whip in their Employment Contract to block agents from talking about things the service doesnt want to talk about talk about any flattering thing. You want to talk about talk about any lovely wonderful memory of a president. Its fine, but talk about the secret service in a way. Thats unflattering. Thats revelatory that comes back and embarrasses somebody and you can lose your job. So i was lucky that they spoke to me. In this happy accident more of them just told me unbelievable things that were so much worse than what had happened in gardena. So much worse and actually chilling because to a person every senior agent that i spoke to you know, who had had some years who had a little hide was convinced that the president was going to be killed on their watch. That it was going to happen. It was a matter of time because the agency was so bleakered so broken so dysfunctional so much using duct tape to keep it together in. When i knew i had a book. Was when an agent called me and i dont mean a secret Service Agent but a book agent and she said you have a book. I dont know you but you have a book and her name was elise Cheney Cheney literary agency, and im forever indebted to her because she would not let go of me. I had no desire to write a book didnt know anything about writing books. I was 40 late 40s. Ill just say and i i always wanted to be journalists nothing else, but she would not let go and convinced me and im so glad that she was the you know, the tiger that she was. Thats a great story and this book is such a service to us all to really get behind this image. Of the secret service as just these agents and suits who are very trim and fit and very lead Protection Unit and in fact not only is that not entirely true the whole origin of the secret service is not what i would have thought he told me more about that sure. It also was a miss not mystery. It was a new piece of information to me. I had not id written a lot about the department of defense the department of justice the department forgive me the Environmental Protection agency, but i really never studied this tiny little Protection Unit that that began in 1865 in the department of treasury. Its initial assignment, and it was called the secret service because were trying to be undercover and secretive about how they did their work Abraham Lincoln and his secretary of treasury had been talking for weeks about the so damaging flood of forged currency that made up the entire or twothirds of the economy at the time and this was really harmful to fledgling United States trying to get back. And recover after the civil war they had been talking about it at a meeting interestingly enough the day that lincoln. Link hours later lincoln was shot and killed. Theyd had a treasury meeting and a Cabinet Meeting to discuss. How can we control this flood of forgeries and fraudulent dollars bills . His secretary of treasury preceded with the idea after lincoln was killed and months later created this little unit of kind of rough and tumble dastardly agents almost like revenuers if you will for the bootleggers era and what they did was what they found people. Gangs like mobster gangs who had these fake plates and they broke up these plate making operations. They tried to arrest the guys engaged and then they burned the currency that was their big job. Wow, so it sounds like there was no formal president ial Protection Agency for a long time in our history and why do you think that was the case . Love this question. This must be from a lawyer. So. You know, i didnt know this so i learned it in the research for the book, but there was intense resistance to the idea of a president ial security team. And it was part and parcel of the founding of america, which is its the peoples house. You know, we talked about the capital as the peoples house. But the first name for the white house was the peoples house. There were no fences if you can believe it around the white house people had picnics on the white house lawn and walked their dogs and and literally rode their horses across the front steps. So the idea of a palace guard was a nathama to american and to american president s who wanted to feel as though they were at least projecting the image of a man of the people the peoples representative and so security was considered just something from over with the royals in europe and not something were going to do here. Unfortunately three president s would be killed before the country and the federal government really woke up and said, okay, we cant lose any more president s this way. You know how lincoln was killed the third president ial assassination that triggered the formation of the secret service or rather. I should say the assignment of this role to the secret service was mckinley. He was at a world fair 1901 and was shot at close range by a socialist communist who was infuriated by mckinleys administration the feeling that Little People were overlooked and mckinley, you know died of his injuries weirdly many many weeks after the actual event, but that was the beginning of secret service protecting president s. Right and then you write about how we finally had a formal agency protecting the president. From the mckinley assassination up until the kennedy assassination. And what was this iteration of the secret service like this period between mckinley and kennedy exactly. Yeah. Well, i would say that it was pretty. Unrutinized lets say it that way it was essentially different patrols who want to three at a time who would be with the president when he traveled or when he was in public or in what is now so frequently called the rope line, you know, they keep a rope between people in the president the president. Shakespeoples hands as they walk by this kind of formalized way of meeting the president and letting him touch the hands of voters and stay engaged with them it was a little bit unprofessional but still a form of Security Armed guards with the president and with his family especially around the time of eisenhower and the war there were theyre forgive me. Before eisenhower there around World War Two there was a much larger interest in at least having one Security Guard along with the president s family. Usually the first lady. And of course then president kennedy takes office. Hes very resistant to having a detail around him full time. Can you tell me more about how those created challenges for the secret service protecting him . Kennedy put an incredible strain on the secret service and i begin the book describing what that was like for the agents who were traveling with him during his campaign before dallas months before dallas. They were exhausted and he was a jet setting high flying. Let me touch every voter i can kind of president which was so different and such a Culture Shock for the secret service after his predecessor who often stayed in the white house didnt travel terribly much and wasnt that interested in standing at a rope line and shaking hands all day long. Definitely wanted to be engaged but kennedy was a whole different animal he fed off as an extrovert fed off the Peoples Energy and wanted to be with them. Any famously said to his detail they call it a whip a very senior supervisor on the president s detail floyd boring. He said i wouldnt get elected dog catcher if i listen to you people and did what you wanted. Hes like i need to be with the people. Im paraphrasing that last part but the dog catcher quote is accurate. He feasted on being with people and he would. Fully almost like a runaway he would flee his protectors to get out in front of them and get closer to a scrum or a throng of people and throw himself into it and it was infuriating to the secret service. So theyre tired from the hours that hes traveling and being with people their hopscotching each other from city to city trying to keep up not catching enough sleep. Theyre exhausted by that travel that hes doing easily triple with the his predecessor had done and then theyre kind of ticked off because he wont listen to the doctor essentially. Then of course we all know now and and they knew better than than anyone. Kennedy was also foiling his protectors because he was trying to be with women who were not his wife. And trying to be with them on a daily basis so that evasion that he was engaged in was also painful for them. And i know this isnt really your question, but i just feel like its important to say this. The agents and i interviewed almost all of them. Sadly many of them have died since my interview. Interviews with them and since the book was published, but i interviewed almost every single agent on kennedys detail. Prior at the time of the assassination ones that were still alive and they were so passionate about their duty to country. Their patriotism was so invested in protecting the president and they were not judging as morality in large measures some of them were but many of them. Were infuriated because it was their job to protect what was happening on the other side of that Hotel Room Door and they couldnt screen these women that were coming in regularly at all hours of the night and and leaving it all hours of the night and they were infuriated because you were putting a barrier between them and their ability to serve their country and do their duty. That is what i felt and learned from them most poignantly. Ride, and of course, we all know the tragic event that this recklessness led to on november 22nd. 1963 and i loved in your book how you really walked through . The assassination through the perspective of the secret Service Agents how do you think having interviewed them and having talked to them . Do you think there were ways in which the secret service failed to protect president kennedy adequately . I do sadly. I mean even though i think that their sense of duty and mission was so keen and palpable. There were ways as individuals they failed, but i think the larger answer to the question is there were ways in which the agency failed them . Didnt give them the tools. To do the job in a way that would would save the president on that day. One is the director of the secret service jim rowley who weirdly used to live like a block from my where i live now went to the church at the corner of my block. You know. Sorry, i was about to go that direction. Im going to stop myself. The way the agency failed the secret service is the director had been begging begging kennedy and the administration to give him more money to hire more agents because he knew how exhausted and beat up they all were he asked for an additional i think 36 agents to try to keep their heads above water and i mean these guys and i interviewed a lot of their wives too. They were literally coming home from an assignment, you know on a nine city tour dropping their bags at their wifes. Front doorstep and i say wifes because the wife would get their clothes wash them put them back out on the doorstep and they would come back from headquarters and go out that night. So they really they were really doing triple duty. Rowley could not get the administration the Kennedy Administration to agree to give him those extra agents. There was a lack of routinized training none of them really knew. In a routine way, what should they do if someone shot at or came at at the president with a knife other than theyre good Law Enforcement training. They didnt have a lot of rootinized training in the seconds that count when a gun shot goes off and the president is standing at a podium or near his car that training wasnt there neither was there ever a consideration . Which you know shocks me after i looked at some of the internal records of the months and weeks before the assassination there. There was not an effort to try to protect the president from gunfire from a line of sight if you all line of sight is a big deal for the secret service. They try to make sure that they block with buses or walls or you know, theyve built walls to to block a line of sight from the rifle. Of a gun forgive me. Little about god end of a gun and the president s head. And so you know Lee Harvey Oswald had a clean shot. Another hundred people could have had a clean shot that day because the secret service was not working very hard to focus on that. You ask the question. So well dave about their own responsibility and the only personal responsibility. Ill lay at the feet of some of those agents was that in order to sort of let off steam at the end of the night and this was a harder drinking time in our American History. They all went out in fort worth the night before the assassination and the trip to dallas to a funny coffee slash strip strip kind of club like a beatnik club where the waitresses were underwear. They the bar tenders illegally served, you know straight liquor, you know. And put it into juice cups, and these guys were there drinking until to four and five oclock in the morning and as earl warren the head of the Warren Commission said in the hearings after the assassination looking into the causes, you know, im sorry direct rowley you cannot tell me that a man whos been up till two four five in the morning whether he was drunk or not is his able to react to protect the president the next morning and and that just is a fact and just true. Right, very very unfortunate. I also know very little about guns. So to join hop onto that train as well the end of a gun. Someones gonna like go care all. No, we all understood. I i also have to ask because unfortunately the 1960s were very tragic decade with multiple assassinations of president of a president and some nonpresident s as well. And you describe in the book how the assassination of Robert Kennedy changed the secret Services Mission in another way. How did that assassination . Change their mission such a devastating time and such of like trial by error, you know. Trial by fire like just such an awful time in the sense of okay. These are president ial candidates running for office. Robert kennedys brother forgive me john f. Kennedys brother is one of them. The secret Service Knows at this juncture before bobby. Kennedy is killed and and shot fatally shot in los angeles. They know that the people who want to kill president s are looking often for fame and they believe that the way to get fame. Is to kill somebody famous or to have such an incredible being engaged in such a incredible violent event that it is enormous and it will make them famous. So when Sirhan Sirhan shoots Robert F Kennedy Lyndon Johnson is alerted instantly. Two oclock, i think in the morning because in los angeles, its its like nine nine or ten oclock when the shooting happens and hes alerted and he immediately calls director rally and says i want you to put security details on every single president ial candidate tonight. Dispatch them do whatever you need to do. Send them and an agent im sorry to whine two stories into one, but an agent people have asked me many times. Have you been to tucson before . And the answer is yes, but kindly like blow through for work. This is the first time ive gotten the chance to really enjoy it and really spend some, you know quality time experiencing the place but i one of the agents that i interviewed here retired agent. Just an amazing icon a reagan detail leader for many years. He was the first agent who was called that night by director rowley. He was relatively young he was deeply trusted by the director as somebody with good instincts and he said okay pack a bag pack a lot. Dont know how long youre going to be gone. Dont know where youre going. Dont know when youre coming home, but youre going to go see. This candidate in tony kalarama neighborhood of washington dc and good luck. And he bobby d was the agents name by the way, bobby d. As his wife reminded me many times in our interviews at her house. Didnt come home for nine months. Again did drop off his laundry. But did not actually sleep in his own bed and forever after prominent candidates for president would always get secret Service Protection. Well after that we should talk about a major success of the secret service and 1981 and other turning point the agency came. When they fulfilled their zero fail Mission President reagan. Shot outside the dc hotel, but survived due to their heroism. You tell me more about how that event unfolded. Um Ronald Reagan have been president for all of about i want to say six weeks. Jerry parr was the leader of his president ial detail, but actually hadnt. Really spent any time with reagan shoulder to shoulder they often say that youre on the right hand shoulder of the president when youre the detail leader, but he hadnt been doing that. Hed been assigning that assignment to the deputy detail leader and he decided on this one particular morning in march that he needed to spend some time with the boss. He needed to get to know him and not just do the paperwork in the office and and get out on the road with him. It was not considered a very high profile event, you know, the president was speaking to a labor union at a local hotel. That was you know, less than a mile from the white house and one that i pass all the time on my way to work. President s had been going there many many times in there in each of their 10 years and it was a standard routine visit. It was rainy foggyish and jerry parr. Decided not to ask reagan to wear his bulletproof vest which they often made the president not made anywhere but asked him to wear on especially on foreign trips and sometimes on trips out of town, but it was kind of muggy icky muggies. Not the right word. It was humid. And so he decided not to bring that up. A man who you all know secretly wormed his way into an area of news photographers, cameramen really. Ps and it is an area he had not been screened. Normally the secretservice sort of down or checks everybody thats going ato get within 100 feet, 100 yards of the president. And there was a failure to do that. There was a presumption that its a local job, weve done this 1 million times. The cameramen are over there so you know what, the president emerges from an underground driveway essentially, like a walkway walking towards the beast, the name for the president ial limo. Shots rang out and John Hinckley is all about 15 feet from thepresident so he has the ability to kill him. What is wonderful about this episode if you can say anything is wonderful about something so traumatic and that a president is that everybody on the president s detail immediately reacts. Instantly with intheir training they didnt have when kennedy was shot. The routinized training is called attack on the principle and they drilled at this day in, day out. In fact attack on the principle is i see something, i hear something, sounds like abad psa and this is my job when that happens. On firegoes off. Hinckley is able to get off a shot in less than twoseconds. Not all of them very well and but still. Jerry park hears it, doesnt look up. It doesnt turn to his wife, doesnt turn to his s left, just start showing the president towards the open black door of the limousine and they are three yards away from it so its not easy to shove Ronald Reagan that far but thats what he does and he almost according to president reagan from his description later, he almost, reagan assumes his ribs had been broken because thats a hard shove into the wheel well essentially in between the two, not the wheel well. Im not good at cars either. [laughter] its that all. Transmission. Transmission called. Rigginsjust goes down on that and hes convinced his ribs are broken. Another amazing agent, timmy who everybody consider some of this poking Football Player but basically was like a real rookie, a youngster. Heres the shot also, doesnt look left, doesnt look right. Knows where the gunfire is coming from. Points is just toward it and throws out his hands as fast as he can and as wide as he can. And that ultimately, those two men saved reagans life. Now, a bullet does get through and it ricochets into, is this boring . Do you guys although this . [laughter] sometimes i really figure youguys know all this. You can talk about cars and guns later. And by the way, most of this i learned with the same chill by reading the fbis 302s which are the fbi agents interviewing agents in real time what happens, what did you do . Of course theres great camera footage of it as well and my wonderful colleague del wilber wrote a book exclusively about this moment in time and irecommend it to oyou. Rawhide down. Rawhide being reagans codename in the secretservice. But the primary documents of this are breathtaking because theyre all, all the agents are basically attack on principle training told me to do this so thatswhat i did. They get him inthe car. Oh, a bullet is ricocheting on the rear passenger door and it slices through part of reagans long and nobody knows that happened. Jerry park doesnt know that happened. Behind him, ray shaddox a deputy agent shops. I still cant believe he didnt break his legs. Schultz parrs legs into the car and an agent knows hes got a gun and hes got to get out of kthere. They have to flee and in his head hes praying please dont let me run over timmy. Because timmy has fallen and they dont know where timmy is and we have to go and i have to run over timmy to get thepresident out of here. Luckily, he doesnt and he survives and he came up a police chief in agreat town outside chicago. So im sorry, thats so long a an answer. I remember reading how this initially they didnt think they necessarily had to go to the hospital but then in fact they had to make a detour. Ill try to be brief. So jerry parr also in his attack on the principle training has had basic like, war, military hospital. Sorry. Its something else. Its like a mass training. If i have to do a tracheotomy i can do it. If i have to do anamputation i can do it. So he notices that reagan is complaining you broke my red, dude. He notices that the froth coming out of ereagans mouth is pink. Its not bloodied, its pink, itsoxidative and from his training hes saying wait a second. Thats a symptom or at least thats a clue that his lung is damaged in some way. Something is happening. And he feels all around him and reagan is like get off me and hes feeling up and down his body trying to find blood and nothing. So he says to drew reroute. Stagecoach to George Washington university. And if he had not done that reagan would have died. He didnt have a lot of time for a surgeon to see him and to determine that he had a perforation in his lung. That its potentially exploding bullet was lodged there and later, i was watching this as a reporter i was a little young for this moment but people watching this in real time, most of the people in the white house had no idea that the president had to have more than half of his blood blood replaced. Thats how much he lost in theemergency room while they were trying to get the bullet and find it. So another way jerry parr saved democracy as well as the life of a politician. An incredible story of heroism of course and another tragic day for our country, september 11 secret service also showed incredible heroism but there were t no abilities lnincluding Vice President cheney. I tried to write this book the way my agent proposed it to me. I wanted to write about the Current Secret Service but he was like, this agency has such an arc from rebuilding itself in the wake of a national tragedy, proving itself when reagans life was saved and many other times. Geraldford and others. And then it begins a slow slide. A slow, gradual demise in the wake of 9 11. Which is so tragic because every other federal agency got a ton of money and a ton of health and got all this star wars toys and tools to rebuild for a new century and a new National Security cuts and the secret service didnt. That day obviously is incredibly poignant and a pivot point for our country in so many ways but for the secret service, it revealed how little they had imagined the ways Foreign Terrorists would like to be had our government. These stabilize our country and basically knock off the head of that country by killing the president. We all know that the plane that crashed was intended either for the white house or the capital. Based on interviews that the fbi has conducted they believe it was very very likely. Like a tossup but very likely to have been the white house. That day , there was a failure to communicate as well as a failure of imagination. A failure to communicate in the white house. Dick cheney, the president as you know was in florida at an education event. Just trying to press the flesh and remind voters how much he cared about education reform and Holding Schools accountable. I wont go into some of the mistakes the secret service made that day regarding president bush but with regard to Vice President cheney, who would have been the president if bush was killed that day, cheney was in his office. He didnt usually go to his Oval Office Meeting but that they did. He was meeting with a close ally who was a top budget official in the omb and he was watching the television when the second jet hit the second tower. The secret service, the person in charge of making sure that liaison with the faa about any threats to the white house because keep in mind the white house had been attacked by a car twice before. Not by a huge commercial jet but it had been attacked twice before. Twice planes and either almost crashed there or crashed into the lawn so its not like that its not impossible to envision that a plane could be used as a weapon. But the agent in charge of liaison with the faa gets a very urgent message from the second plane hitting the second tower. That is about 9 0 3 am that morning and it is we are still missing 2 jets. Not communicate with us and heading towards you. There 20 minutes out, 20, 30 minutes out. For some reason, this agent whose liaison with the faa sends a carrier up to the tower of the Old Executive Office building which is where the secret service has its Emergency Operations center. This runner goes up there to communicate that message so that on a very classified screen that no one supposed to know about and we will talk about very much more, on this screen where the white house is tracking planes coming close, they only have this much of the picture. The faa has this picture. So they run up to look and see how close, how many minutes out, how many seconds out but nobody communicates to the headquarters of the secret service, weve got two incoming planes. Because you have to protect the Vice President of the white house where the planes are coming, too. And it is literally a minute before the incoming plan that ends up crashing into the pentagon buzzes the white house before the detail leader breaks into cheneys office and says weve got to go, grasses cell and hoists about the doorway down the stairwell into the underground bunker. Another failure of imagination that day was nobody thought we were going to have to rush the Vice President to the underground bunker in athens to prepare for a plane incoming to hit the white house and the agents who were with him do not have the classified key to instantly get him inside the protective bunker and they have to wait in the underground tunnel which is protected but not the same kind of f protection to get him inside. Again, ridiculously long answer. Im going to have to work on my cohesion. Its all fascinating and i can see everyone in the press on the edge of their seats, i appreciate it. [applause] and im going to ask one more question before we turn it over to theaudience for questions so start thinking now about your questions. President bush of course leaves office. Is replaced by president obama. And as you said there was not the same level of funding being provided to the secret service so other agencies post 9 11 but at the same time president obama is the first black president faced enormous threats, unprecedented threats and how did that stretch theagency even further . Im so glad you asked because in a way its a bit of a perfect storm. After 9 11 all sorts of big behemoth agencies are stood up from scratch. Transportation security administration, all of a sudden tens of millions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of new recruits and employees all added to this Huge Department of Homeland Security and what congress and what the president are the most worried about is the last thing that just happened and its how do we stop planes from being used fas weapons of mass destruction . How do we make the skies safe again . Its really the only thing theyre worried about and secondarily how do we keep terrorists from getting into the country and overcoming the border patrol. An incredible operation that is amped up to secure our ports, secure our borders. Some people would argue terrorists arent coming in through tijuana but we spent jillions of dollars to secure those borders. Again, in the wake of 9 11 that was the primary reason. Secret service is not on the president s radar at this time and i meet president bush before obama takes over. Its true for president obama as well but this is a weakening of an agency where all the money is going to the big sister agencies that are supposed to keep us safe. The only problem is there for getting the president s target number one for isys. Target number one still for mass tutors who want to be famous. And so the secret service just gets comparatively shrunk littler and littler trying to keep up. The commission is expanding. A larger number of people to protect and its just eating away at its ability to do its job. The perfect storm, the other threat of that on the other incoming front is that president obama represents an n accidental threat to a portion of americans who believe all black president is a danger to them. And disgusting to them. And threats against president obama quadruple compared to the previous president. Now, i have to not counteract but put some context there. Internet threats, the use of the internet as a way to threaten and make threats is on the rise so its possible the increase is partially attributable to that but i have read some of these chatter that the secret service collected and investigated and it is spine tingling. Its talking about how we can hang michelle obama,where we could hang her. How this could be done. Ways in which you know, president obama could be drawn and quartered. Theres some pretty visceral threat material here. Itsnot a guy in a bar melting off about a black president. Although that happens to. So it is a very worrisome time for the obamas. The director at the time Mark Sullivan whos been criticized pretty badly for not being more forceful just like director rollie is begging for additional money but when he doesnt get it he kind of stops begging and the secret services is depleted. Thank you so much for telling us more about that and nowwed like to let the audience ask a few questions. We have microphones appear and we look forward to hearing from you. The end of a rifle is often referred to as muzzle. [laughter] really. You just touched on protecting obama and some of the things that have happened to him. Do you know, is the secret service at all concerned about a gay transportation secretary and then do they have a responsibility there . There was one other guy i was worried about but hell know. I dont know what the threat matrixes for Pete Buttigieg but i would imagine because of his prominence and public position i would imagine that its higher than normal for a cabinet secretary but i dont know well enough to speak intelligently about thethreat matrix and what that would trigger for him. Thats true as well for the state department. Hillary clinton was protected by the Diplomatic Security core. This happened also because she was the first lady and given Lifetime Protection had secret Service Protection at night at her home so dont know the answer on pete. I will tell you its interesting the people you dont expect dto have a threat matrix. While i was here yesterday i reported a story about the National Security advisor who the secret service is now investigating what appears to be a strange man who came onto his lawn and may have tried to break into his own days and four hours after this deputy National Security adviser became the public face for sanctions against russia to the White House Briefing room. If you may remember David Axelrod, obamas senior advisor, he got the secret Service Detail after a man began shooting in the lobby of the Holocaust Museum and the man died, he was killed. The shooter was killed. But when they went through his pockets, they found all these drawings and the address and phone number for David Axelrod and commentary about his jewishness so secret Service Began protecting him after that, long answer. Carol, could you talk about today. Whats happening withthe secret service now. Your belly are wellversed on the last years. But perhaps some context on the trump time and exactly where were at. I hope that someone here is y what im about to say the onto this room. Im very disappointed that after r basically diagramming whats wrong and broken with the secret service and how underserved the agents are by the federal government and the white house in providing them with funding that the Biden Administration has done almost nothing to rectify that. Now, the biden ministration has a lot of problems on its plate and iacknowledge that. But one of the agents who came to me and risked their careers to say president is going to get killed. Its a matter of time. Do something. I am only channeling their very passionate fear, passionate fear. And nothing that is really other than the margins have been fixed. Is there any initiative in congress . Nothing. Wended the secret Service Protection start with the presidency and second question related to that is that when the former president leads to saudi arabia because he does not want to face any of the various lawsuits he has going against him. What measures if any can be done to remove him is secret service or does he have it for life. I think i understood your first question and the answer we talked a little bit about before but the secret Service Began present protecting president sa little after 1901 in the mckinley assassination. Its embarrassing we cant keep letting president s die because of voter comes up to them with a gun. As for the president , its really hard to lose your lifetime promise of protection. It is written into the statute and our president can try to decline it. But the Us Government does not have the option to decline protecting former president s and former first ladies. It is a guarantee. If you are in prison, there would be another provision for how thathappens. [applause] im not predicting, i just know that that question hascome up before. Carol, its really a riveting book. Can you read a book about the patriotism these agents feel later in the book you talk about how many of them voted for trump and im wondering if you can ptalk about how any democratic president can feel safe with that sort of mentality. Im glad you asked the question because the kicker for my book is essentially me learning in the wake of january 6 because i was recording on january 6. I had to come out of book leave january 6 and keep reporting for the post which im glad for that duty and that mission, im not complaining but what i learned is that secret Service Agents were rooting in some instances for the insurrectionist to attack the police officers. How can you owbe blue for someone to take a flagpole into the chest of someone blue. I dont mean party, i mean police officers. Thats really frightened me. About our society and about that mission, that patriotism so many times. But you know, the secret service like allLaw Enforcement agencies leans conservative. Thats okay. The fbi leans conservative. Im sure the Tucson Police department leans conservative in their personal lives. The fbi, all these agencies also have always had a tendency to check their politics at the door so leave that outside. Put it in the locker. And i think its illustrative of the rest of the country as our country has become more and more divided the secret service became as did the fbi and other Law Enforcement agencies has become more open about their political viewpoints. More angry, more vituperative and increasingly uncomfortable checking their politics at the door. Which worries us all. I want democratic liberal leaning cops to check their politics at the door. Its about blind justice. Its about the mission. But that changed and donald trump again, i give him credit for his genius, he convinced Many Americans and many secret Service Agents that he was their defender. Their protector, their savior. Thank you for being here carol. I have a question i read in the paper that we are spending millions of dollars protecting michael pompeo. Where did that money come from and why is he so important . What are the people who are actually in charge now protecting this raises an important question and ill try to be quick because ive got my twominute warning over there. Rather infamously donald trump extended protections for his children, although children for six months after he left office and three top aides, National Security adviser, his chief of staff and i believe im blanking on the third. I wrote the story but i cant remember what i wrote. And pompeo is not in that group. But hes getting protection now from the state department and i have to believe that the Biden State Department again, not political. He just happens to be the hnext president has found a very justifiable and reasonable reason to protect them. The threats against him rise to that level. You asked the question where did the money come from. It comes out of the state Department Budget and ultimately comes out of our pocketbooks and i cant help but think that it also diminishes our ability to provide the kind of protections the secret service wants to provide. One last question. I had quite the urgency to deliver some great commentary on this years speech because i try to reinvested and in a lot of these types of things. I want to make a strong interest to the audience but heres my question. Right off the bat. What are some of the, what are some of the key duties involving social media for the protective services. I hope i understand your question right. You mean monitoring social media . So the secret service has a huge extra responsibility and duty because social media is where people make threats. Social media is where the proud boys and both keepers at times kim indicated their plans for january 6 so that gives you good clues as reporters do from monitoring this about what bad guys are up to and what theyre threatening. Its important and its a good question. Do you think that the proud boys were following the most noteworthy example of the groups that were trying, was there a specific group you found the most noteworthy and could possibly have been involved and started from before the insurrection itself . There are three main things although we dont know , im not a prosecutor or fbi agent. The both keepers, proud boys. [inaudible] great to know. Thank you. Loved the speech. If youre enjoying book tv sign up for our newsletter using the qr code on the screen to receive the schedule of upcoming programs, author discussions, book festivals and more. 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