Secrets Of The Secret Service
By Wyatt Earp | October 16, 2009
Have you ever wondered what presidents and vice-presidents are really like when the cameras are off? Well, wonder no more. A new book interviews over 100 former Secret Service agents about their assignments and their families.
The results? Pretty much what you would expect . . . and some things that you would not.
In his In the President’s Secret Service: Behind the Scenes with Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents they Protect, journalist Ronald Kessler gives us a peek inside the intimate lives of our presidents. Through interviews with over 100 secret service agents from the past and present—dating all the way back to John F. Kennedy—Kessler paints a picture of what our presidents are like when no one is looking.
We learn from the agents Kessler interviews that John F. Kennedy was a serial adulterer (big surprise) and that Lyndon Johnson was essentially a serial adulterer and a lunatic. “If Johnson weren’t president, he’d be in an insane asylum,” said one former secret agent who sometimes was on Johnson’s detail. Secret Service agents found Richard Nixon strange and unsociable. Agents described Gerald Ford as friendly but cheap, often tipping caddies at exclusive country clubs a dollar if anything at all. But the president subject to the greatest scorn is Jimmy Carter.
Carter is portrayed as a phony according to the agents interviewed by Kessler. Carter would put on a show for the public to convey himself as a common man, but it was never anymore than an act. For instance, we are told that when Carter would make a point of carrying his own luggage in front of the press, he was really carrying empty bags. He expected others to carry his real luggage. Unfriendly, Carter “didn’t want the police officers and agents looking at him or speaking to him when he went to the [Oval] office,” explained an assistant White House usher. “The only time I saw a smile on Carter’s face was when the cameras were going,” one former agent told Kessler.
Wow, I am really, really shocked. I wonder if he treated Jewish agents with more scorn that the non-Jewish ones?
Long story short: Reagan, Clinton, Bush 41 and 43, and Obama are/were decent sorts. Johnson, Carter, and Hillary Clinton? Not so much. Although none of the paragraphs jumped out at me more than this one, which exposes Al Gore for the ignoramus we always thought he was:
Vice President Al Gore was exceedingly obnoxious to his agents according to Kessler. When scolding his son for not doing well in school, Gore chastised him by warning that “if you don’t straighten up, you won’t get into the right schools, and if you don’t get into the right schools you could end up like these guys.” The “guys” Gore was referring to were his secret service agents! (H/T – The North Star National)
A-hole. Well, at least his demeanor toward the “hired help” is not surprising in the least. How’s that for an inconvenient truth?
Topics: Politics | 7 Comments »
October 16th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
I’d call Jimmy Carter a tool, but tools can be useful, whereas Carter can’t.
October 16th, 2009 at 8:57 pm
Sounds like an interesting book. I shall have to read it.
(I used to babysit for someone who went on to be a secret service driver for one of the men mentioned. Hmmm.)
October 16th, 2009 at 11:04 pm
Read the book The Flying White House. The author was a pilot on air Force one.
October 16th, 2009 at 11:55 pm
Wyatt,
Have you every worked with the Secret service, and are you at liberty to share your impressions?
October 17th, 2009 at 12:57 am
John D – Good point.
RT – I think i may pick it up, too. Looks like a good read.
Rick – Nice. That sounds interesting, too.
Mario – I have not. I have worked with a few FBI agents. Some have been great, some have been arrogant as hell.
October 17th, 2009 at 4:38 am
I remember Gore coming through my area during the election he lost…
I was standing outside an apartment building as his motorcade drove by. With me was a friend of mine, and an old timer who was out with a Bush sign.
Most of the agents who saw us gave us a thumbs-up. Says something about the man, don’t it?
October 18th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
John D said:
“I’d call Jimmy Carter a tool, but tools can be useful, whereas Carter can’t.”
I must ploitely disagree, sir. He serves as both an example and a warning.