Free In the President's Secret Service by Ronald Kessler Page B

have been shot to death [if he had not rolled under the chopper]. It was not going to take off this time.”
    Preston, twenty, had flunked out of flight school and perhaps wanted to show them all that he did have some flying skills. He was treated for a superficial gunshot wound. He was sentenced to a year at hard labor and fined twenty-four hundred dollars.
    Neither President Nixon nor his wife, Pat, was at the White House at the time.

9

Jackal
    I N THEIR IN-HOUSE jargon, agents refer to any possible assassin as “the jackal.” Were a jackal to strike, it would most likely be when the president has left the cocoon of the White House. Every assassin has pounced when a president is most vulnerable—outside the White House, usually when arriving or departing from an event. That window of vulnerability opens several times a week when the president leaves the White House for an event in Washington or goes on a domestic or overseas trip.
    Even a visit to a friend’s home requires elaborate preparation. When George W. Bush was president, he and Laura had dinner at the home of Anne and Clay Johnson, a close friend from high school. Guests included Bush’s Yale friend Roland W. Betts and FBI director Robert S. Mueller III, and his wife, Ann. Checking out the Spring Valley home in Washington beforehand, the Secret Service set up a command post in the basement.
    “They asked that drapes be put up in the dining room and suggested a chair in which the president should be seated,” Anne Johnson recalls. “Agents were posted around the yard, and no-parking cones were put up in front of the house.”
    The Secret Service asked the Johnsons to clear a closet that was big enough for at least two people.
    “In case of an emergency, an agent was going to grab the president, and the two of them were going to dive in,” Anne Johnson says. “That would have been an interesting dive, because GWB would have had Laura by the hair, at the very least.”
    Anne Johnson asked an agent, “What should everyone else do in case of an emergency?”
    “I only have one client: the president,” the agent replied.
    Ten days before a presidential trip, at least eight to twelve agents fly to the intended destination. That is in contrast to the two-man advance team sent for President Kennedy’s trip to Dallas. Back then, the Secret Service had about 300 special agents, compared with 3,404 today.
    Now an advance team includes a lead agent, a transportation agent, airport agent, agents assigned to each event site, a hotel advance agent, one or two logistics agents, a technical security agent, and an intelligence agent. As part of advance preparations, a team of military communications personnel from the White House Communications Agency is sent to handle radios, phones, and faxes. They ship their equipment and additional personnel on Air Force C-130 cargo planes. The Uniformed Division’s countersniper team and the counterassault team from the Secret Service’s Special Operations division may also send agents on an advance.
    The counterassault team, or CAT, as it is referred to, is critical to providing protection outside the White House. A heavily armed tactical unit, it is assigned to the president, vice president, foreign heads of state, or any other protectee, such as a presidential candidate, deemed to require extra coverage. In the event of an attack, CAT’s mission is to divert the attack away from a protectee, allowing the working shift of agents to shield and evacuate the individual. Once the “problem,” asSecret Service agents put it, is dealt with, CAT members regroup, and the shift leader directs them to their next position.
    The Secret Service first started using the teams on a limited basis in 1979. They were formed after several agents involved in training were having lunch and began asking themselves how the Secret Service would deal with a terrorist attack, according to Taylor Rudd, one of the agents. After President Reagan was