Free Life Inside the Bubble: Why a Top-Ranked Secret Service Agent Walked Away From It All by Dan Bongino

assumed she was upset. I was surprised and thrilled to hear some excitement in her voice and that she was ready for a bold change as well. Though we were dating for only a year, she said she would ask her supervisor at the SIA to see if a transfer to their Washington, DC, office would be possible. She also agreed to accompany me on my house-hunting trip to Maryland. I knew if she left me that the devastation would be permanent and was relieved at her willingness to “take a look” at Maryland.
    After doing an exhaustive cost-benefit analysis of living in Maryland versus living in Virginia or Washington, I decided on Maryland. The state seemed ideal to me. Robert Ehrlich had just been elected its first Republican governor in over thirty years and, although the legislature was largely dominated by Democrats, the state itself offered a little bit of everything: good schools, a major city in Baltimore, proximity to my workplace, Catoctin Mountain Park, Deep Creek Lake, the Chesapeake Bay, Annapolis, and a whole lot more I would come to discover while living there.
    Paula and I left for our house-hunting trip in November of 2002 excited at the possibilities. Owning a home was something I had never considered during my childhood and now I was taking a trip to buy one; it was a new adventure for both of us. After a long week of looking at various houses in a number of different neighborhoods, we settled on a home in Severna Park. With its white exterior, blue shutters, and spacious front lawn, it was the piece of middle-class heaven both Paula and I had been searching for our entire lives.
    I moved to Maryland, initially, by myself while Paula stayed back in New York for an additional month finishing her work for the New York office of SIA. I reported to work anxious to get started in the control tactics section, but was dismayed to be temporarily assigned to the investigative tactics section. The section was short personnel and I was to fill in as an instructor until they could find a permanent replacement.
    Having just completed a nearly two-year investigation of a major creditcard fraud ring with a tie to international terrorism, I was well versed in the nuances of major federal investigations. After teaching classes for a week, with no prior experience at lecturing, the supervisor of the section, Bob, was impressed with my grasp of the subject matter and I was transferred to the section full time. I took on the new assignment with vigor. I enjoyed working for Bob—he had been working for the Secret Service for nearly two decades within our investigative branches and on the Vice Presidential Protective Division (VPD). Bob was always smiling, a contrast from Marty who seemed to always be internally deliberating about something. Bob had come from the VPD and in the culture of the Secret Service you are either a Presidential Protective Division (PPD) agent or you were VPD, and this label was permanent. It did not matter if you worked VPD as a rank-and-file agent and then received a promotion and moved to the PPD as a supervisor—you would always be remembered as a “VP guy.”
    The training center’s investigative tactics training program needed a complete overhaul. With the assignment of another new agent to the section, a tough-as-nails Marine veteran named Tim, we were ready to discard the old program and start fresh. Tim and I had very different backgrounds but became quick friends. He was a country kid and I was a New Yorker, so he referred to me as “Big City.” I laughed at the name and learned to live with it. Having grown up largely within the borders of New York City, I was amused by Tim’s stories of shooting squirrels in his backyard with a .22 rifle as a young child. This type of activity would have led to your arrest in New York City and was unheard of. Ironically, although we grew up in polar opposite environments, we both had relatively similar worldviews and similar instruction styles. We both valued