Zero fail, p.29
Zero Fail, page 29
O’Neill had himself many times tried to eliminate his own Secret Service detail, and each time his staff had talked him out of it. The protective team had been provided to every Treasury secretary since the Service’s first days, but O’Neill felt it was wasteful and annoying. “His view was they just help you get through intersections,” said one of O’Neill’s senior aides.
O’Neill’s belief that the Secret Service wasn’t that essential—either to his safety or to his Treasury Department—increased that spring. The White House was sending signals that Treasury would also lose the U.S. Customs Service to the formation of a consolidated border agency. With the exodus of Customs, it became clear that the secretary simply didn’t care about the rest of the assorted law enforcement agencies within Treasury. What connection, he asked, did the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, or the Secret Service have to Treasury’s central mission of setting national economic policy? “I think it was O’Neill himself who said, ‘Why do we even have these other law enforcement entities?’ ” said Richard Bonner, who was then the customs commissioner. “My impression was he said, ‘Let’s get rid of them.’ ”
The president’s blueprint rattled many in the tradition-bound Secret Service. Some insisted they stay in their original birthplace, but Stafford deputy Paul Irving argued that Treasury had long ignored the Service and DHS might be their ticket to larger budgets. Stafford hadn’t reached a decision on what was best, but ultimately he didn’t feel he had much choice, as Card notified him the day before the president’s meeting that it was a done deal. The Secret Service would join the new department. “The Secret Service could have argued to stay,” Bonner said. “It had enough juice to stay in Treasury if it wanted, in my opinion. They thought they would be better off getting out of Treasury, since law enforcement was such an afterthought there.”
On June 6, Bush announced his reorganization plan in a televised address to the nation, taking Lieberman’s name out of the bill and calling it simply the Homeland Security Act. He told the audience this new Department of Homeland Security would be called upon to defend the country in a “titanic struggle,” and that it would comprise 169,000 employees and a budget of $37 billion. Only the Defense Department would be larger.
“Tonight, I ask the Congress to join me in creating a single permanent department with an overriding and urgent mission—securing the American homeland and protecting the American people,” Bush said. “Thousands of trained killers are plotting to attack us. Employees of this new agency will come to work every morning knowing that their most important job is to protect their fellow citizens.”
Many Secret Service agents, but especially the powerful and defensive alumni club of former agents, worried about the future. Creatures steeped in tradition, they eyed the change warily, and some second-guessed Director Stafford’s choice to go along with the idea. But five days later, the grousing and fretting became an afterthought as the Secret Service’s reputation took a swift kick in the gut.
* * *
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ON JUNE 11, 2002, U.S. News & World Report published the results of a monthslong investigation documenting a trail of horrendous behavior the Secret Service had tolerated in its highest ranks. At the time, members of Congress called it the most embarrassing moment in the agency’s history. The bombshell investigation painted a picture of the Secret Service as a team of arrogant louts, with senior leaders engaged in covering up for other lawbreakers and incompetents in their chain of command, or tarnished by misconduct themselves. The article reported on a senior agent, later promoted, who took a female informant back to his apartment for drinks and sex. She ended up dead in his bathroom from a drug-related brain hemorrhage. In one reported incident, a Los Angeles agent was caught having sex with a friend’s sixteen-year-old daughter at night and giving her methamphetamines to stay awake in her classes at high school. The report also cited several instances of agents caught stealing federal funds for personal use. In another case, agents left behind a highly sensitive and detailed security plan for protecting Vice President Cheney at a snowboard store after shopping during the Olympics in Salt Lake City.
All this gave Andy Card, President Bush’s chief of staff, a case of heartburn. Card might have been able to understand if this was a few bad apples. But the allegations of misconduct at the very top demanded action. The investigation cited sources and sworn statements from Secret Service personnel who said that Director Stafford, former director Lewis Merletti, and A. T. Smith, a top supervisor who used to lead Hillary Clinton’s detail, had all had well-known adulterous affairs with staffers and aides in the Clinton White House. Smith and Stafford declined to comment at the time and would repeatedly decline to discuss the allegations. In a letter to the magazine, Merletti denied an improper relationship but suggested that these rumors of affairs had been investigated and debunked by the Independent Counsel. But Starr’s office insisted they had investigated no such thing.
Extramarital affairs were viewed as a black mark on an agent’s security clearance because the secret made them vulnerable to blackmail. Agency protocol urged against close personal relationships with protectees or their staff. Several anonymous agents signed sworn affidavits attesting to widespread belief within the agency of Merletti’s and Stafford’s affairs. Agents had taken particular note of Stafford’s romantic relationship with a pretty blond White House political staffer who had handled advance planning for Mrs. Clinton.
Not since a Washington columnist had questioned whether agents were sluggish and hungover the morning Kennedy was shot had the agency faced such a public tarring. It was a particularly painful smack at Stafford, whose son was then in the Secret Service training academy preparing to join the agency. It also raised questions about previous directors’ tolerance for bad behavior. The investigative piece cited internal agency sources who said previous directors had repeatedly promoted Stafford despite widespread knowledge of his affair among senior leadership. Stafford privately blamed Moore’s group of Black agents who brought the discrimination suit against the Service, arguing that they tried to hurt him by exaggerating claims to the magazine.
Stafford, a handsome and athletic man, was jokingly nicknamed Elvis inside the Service. Like the heartthrob rock-’n’-roll singer, he had a husky voice and a Southern accent and wavy brown hair. In addition to being six foot four and broad-shouldered, he was a natty dresser. He frequently wore cufflinks and custom shirts. He sported a hipster’s black turtleneck on more casual outings.
Stafford had a very good reputation as a dedicated agent, an image cemented when he headed up President Clinton’s detail in his second term. He had been a fierce advocate for Secret Service budgets, at times going around his Treasury secretary to press for more money so he could add staff and ease the load on overworked agents and officers. Stafford also had acquired a reputation for enjoying the company of a woman who was not his wife.
Card made up his mind quickly. The director of the Secret Service simply had to be above reproach. Card alerted key White House deputies a few weeks after the article appeared that the president planned to make a change at the Secret Service, and he told Secretary O’Neill to direct Stafford to submit his retirement papers. Stafford asked Card why he was being pushed out and whether it had anything to do with the U.S. News piece. Card denied that, vaguely indicating that it boiled down to several things. “We just want to go in another direction,” Card said. But one senior Bush adviser said Card was in fact disturbed by the allegations in the magazine piece. “It’s such a sensitive position,” the adviser said. “That kind of conduct deserved immediate action. It speaks to arrogance beyond belief.”
Stafford’s days as director had been numbered anyway. Every incoming president had eventually made his own selection of director. But because of the article, the clock sped up a bit and Stafford’s departure was less graceful. Card quietly sought names for his replacement.
The negative publicity came at a bad time for the Service. The National Public Radio program All Things Considered interviewed one of the article’s chief reporters, Chitra Ragavan, about her findings just as Congress was discussing the formation of the new Department of Homeland Security. The reporter warned that the Service’s lack of accountability and morale problems would likely get far worse if it was moved inside this larger bureaucracy. “You’re going to have a brand-new agency which is going to have very little time—initially at least—to correct any problem,” she told the NPR host. “Our analysis is that any agency that inherits the Secret Service is going to inherit these problems. So you can imagine that these problems will go unresolved and may fester in this new agency.”
On July 9, “Elvis” showed up to testify about the new department and reorganization plan before the House Judiciary Committee. Stafford explained to the committee that he fully endorsed the plan to move his Service of four thousand agents into the new Homeland Security Department of 169,000.
But as the hearing progressed, a friendly member of the committee asked Stafford to speak about the U.S. News & World Report allegations. It was a softball question, meant to give the director a chance to rebut the claims, but still it stung.
“Director Stafford, recently one of the major national news magazines did an investigative report on the Secret Service that skewered the agency pretty severely,” said Republican congressman Bob Goodlatte of Virginia. He continued,
It cited literally dozens of various types of problems in the agency. Everything from security lapses to embezzlement or theft, sex scandals, barroom brawls, morale problems. Now I don’t want to turn the hearing into a review of all the allegations that are made in that story. I do want to give you an opportunity to tell us how the agency is responding to that, whether you’re addressing any of the concerns in the article, and most importantly, how you think this transfer of the Secret Service from the Treasury Department to the Department of Homeland Security will affect any efforts you are undertaking to reform the agency.
Stafford looked up, stone-faced and grim. By all appearances, he was angered by this subject. “Um, that article was yellow journalism,” he said. “I think anytime you go back in any agency’s history over thirty years, which is what they did…”
He started again.
“It wasn’t an investigative report on the part of that magazine,” he said. “It was taken directly from a twenty-eight-page document that was submitted anonymously, I might add, by people who may have been fired by the Secret Service, by people who may be suing the Secret Service, by people who are sinister and have motives of revenge. That article took some truths, again going back over thirty years, [and] mixed with some distortions and a number of untruths. I can’t explain why they did that.”
Agents watching the director knew that his words carried some measure of spin for the cameras and the lawmakers, yet they saw that he didn’t specifically reject anything in the story as inaccurate. Many of the incidents described in the U.S. News & World Report article were buttressed by witnesses, lawsuits, police reports, and the Service’s own internal inspection reports. Agents on the president’s and First Lady’s details also knew that the part about Stafford’s extramarital affair was true. The woman he had been seeing had made no secret of the relationship in conversations with a small circle of co-workers.
One agent hearing Stafford’s claims remembered being a newbie on the Clinton detail, waiting in a helicopter while the team’s liftoff for Andrews Air Force Base was delayed. Mrs. Clinton’s staffer was late to meet them as they headed out for a trip. “Sorry. We’re not allowed to leave without the SAIC’s girlfriend,” a more senior agent told the new one.
* * *
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IN NOVEMBER, STAFFORD publicly announced he would retire at the end of the year. As all his predecessors had done, the outgoing director offered a list of names for potential replacements. They were all active-duty senior supervisors who worked for him.
But the White House wasn’t interested in Stafford’s suggestions. As December arrived, none of Stafford’s crew had gotten any calls for interviews. Bush’s chief of staff instead had focused primarily on a string of retired Secret Service executives that the Bush family knew well, and after final interviews during the week of December 10, he had narrowed the field to two. One leading candidate was Ralph Basham, who had retired from the Secret Service six years earlier as an assistant director and was a trusted member of the extended Bush “family” after serving on Papa Bush’s detail. Another was William Pickle, a former assistant director who had led vice president Al Gore’s detail and had retired in 2000.
This cannot happen, Stafford told his mentors and longtime allies in the Secret Service family. In Stafford’s view, the Bush White House was politicizing the agency by reaching outside the current management team and looking for a friendly crony in the rearview mirror. That would make the new director beholden to a president and break a sacred tradition of succession at the Secret Service.
The country had been hit by the most traumatic attack since Pearl Harbor and needed a forward-looking, independent leader to bring the president’s security to a new level. Stafford argued that Basham and other retired agents had been out of the game too long and weren’t up to this challenge. Stafford had worked alongside both—as an assistant director with Basham and as Pickle’s peer and boss. Basham had been turned down for the job once before. In 1997, Basham interviewed for the director’s position, but Clinton chose Lew Merletti, the former head of his detail, as the next director.
“I have seven people ready to replace me,” Stafford complained to colleagues. “Basham was an assistant director who got passed over. He couldn’t make it as director when he was here. He doesn’t deserve it now.” But Stafford was also smarting over more than the qualifications of Card’s candidates. He was personally insulted that Card didn’t think enough of his recommendations to interview any of them.
Stafford turned for help to the alumni club of SAICs—special agents in charge, the former heads of the presidential and vice presidential details, many of whom he knew well. Twelve were scheduled to come to the White House for the annual Christmas festivities in mid-December as well as a luncheon and small information briefings arranged just for them. Typically, in honor of their service to previous White Houses, the former Special Agents in Charge received a private audience with the current director, the president’s chief of staff, and the vice president to hear about the White House and the current state of security.
On the day of their visit, Card popped in to the Old Executive Office Building to welcome the old guard as they gathered in a conference room drinking coffee and telling war stories of presidential trips past. But after the introductions and pleasantries, a number of the former SAICs turned the holiday greeting into a chance to air a grievance. A few spoke up, saying they feared Card was tossing out the Secret Service tradition of picking a director from within the institution. John Magaw, then sixty-seven, had served as director for Papa Bush’s last year in office and had reason to believe his voice carried some clout with the Bush family and the younger Bush’s White House. Magaw, a purist about traditions, had mentored and promoted Stafford on the president’s detail, and now he and others echoed some of the director’s complaints. Plucking a former agent out of retirement would end the traditional selection for the director, he said; it would be “a mistake.”
Card had listened quietly, but he was growing angry. He said he understood the former leaders of the Secret Service had strong opinions about who should be the next director. He told them he completely disagreed with their assessment and had heard there weren’t very strong leaders in Stafford’s executive suite. “Neither the president nor I am asking for your opinion, gentlemen,” he said.
With that, the White House chief of staff wished all the former detail leaders a happy holiday, excused himself, and walked out.
* * *
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“YOU KNOW YOU don’t belong here,” Stafford said gruffly.
The director, six feet three inches tall and broad-shouldered, stood to address Ralph Basham, the man who was the top contender to replace him. Stafford made little effort to control the frown hardening over his face at Basham’s visit to headquarters. A beefy former football player, Stafford remained in tip-top shape at age fifty-four. Without trying, he loomed large.
“I’m asking you not to accept the position,” he said. “This will become a political position if you take it.”
Stafford was frankly used to getting his way, yet it appeared quite likely he was going to lose the battle over his replacement. Thanks to the White House, his days were numbered and his opinion on the matter was being dismissed.
Basham looked at the outgoing director, pondering for a moment how best to respond. He chose to adhere to the Bush family creed: civility first. “I understand you’re not happy,” Basham told Stafford. “But I didn’t ask for this job. I’m here because the president asked me.”
At five feet ten inches, with gray hair and wire-rimmed glasses, Basham cut a far less imposing figure than Stafford, looking more like a folksy college dean than a security agent. The sixty-year-old retired administrator had considerable advantages in the Bush White House, though. More than a decade ago, Basham had forged a close bond with the first President Bush, George H. W. Bush, while serving on the vice president’s detail in the late 1980s. He was even Bush’s occasional partner on the tennis court. Over the years, Basham rose to management posts at other federal law enforcement agencies, including assistant director of the Service. One of Basham’s closest friends from the days on the road with the vice president was 41’s former “body man,” Joe Hagin. Now Hagin had risen to become 43’s deputy chief of staff. The president would decide on the new director but would seek Hagin’s recommendation.
