Zero fail, p.44
Zero Fail, page 44
Around 7:05 p.m., President Obama stepped out of the Oval Office into the soft evening air. A briefcase of weekend reading in his hand, he strolled down the West Colonnade with his deputy chief of staff, Anita Breckinridge, then said goodbye to go meet his daughters.
Four suited Secret Service agents shielded Barack Obama’s flank and back as he walked from the South Portico’s ground-floor exit to his waiting helicopter in the grass. Malia and Sasha, along with a school friend, followed close behind their dad, canvas backpacks of schoolwork strapped to their shoulders.
Most of the Secret Service’s traveling shift that would accompany Obama the next three days had already left for the Anacostia Naval Station. They were catching their own helicopter ride north and would receive the president when he arrived at the retreat. Now agents on the temporary “make-up” shift took their positions around the family to ensure they departed safely.
One of the presidential detail agents who often protected the Obama daughters, Stavros “Nick” Nikolakakos, an expert marksman and fitness fanatic of Greek descent, had spent a chunk of his career preparing for a high-stakes shootout. But he wasn’t expecting much excitement tonight. Before the First Daughters’ detail, the black-haired Bronx native had worked as the top-ranked sharpshooter on CAT, the Secret Service’s elite Counter Assault Team. The daughter detail was relatively ho-hum compared to that, but it was a good route to rise to the president’s detail.
This Friday evening, on the access-controlled White House compound, Nikolakakos and his fellow agents searched for any movement, sharp sound, or odd shape, their eyes darting back and forth. Meanwhile, Obama looked eager to escape the capital after another draining week. He gave a short wave to the skeletal Friday night press pool, wishing them a good weekend.
His daughters, sixteen and thirteen, walked on toward the helicopter, keeping their eyes forward, turned away from the flashing cameras. The agents halted at the end of the paved walk, staying out of the picture frame. The famous family stepped onto the grass alone and the cameras whirred. When the Obamas reached the white-topped green helicopter, the president ushered his daughters and guest up the short accordion stairway, then climbed aboard behind them.
The president’s walk to Marine One and departure from the South Grounds had become a well-choreographed movement in the modern era, repeated several times a week as he dashed from city to city. This serene image, captured hundreds of times, was as close as the president could get to appearing a carefree everyman strolling across his backyard without any bodyguards or guns in view. In reality, a small militia stood at the ready.
Obama’s Secret Service protectors feared that helicopter departures provided a choice opportunity for enemies to attack. Marine One’s lumbering liftoff from the lawn—clocking the same speed as the helicopters that had carried President Eisenhower in the 1950s—made the president a sitting duck for his enemies in the sixty to ninety seconds it took for the helicopter to rise and begin its flight path.
So, as they’d done for hundreds of POTUS helo lifts before, Secret Service officers in uniform and plain clothes fanned out from the South Portico to Constitution Avenue. They scanned the adjoining streets and crowds on the nearby Ellipse for anyone who might pull out a rifle or grenade launcher to try to take down the president’s slow-moving aircraft. Counter-sniper officers posted on the White House roof checked their sight lines on the South Grounds and nearby roofs and balconies for unusual movements. Four officers on the Emergency Response Team, wearing all-black tactical gear and Kevlar vests, lurked on the southwestern side of the grounds. They stayed close enough to tackle any intruder who got close to the landing zone.
“Renegade departing Crown,” agents heard over their earpieces, the president’s familiar code name.
Like other agents standing by, Nikolakakos knew the First Family would be helicoptering northward in a minute, his shift would end, and he could give his guard-dog reflexes a rest. Marine One lifted off without a hitch, albeit a few minutes late, at 7:16 p.m.
The president left in the nick of time. In three minutes, all hell would break loose.
With Marine One airborne, all 154 Secret Service agents, officers, and supervisors working to protect the complex that night started breathing a little easier. It was simply a natural reaction when Obama left the premises: The Boss was on somebody else’s watch now. On the South Lawn, members of the Counter Assault Team now started stripping off their hot tactical gear and loading it into SUVs parked on the nearby south drive. Some took out their earpieces—no need to monitor the radio now.
Agent Nikolakakos walked with a shift supervisor toward the house and into the Diplomatic Room. Both men needed to collect some of their belongings from Staircase, the detail agents’ down room under the First Family residence.
On the north side, Officer Clifton Monger, an experienced canine officer stationed with his dog in a van just west of the North Portico, grabbed his cellphone to make a personal call. The former Marine no longer was solely focused on the White House radio frequency but thought he could monitor it with one ear. He had left a second tactical radio, one he used to communicate with his emergency response team, in his locker.
Officer Sean Hughes, a lanky, brown-haired newbie who was guarding the front door at the North Portico, left his post to talk to his friend stationed just inside the house. Officer Phylicia Brice had graduated from officer school together with Hughes a few months earlier. She was headed to New York to help with the upcoming United Nations Assembly, so Hughes was offering her some suggestions for places to eat and visit in the Big Apple.
At 7:19 p.m., while Monger was on a call and Hughes and Brice were chatting, Gonzalez hopped onto a three-foot-high concrete wall abutting a section of the White House’s black iron fence. This section of fence was under repair and missing its spiky decorative finials. From the concrete barrier, Gonzalez easily hoisted himself onto the seven-foot-six-inch fence and straddled the flat top. A short bald officer stationed just twelve feet away spotted him and yelled at Gonzalez to stop. He missed grabbing him by an arm’s length. Gonzalez swung his leg over and landed on the White House grounds in one swift motion.
He was the fifth fence jumper that year, part of an increasing nuisance for the Secret Service officers guarding the complex. Most of them were mentally troubled people. All were easily stopped within a few yards of where they landed, usually by the canine.
On this Friday night, though, nearly every single thing that could go wrong did.
As Gonzalez crossed the fence line, his body passed through an infrared beam similar to an invisible dog fence. He also set off a ground sensor soon after he landed. Both sounded an “alarm break” at the Secret Service’s Joint Operations Center on the ninth floor of Secret Service headquarters on G Street. The team there was supposed to coordinate the response to emergencies and threats at the White House six blocks away.
An alarm and a flashing red light on the JOC console gave the location where the intruder had entered. Gonzalez had cleared the fence near Charlie 4, Zone 312—just east of the complex’s main visitor gate on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Kenneth Havens, a Secret Service officer in charge of alarms at the JOC that night, heard a muffled radio transmission: “Jumper!…north fence line.” Havens wanted to be sure officers heard the location, so they could nab him. He pushed the radio console’s microphone for White House One, the frequency for all officers on the complex.
“Got a jumper,” Havens said. “North ground center fence jumper. North fence line fence jumper. North fence line.”
This was failure number one of the night. Other than the phrase “got a jumper,” none of Havens’s broadcast reached the officers. Unbeknownst to him or many others in the JOC, the sophisticated radio console the Service bought four years ago for the command center hadn’t been set to automatically override other officers’ calls. One officer had “keyed” his radio—depressed a button to speak—just before Haven and canceled his transmissions to everyone.
Gonzalez meanwhile proceeded in a curved route toward the east side of the driveway in front of the mansion, running with a limp.
Two officers on the Emergency Response Team, the tactical team wearing black vests and in charge of putting down trouble, were standing guard inside the Charlie 2A booth immediately to the east of the North Portico. Here was failure number two.
Someone had removed the speakers from the booth’s alarm system. Officers had been joking that summer about officers somehow “liberating” high-end speakers from fixed posts on the ground. So the two ERT officers received no broadcast alerts about what was happening.
Even with that glitch, the two men picked up the telltale signs of a jumper. They heard yelling from the north fence line officers. They saw floodlights come on at key guard booths, a standard signal in the case of a jumper.
The men came out of their booth within five seconds, moving quickly toward the north driveway, and readied their long guns for what might come. Though they couldn’t see him yet, they were in the perfect spot to intercept Gonzalez.
Next came failure number three. The emergency response officers were thinking: We don’t have to rush this guy. They’d been trained to let the dog handle jumpers.
The Belgian Malinois, the Secret Service’s fail-safe method for neutralizing fence jumpers, was bred to home in on a designated enemy and launch like a missile to take down that prey. Known as the leaner, meaner German shepherds, these dogs had taken down nearly every jumper on the grounds. Canine handlers were trained to release the dogs within six to seven seconds of any perimeter breach.
Within the same five seconds it took the ERT officers to come out of their booth, Officer Hughes had run back out to his abandoned post at the front door. Hughes squinted to see through the bright lights shining down from the portico. Black trucks and hedges blocked his vision, but he could make out officers moving toward the North Lawn.
Now eight seconds after the jump, Hughes drew his 9-millimeter P229 pistol out of his hip holster and backed away from the front door. He remembered from academy training that the canine and the ERT were supposed to tackle any jumper. He had also heard in training that the dog could get confused about whom to attack and he wanted to reduce the risk of that by staying clear. But that training presumed that a Malinois with big teeth was bounding his way.
At the eleven-second mark, Gonzalez came chugging into view, curving around the east side of the fountain in the center of the circular drive. Where the hell is the dog? one ERT officer thought.
Failure number four was something nobody would have predicted: The dog was so late he missed the whole incident.
The Malinois on duty that night had been resting in a comfy crate in the back of a parked van next to the portico when Gonzalez made his jump. Monger, his handler, was on his phone. Officers were supposed to monitor their radio closely at all times, but they had so little free time that quick personal calls were allowed. Despite years of trying to hire enough officers, the White House still suffered from a manpower shortage, and officers were still being called in and ordered to work extra shifts. On average, they still worked half their days off.
Another ERT officer on the west side of the North Lawn who was closest to stopping Gonzalez didn’t run to grab him. He instead ran to get Monger and the dog. Monger learned there was a jumper when he glanced through his van window and saw an officer running outside. He hopped out of his vehicle, unlocked the Malinois from his crate, and started running with his dog on a long leash.
It was now thirteen seconds since Gonzalez’s jump. The intruder had a big head start on what was supposed to be the White House’s crack security team.
Canine handler Monger and his dog came from the west and reached the grassy lawn in front of the North Portico fifteen seconds after the jump. Monger hadn’t had time to make sure the dog locked on to the jumper. He couldn’t successfully sic the dog unless it’d already been trained on a single target. The two ERT officers from the Charlie post on the east side had rushed over in an L formation to try to corner Gonzalez. But Gonzalez surprised them all by plowing into the thick, century-old boxwood hedge that surrounded the front of the portico platform.
On the raised marble landing, Hughes kept his service pistol at chest level and took cover behind a pillar at the far east corner of the portico. He saw rustling in the shrubs below and thought it might be a scuffle.
But Gonzalez—a broad-shouldered bald man with light brown skin and wide eyes—was only wrestling with the bushes. He stepped out of the dense shrubs and lumbered up onto the western steps of the stone portico. “Stop now! Get down! Stop!” Hughes yelled at the intruder at the top of his voice.
Failure number five was captured on CNN’s live feed aimed at the White House’s front door. Hughes was taking cover more than fifteen feet from that door. Nothing blocked Gonzalez’s path into the president’s house other than the risk of Hughes’s shooting him. Gonzalez stepped up to the white-framed threshold, seeming to look through Hughes. The officer didn’t move. The Service had not trained him for this possibility—a man standing at the White House’s front door—but he didn’t think he should shoot to kill. He later explained that he believed the jumper wasn’t armed, the doors were locked, and the priority was to let the dog take the man down and avoid being attacked by the canine himself.
Failure number six unfolded inside the White House. On the other side of the door, in the vestibule, Officer Phylicia Brice had never received the advance warning of the menace outside. The “crash box,” installed at all booths and standard posts, was supposed to sound an alarm for intruders. But the box at Brice’s post and others inside the mansion had been muted at the request of the White House usher’s office more than a year earlier. Frequent false alarms tended to disrupt events inside. So Brice never heard any emergency broadcasts. Seconds before Gonzalez reached the door, she realized this was an emergency when she looked out the window and saw Hughes with his sidearm drawn.
Failure number seven was that because Brice didn’t get any warning of the jumper, she didn’t have time to properly lock the doors. She pulled them shut but wasn’t able to latch them with the heavy-set pins when Gonzalez yelled from outside, “Let me in!” He gave the two decorative wooden doors a firm push with both hands, and they flew open. He came crashing in and knocked Brice to the ground.
In twenty-nine seconds, Gonzalez had made his way from a public sidewalk to inside the White House. He had gotten directly past eight trained security professionals on a compound staffed with 154 men and women in total.
Brice jumped back up and tried to tackle Gonzalez, but at roughly five foot five, she was no match for his much bigger frame. She yelled at him to stop. He didn’t and kept walking briskly toward the East Room. She pursued him and reached for her baton to hit him, but she grabbed her flashlight by mistake.
The delay let Gonzalez walk into the East Room, a grand ballroom that had hosted some of the country’s most historic ceremonies. Brice threw her flashlight to the floor and pulled her handgun on Gonzalez, but he continued to ignore her commands that he stop. He turned back into the grand hall and toward the State Floor.
Failure number eight was the result of assumption. While Brice was struggling to control the intruder, the ERT officers outside didn’t rush inside to give her backup. They paused outside the door. This unique SWAT team, trained to put down all manner of threats, believed the CAT team was responsible for handling emergencies inside the White House, while they handled the outside. The only problem was that the CAT team, then loading their gear after the president’s departure, was not monitoring their radios. They had no clue about the jumper.
Failure number nine was the result of bad communication. Like CAT, PPD agent Nikolakakos and supervisor Joshua Pruett had little warning about the intruder. Agents on the president’s protective detail used a different radio frequency than the one for officers protecting the White House. Mostly, they couldn’t be bothered with the volume of White House traffic. But in some rare cases it mattered, and they missed what was happening.
The two agents got their first signal of trouble when they heard muffled yelling echoing down toward Staircase from one level above. Luckily, the whole building was an echo chamber. Both agents bounded out of the down room, where agents gathered between assignments and trips, and up the stairs leading to the East Room, where they found the true hero of the day—Officer Michael Graham—on top of Gonzalez. Graham had lunged at the intruder to bring him to the ground, but Gonzalez was still wrestling to get free.
Nikolakakos helped Graham by grabbing the intruder’s arms. Meanwhile Pruett kept his gun drawn on Gonzalez. Nikolakakos cuffed Gonzalez’s wrists behind his back and began a cursory search for any explosives or other weapons. The agent dug into the Army veteran’s pocket. Some chewing tobacco tumbled out. Then Nikolakakos felt something metal and pulled out a folding knife with a three-and-a-half-inch blade.
The three men looked at one another in disgust, at the insanity of anyone getting through hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of security technology, rings of duplicative security systems, and that many Secret Service guards. Here a fence jumper had made it deep inside the mansion and right up to the steps of the president’s private living quarters. And he was armed.
“Jesus Christ,” one of the agents said. “The guy’s got a knife.”
* * *
—
JUST AFTER 7 p.m. that Friday, Julia Pierson steered her government Jeep into the on-ramp for I-395 South, curving around the Jefferson Memorial. She was giving her assistant a ride home so they could talk over a to-do list of priority tasks for the coming week. She wanted to get home to her Alexandria townhouse, pack, and get some sleep before rising at 6 a.m. and catching the 8 a.m. shuttle to New York. But as Pierson approached the Pentagon, some sharp voices crackled over her Service radio. She almost always traveled with the radio tuned to White House One, the frequency used by the Uniformed Division officers at the complex.
