Book Review
On The President’s Secret Service: Behind The Scenes With The Agents On The Line Of Fire And The Presidents They Protect
by Ronald Kessler
(Crown Publishers, November 2009)
The people who serve in the United States Secret Service seem to live in an alternate universe. They are upright, almost motionless and without any facial expression. Their astringent demeanor is all it takes to convey their purpose for being who they are, why they are, where they are.
These are men and women who represent the purest service imaginable: at any moment they would throw themselves in front of the President of the United States to stop a bullet, using themselves as human shields.
Talk about sacrifice!
With a title like On The President’s Secret Service, I was hoping to learn more about the men and women who choose to lay down their lives for our highest elected officials. As much as I would like to believe that each and every agent is a paragon of virtue, I am old enough to know that we are all mundane in many ways and lack the sustainability never to fall under the wheel of the common.
However, with all my adult wisdom, I was not prepared for what awaited me between the front and back covers of Kessler’s latest book. The last part of the title, Behind the Scenes with Agents on the Line of Fire and the Presidents They Protect, should have been rewritten to accurately describe what this book is really about: Behind the Scenes with Agents Gossiping About the Presidents They Protect.
There is little to admire here. Instead of taking a sly look at what might have been remarkable insights into a Secret Service agent’s decision-making process, dozens of former Secret Service agents offer us page after page after page of teen gossip that seems overeager. for giggling. the backs of their former charges. And, of course, we get a repeat of the all-too-familiar rackets of presidential infidelities.
Kessler begins his book with some truly interesting and valuable background on the beginnings of what we know as the Secret Service, beginning with President Lincoln’s negligent bodyguard who wanders off to get drunk, leaving the president unprotected. We all know how that was.
There is historical information in Kessler’s book that is worth reading. We are treated to a history of would-be assassins during the tenure of President Harry Truman. Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola, two Puerto Rican nationalists seeking to draw attention to the cause of seceding from the United States, decided to go after Truman and raise awareness of his cause.
The ill-fated couple bought German pistols in New York, took a train to Washington, DC, and took a cab to the White House. Collazo and Torresola learn, to their chagrin, that President Truman was staying at the Blair House across the street while the White House was undergoing renovations.
What follows is a shootout between Collazo and Torresola with Secret Service agent Floyd Boring and White House police officer Joseph Davidson. Also on duty were White House police officers Leslie Coffelt and Donald Birdzell, as well as Secret Service agent Stewart Stout and Vincent Mroz inside Blair House.
Kessler writes that the November 1, 1950 shooting at Blair House was the largest shooting in Secret Service history. As the story goes, twenty-seven shots had been fired in forty seconds, leaving Torresola and Collazo dead at the scene and Officer Coffelt dead four hours later in the hospital after undergoing surgery.
It’s a shame Kessler didn’t stick with more of these significant stories as he progressed through the story. Instead, his book dissipates into nothing more than baseless contempt for past presidents and their families.
The disappointment extends beyond the author and his choice of subject. Without the willing contributors of Secret Service agents on duty for Presidents Kennedy, Carter, Nixon and Johnson, Kessler would not have had half the smears he generously quotes from his interviewees.
It’s impossible to know if what these agents said is true or where these stories actually came from, because Kessler offers no source material or attribution anywhere. Another difficult question is why these former Secret Service agents choose to go public with the dirty details they claim to have observed. There were several lewd comments about President Lyndon Johnson made by Secret Service agents whom Kessler sometimes quotes directly and sometimes anonymously.
An example of this is a comment from a former agent assigned to President Johnson: “I knocked on his bedroom door,” says the former agent. “Lady Bird said for her to come in.” “She’s in the bathroom,” he said. I knocked on the bathroom door… Johnson was sitting on the can. Toilet paper was everywhere. It was weird. If Johnson weren’t president, he’d be in a madhouse,” former agent Richard Roth says he thought when he was occasionally on Johnson’s detail.”
Kessler’s book lacks professional documentation for the comments, opinions, or statements it presents as fact. His publisher, Random House, is closely associated with the media company NewsMax, where Kessler is on staff. This association could explain why the book lacks sources or attributions.
In his acknowledgments, Kessler wrote: “The Secret Service has agreed to cooperate on this book, the only book about the agency to receive such cooperation.” However, the cooperation did not extend to Kessler secretly obtaining the entire directory of the Association. Without acknowledgment or approval from the Association, Kessler called all of the former agents on the list, according to Ike Hendershot, president of the Association of Former US Secret Service Agents. Hendershot said Kessler abused his trust by going beyond the names he had available. Unfortunately, he said, there was a lack of professionalism on both sides of this project.
However, in keeping with the organization’s name, any punishment has remained “internal.”
It’s hard to know if it would have made a difference. One wonders, however, about Kessler’s approach to saving the Secret Service from calamity, as he says in his book at the end of the acknowledgments. Did it occur to you that airing all this dirty laundry on these former agents might make current and future presidents wary of the agents guarding them now?
However, such an important topic as the behavior, reactions and motives of the Secret Service are very serious. Putting agents in situations, after the fact or not, requires serious investigation as these events are recorded forever. In that sense, Kessler’s account of Sara Jane Moore and her assassination attempt on Gerald Ford is utterly and utterly devoid of reality.
On page 50 of Kessler’s book, he wrote that Oliver Sipple, a disabled former US Marine and Vietnam veteran, pushed Sara Jane Moore’s arm as she pointed her gun and shot President Ford. He also wrote that the bullet flew several feet over the president’s head and that Secret Service agents Ron Pontius and Jack Merchant pushed Moore to the sidewalk and arrested her.
Sipple grabbed Moore’s arm, but not until after she fired her first shot, which missed Ford’s head by only six inches. Sara Jane’s gun had been confiscated the day before, and she bought the .38 she used that day that morning without knowing that the scope was off.1.
When the crowd gathered to see Ford, no one was looking at Sara Jane Moore. When President Ford came out, he froze for a moment, deciding whether to cross the street so he could shake hands with the people lined up on the north side of the street.2
After his first shot, people realized something had happened and Sipple, being a Marine and a hero, lunged at Moore and fired a second, potentially deadly shot.
Another factual error in Kessler’s account concerns agents Pontius and Merchant. Kessler said Moore was pushed to the sidewalk and arrested.
Agent Pontius and Merchant were assigned to protect Pres. Ford and were standing with Ford across the street from Moore. They did not leave Ford’s side. In fact, they grabbed the president and shoved him into the limo and sped away.
SFPD Officer Tim Hettrich is the law enforcement officer who subdued Moore. Hettrich was assigned the crowd detail and placed on the sidewalk near Moore. Hettrich took the gun from him and handed it over to Secret Service agent Dotson Reeves, who grabbed Moore off the sidewalk.4.
Kessler’s book may be interesting to some, and there are passages that appear to be historically accurate. As for comments in quotes and editorial comments that lack attribution, it is up to the reader to decide whether this book is worth reading or accepting for what it is: baseless entertainment.
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