WORTHY OF TRUST AND CONFIDENCE
Emblazoned in brushed-metal letters across a gleaming metal-paneled wall at Secret Service Headquarters are these five words:
WORTHY OF TRUST AND CONFIDENCE
It’s the Secret Service’s longtime motto. “It’s what we are looking for as candidates go through the hiring process, and ultimately, it’s the expectation we have of everyone in the Secret Service,” says an agency spokesman.
The motto is also written on Secret Service ID credentials, which state that the bearer “is commended as being worthy of trust and confidence.”
Occasionally the motto takes a hit, but in the last few years it has taken a beating. Scandals involving prostitutes in Colombia, DUI agents at the White House, and an officer charged with soliciting a minor for sex are just a few that have made headlines.
Then there are the security breaches: a knife-wielding fence jumper who made it into the White House, a man pretending to be a member of Congress who found his way to President Obama in a secured area, a drone that landed on the White House lawn.
Articles and news reports have taken to describing the Secret Service as “the beleaguered agency” or “the scandal-tainted agency.” A bipartisan congressional investigation resulted in a 439-page report in December 2015. Its title: “United States Secret Service: An Agency in Crisis.”
The report noted that Secret Service morale was “at an all-time low.”
A longtime dog handler was recently sitting in a diner where the news was on TV when a story about a Secret Service scandal came on.
Not again.
He felt a knot in his stomach. He looked down at his food and hoped no one would notice his uniform.
“It’s embarrassing. People see these stories and it taints everyone in the Service,” he says. “They don’t see that the vast majority of us take our responsibilities extremely seriously. We devote our lives to the Service. They don’t see the birthdays and Christmases and first steps and recitals we miss. They don’t understand the tremendous dedication almost everyone has.”
It’s some comfort to him that no dog handlers have been involved in the scandals. “And much to everyone’s relief, no dogs have been implicated either,” he jokes. “They keep their noses out of all that.”
Secret Service dog handlers have responsibilities others in the Secret Service don’t. After a shift, most can’t or don’t go out with other officers, because they need to get their dogs home. When traveling, if they go out to eat, it’s usually with other canine handlers. Takeout is a popular option among handlers on the road. They often bring it back to their hotel rooms and relax with their canine partners.
“It’s a totally different animal when you get a canine,” says former Secret Service dog handler Daryl G., now an EDT training assistant. “When I first came on, the trainer said, ‘You got a kid now. You don’t have any kids? You got one now.’ Because it’s 24/7.”
It’s hard to get into too much trouble chilling in a hotel room with your dog. Daryl’s dog, Boky, was fond of pulling toilet paper off the roll when Daryl wasn’t looking. And when the dog was young, he tore the sheets off the hotel bed a couple of times when Daryl was washing up. Daryl found him gnawing on the corner of the mattress. No visible damage, just some dog slobber. He washed it off and remade the bed.
Kind of a pain, but hardly the stuff of Washington Post headlines.
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Trust and confidence are mainstays of the Secret Service canine world. Dogs have to trust their handlers. Handlers have to trust their dogs.
It’s this way across the board in the world of law-enforcement K-9s and military dogs. But in the Secret Service, the life of the president of the United States may depend on this all-important bond between dog and handler.
Some dogs arrive from their European kennels hungry for a best friend.
“They haven’t always had the best experience in life so far,” says ERT handler Luke K. “They want to be part of somebody’s pack. A lot of these dogs, as soon as you get them, they’re ready to be your partner.”
His dog, Nitro, was not one of these dogs. He didn’t want to listen to anyone. He did things his own way or no way at all. Regimented training cut through some of this. But it was the time Luke put in with him away from the job that really forged the dog’s trust.
“I talked to him all the time. I still do. Even though he doesn’t understand what I’m saying, he knows my voice, the inflections,” Luke says.
It took a year for Nitro to finally let his handler roll him over on his back for a tummy rub. Luke had finally won his dog’s trust.
Handlers work to do whatever it takes to maintain the trust and confidence their dogs have in them. It’s one thing to earn their trust. It’s another thing to keep it.
After Rex’s long overnight duty for the pope’s visit to the capital, he didn’t go right to sleep when he got home. Tired as he was, it was time for his usual game.
“Get your toy, Rex!” Jon said with an enthusiasm that came naturally despite his fatigue.
Rex has many toys. But there’s one toy, the toy, he must have every day after work. It’s a hard nylon bone with big knuckles on the end. It helps him unwind, like a canine version of a martini and a pair of slippers. Jon, who is a newlywed and has no children yet, calls Rex’s bone his “Binky.”
Rex immediately located the knucklebone and dropped it at Jon’s feet. Jon threw it for him a couple of times and Rex settled in for a good chew.
The tradition was once in jeopardy, when Jon threw the bone while they were outside and lost it in the bushes. Handler and dog looked everywhere and couldn’t find it. Rex eventually gave up and stared at Jon with an expression that went beyond disappointment. It was more like crestfallen shock.
“I came back empty-handed and it took the wind out of him. It made me sad. I know it’s pathetic to say, but I literally got sad,” Jon recalls. “I’d really let him down.”
The pet supply store was still open, so Jon drove over and managed to find the same toy. Only he’d forgotten that it comes with green rubbery material that covers the straight middle part of the bone. Rex had worked his way through that covering over time and would certainly know a fraud.
Jon couldn’t face disappointing his dog. Rex had trusted him, and he had thrown his happiness away. The green rubber had to go. Besides, he didn’t want to have to watch over Rex as he chewed through it, trying to pick up every single shred so Rex wouldn’t eat them, as he had tried to last time.
When he got home, he brought out a razor to slice through the rubber. It barely made a dent. This was some hard rubber. It took more than twenty minutes, but at last Jon had fashioned it to look just like the one he lost.
He brought it to Rex and hoped his dog would be OK with Binky version 2.0. Rex looked at the bone, looked at Jon, grabbed the bone, and wagged his tail. And all was once again right in his world.
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“If you think about it, these dogs never lead you to anything good,” says lead instructor Brian M. “You have to be able to trust your dog. So we train and we train and we train.”
The Secret Service’s federally accredited dog training is rigorous, with year-round validation testing of skills. Being a handler in the Secret Service canine program is like being a student who ends up with that teacher who gives hard tests and throws in pop quizzes.
The difference is that the Secret Service’s tests can happen day or night, and the test venue can be in rain or snow or blistering heat.
For ERT handlers, tactical abilities, speed, and strength are always being challenged. Handlers have to meet intensive physical demands on a monthly basis. Dogs are evaluated in much the same way.
Detection dogs need to be able to work safely and efficiently in realistic environments, often surrounded by masses of people. The greater Washington, D.C., area is where they do most of their training.
The Service works with dozens of venues so handlers and dogs can be exposed to as many different environments as possible before they’ll face them in the real world. No one wants the first time a dog sniffs for explosives in a football stadium to be the first time a dog has experienced a football stadium. It’s equally important for the handlers to know how to navigate different complex scenarios.
The names of the venues the Secret Service uses can’t be published, but among the places that welcome the canine teams, apart from football stadiums, are convention centers, airports, train stations, baseball parks, arenas, rental car parking lots, and shopping malls.
Exposure to the world outside RTC starts early in training.
One blazing summer afternoon, a class of Friendly Dogs is enjoying the cool atmosphere inside a large shopping mall. The dogs and handlers are about halfway through their seventeen-week training. Since Friendly Dogs will be working among the throngs in front of the White House for a living, it’s important they hone their skills in crowded settings.
A sign at both ends of the practice area lets mall-goers know that these are dogs in training. Most shoppers go about their business, but some stop to watch.
“What’s she doing?” a young girl asks her mother as a shiny black Lab walks around with his handler and sits every so often.
“Aw, she’s so pretty. She must be tired of shopping, honey. See how she’s sitting?”
“I’m tired of shopping, too,” the girl announces, sounding all too happy to have solidarity with the dog.
But this Lab, a male named Lappy, is anything but tired. He’s gaming the system. He has been rewarded for sitting after tracking an explosives scent that a Secret Service “plant” is carrying, and for alerting to a backpack or briefcase containing a scent he’s been trained on. So Lappy figures that if he sits a whole bunch, he’s apt to get his reward more frequently.
Trainers call it cheating. They’re used to it. It’s a phase most detection dogs go through. Lappy is the new kid in the class, so he has some catching up to do.
His handler’s previous dog, Jack, had to be returned to Vohne Liche Kennels because he was scared of slick surfaces. It’s a surprisingly common problem. To some dogs, especially those not exposed to it early in life, walking on tiles or shiny hardwood or marble is said to feel like walking on moving ice, or a wobbly treadmill. They dig in, or retreat.
Pet-dog owners with time and patience can help their dogs overcome this fear. The Secret Service usually tests for this issue before buying a dog, but sometimes the problem doesn’t show up until the dog is in a different setting. Instructors will try to help the dog, but time is of the essence.
Even though Friendly Dogs don’t work on slick surfaces at this point, there’s a strong possibility their roles will expand. Jack’s issue wasn’t something that turned around quickly, so he made the long trip back to Indiana, and Lappy replaced him.
Cheating is a much more fixable issue, although some handlers have to be on the lookout for it throughout a dog’s career. If Lappy’s handler needs any encouragement, he just has to ask Jon.
“If Rex wasn’t cheating, he wasn’t trying,” he’d tell him. “And trust me, he tried to cheat all the time. You’ve just got to stay on it. They come around.”
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Secret Service dog handlers want to be worthy of trust and confidence in the eyes of the president. They want the president and other protectees to know they’ve got their sixes, and to never doubt it for a moment.
They don’t often see the president up close. But when presidents spend time at their vacation residences, chances for crossing paths increase. Activities like horseback riding, hiking, hunting, fishing, and walking in nature all take a president outside, where the Service’s ERT dogs and handlers post.
In the past, dual-purpose dogs were the ones with this duty. Former handler Freddie McMillon and his dog, Marko, used to work at George H. W. Bush’s estate in Kennebunkport, Maine.
Bush (generally referred to as “Bush 41” in the Secret Service) hosted many VIPs at his stunning seafront compound. British prime minister John Major, Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney, and Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin were among his guests over the years.
McMillon says sometimes the president didn’t want to talk with these world leaders inside. For whatever reason—McMillon suspected the president wanted more privacy—there were times that Bush and a VIP guest walked away from the main house and ended up in the area he and Marko were watching.
Whenever that happened, McMillon would turn his back to them to watch out for anyone approaching. He’d also turn off his ears to their discussions the best he could.
“The president trusts you enough to be out there talking about important world matters in front of you,” he says. “You have to live up to that trust and just keep doing your job.”
He and Marko were also regular fixtures at Ronald Reagan’s Rancho del Cielo. The canine teams were the front lines of defense on the large California property.
“If the bad guys got through us, that means we were all dead out there in the field,” he says. “We’d give our lives to make sure nothing happened to the president.”
Like Bush, Reagan hosted world leaders at his vacation residence, known as “the Western White House.” While they never walked out to McMillon’s distant post, as Bush’s guests later would, McMillon sometimes enjoyed a little interaction with Reagan when the president went horseback riding.
“On occasion he’d stop and he’d talk to me. Just nice talk, asking how I’m doing, how’s my dog, how’s the family and kids, stuff like that,” he says.
“The agents didn’t like it but what could they do? I couldn’t ignore the president. I’m from Brooklyn and if you talk to me, I talk to you!”
McMillon enjoyed knowing that the president was aware of Marko. “He knew we were out there looking out for him and Nancy. Marko wasn’t going to let anything bad happen to them.”
One day the president came out to greet his Secret Service canine protectors and take photos with them, as he had done with the group of Secret Service dog handlers that included Ferrara and Bart.
Marko sat calmly at McMillon’s left side. The president approached and stuck out his hand to shake McMillon’s. As McMillon reached out to the president, he saw something horrifying from the corner of his eye.
Marko was staring right up at the president, and baring his teeth.
McMillon didn’t want anything to go down the leash to Marko and make him think Reagan was dangerous. Any wrong move on his part—even unconsciously tightening up because of his dog’s reaction—could cue his dog that this guy reaching out to him was a foe, not a friend.
“I could see Marko was saying, ‘Should I or shouldn’t I?’” he says.
Pulling the dog tight when he was like this could have prepped him for fight mode. He did the only thing he could do.
He relaxed.
Then he told Marko, “Stay,” and dropped his hand to his side, making the leash loose. He was confident of Marko’s obedience and knew he would listen. Marko stayed, still staring up at the president as Reagan and McMillon shook hands.
If you look carefully at the photo capturing the moment, behind the president you’ll see the face of another dog handler. He’s looking down at Marko. He doesn’t look as confident as McMillon about the situation.
“He’s got that ‘OMG!! Fred, watch your dog!’ expression going on,” McMillon says with a laugh as he looks at the photo decades later.
“I think a lot about what could have happened. Without the trust Marko and I had in each other from all the training and time we put in, this could have had a very different ending.”
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The top of the Secret Service Explosive Detection Team ply their trade at some of the best homes in the world. Before the president or vice president attends a fund-raiser or other function at someone’s residence, an explosives dog team or two will have done a thorough sweep of the home first.
No matter how rich or famous, the homes’ owners (or more likely, someone who works for them) must open their bedrooms, bathrooms, closets, pantries, and sometimes dresser drawers to dogs and their handlers.
Most have no problem giving dogs access to even the most private areas of their houses. They know it’s something everyone who has hosted the president has done. Friends in these circles communicate to other friends what to expect.
“They are extremely professional, a well-oiled machine,” says a key staff member of the home of a West Coast couple that has hosted presidents and vice presidents several times. “The handlers are considerate, quick, and thorough, and the dogs are beautiful to watch.”
When friends ask about her experiences with the Secret Service, she lets them know that the agency comes out about a week before an event and sets up phone lines, looks for windows and other areas that may need to be blocked, and performs other preparatory security work.
A few hours before the event, the dog team arrives. Hectic as it can be before a presidential fund-raising dinner, the staff has to leave. The cooking staff plans for this, so there won’t be any culinary disasters during their absence. In this couple’s case, the canine team’s sweep of their five-story house—from wine cellar to upstairs specialty kitchen, plus the gardens—takes well under an hour.
This staff member and the couple are usually in the house during the sweep. Two of their own security staff accompany the dog team and the EOD techs who go along. The couple stays in a bedroom, and she stays in her office.
“It’s very interesting watching the dogs. They’re hyper in a good way, so energetic. You can tell they love what they do,” she says.
When the sweep is done, the house and property are considered secured, and everyone coming back in is screened by Secret Service personnel and magnetometers.
“The dogs are the highlight of the process. We’d have them back in a heartbeat,” she says.
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Barbra Streisand might not feel the same way. According to a memoir by former Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe, in the late 1990s Streisand was to host a brunch for the Clinton Library at her Malibu Hills home.
When she learned on the morning of the brunch that Secret Service dogs needed to do a sweep of her property, she refused. “Barbra did not like dogs,” McAuliffe writes in What a Party!
“Let me make it simple: No dogs, no Bill Clinton,” I said. “Please, Barbra. This is important to the president for his library and his legacy . . .”
She kept arguing, talking about how the dogs were going to get into her shrubs, which she meticulously maintained herself.
McAuliffe managed to convince her by telling her he would personally walk around with the dogs. He did, but they worked swiftly, and he couldn’t keep up with them.
Later, I was in the big tent we’d set up, checking on some things, when I heard Barbra screaming my name. I walked out into her beautiful garden to see what the commotion was all about.
“Look what I stepped in!” she said.
When Brian M. learned about this story more than fifteen years later, he shook his head and looked down at the floor of his shared office at RTC.
“That’s mortifying. That would never happen today. That should never have happened then.”
A Secret Service dog handler who overheard the story chuckled and chimed in.
“Shit happens,” he said. “You just have to clean it up, always.”
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Former Secret Service dog handler Cliff Cusick recalls the time he and his dog Devil went to Mississippi for President Jimmy Carter in 1977. One of his jobs was to have Devil search the home of a couple who would be hosting the president.
“Well, the lady finds out that the dog’s name is Devil, and she was a very strict Southern Baptist and she would not allow it,” he says.
“She said, ‘You are not coming in my home with the devil.’ She was serious as a heart attack. She was adamant that the dog was not allowed.”
He tried not to be put off that someone wouldn’t want his dog to check out the house just because of his name.
“It’s OK, Devil, don’t take it personally. Some people just have trust issues,” he told his dog as they moved along to search the outside grounds instead.
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Barney was not a bad dog. It’s just that sometimes he wasn’t a very good dog. George W. Bush’s Scottish terrier was known for his dislike of strangers. At a place like the White House, there’s no shortage of those.
“Barney guarded the South Lawn entrance of the White House as if he were a Secret Service agent,” Bush said in a statement after Barney died in 2013.
Not quite. Secret Service agents don’t bite people to protect presidential interests. Barney did. Within the space of two months in 2008, he bit the public relations director of the Boston Celtics on the wrist and drew blood, and he bit the hand of a Reuters White House reporter who tried to pet him.
Jenna Bush Hager, daughter of the former president, didn’t wax sentimental about the family’s dog in a 2013 Today show segment.
“Barney was a real jerk,” she said matter-of-factly, temporarily stunning the hosts into near silence except for a couple of shocked “wows.”
Barney was far from being a Cujo. He had friends around the White House, held on-screen appeal via his eleven “Barney Cam” short films, and greeted heads of state.
But Secret Service dog handlers say Barney wasn’t fond of their dogs. Handlers are always vigilant about the locations of the pets of the First Family while on the White House grounds. Radio communications between handlers and White House staff prevent any surprises while a First Dog is taking a walk or running out for a bathroom break, or when an EDT dog is doing a sweep inside the White House after tours.
“Be advised the family pets are on the south grounds,” a White House staffer might say.
“Copy that,” a handler will reply.
It’s a fairly foolproof system, but Barney, apparently, was no fool. On a few occasions, he charged unexpectedly in the direction of some ERT dogs on the White House grounds.
“We’d have to pick our dogs up on our shoulders,” says Stew. “Barney was dog aggressive. Our ERT dogs are not dog aggressive.”
ERT handlers have exquisite control over their Malinois, but they couldn’t take any chances. They’re entrusted with keeping the First Family safe, and in this situation, that also meant keeping Barney out of harm’s way. Barney blasting out of nowhere and surprising a Malinois with a bite was an event that had to be avoided.
ERT canine handlers routinely lift their dogs on their shoulders in case they have to use the maneuver in real life. Avoiding Scottish terriers wasn’t one of the situations they practiced for, but any port in a storm.
Barney never sank his teeth into an ERT dog. But he did manage to put the bite on an EDT canine once. The dog, Oscar, didn’t care much for other dogs. While sweeping the White House for anything that shouldn’t be there after the day’s tours were completed, Oscar’s handler heard the distant sound of something troubling: Barney. And by the sound of his barking, Barney was closing in quickly.
The handler wasn’t sure how Barney had come to be in the same place he and Oscar were working, but it didn’t matter. He had to act quickly to protect the president’s dog. He crouched down and scooped Oscar into the crook of his arms, then stood up, lifting Oscar high off the floor.
But not high enough. The stampeding Barney jumped up and grabbed hold of Oscar’s tail. This surprised Oscar, who was already somewhat discomfited by being held aloft so suddenly in his place of work. The Malinois wriggled and writhed and tried to escape from his handler, who had to summon his strength to keep the dog from tearing after Barney.
Luckily for Barney, other officers almost immediately arrived on the scene and were able to grab the First Dog before all hell broke loose.
Secret Service EDT assistant trainer Leth O. recalls another near miss with Barney. An EDT dog was doing a sweep in the White House, and Barney ran up to the dog. “He wanted to fight,” Leth says.
The handler didn’t pick up his own dog. Instead, he picked up Barney—a brave move for anyone not in Barney’s inner circle.
According to Leth, when the president heard about the incident, he called the handler to his office. Was he in trouble? Should he not have touched the First Dog?
The handler’s concerns were allayed when the president thanked him for what he had done and presented him with a special presidential coin. It bears the presidential seal on one side and, on the flip side, says “George W. Bush Commander in Chief” around an image of the White House.
“This handler helped win the president’s trust and admiration, and it was a boost for us all in a way,” says Leth. “It’s not every day a president shows his appreciation so directly to dog handlers.”
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He was Jesus Christ. Marilyn Monroe and John F. Kennedy were his parents. He was about to announce his run for president. And he planned to kidnap one of the Obama family’s Portuguese water dogs.
Scott Stockert made these bizarre claims when he was apprehended by Secret Service agents in a Washington, D.C., hotel in January 2016.
The last claim did not surprise them.
They’d received a tip from the Minnesota Secret Service field office that the North Dakota man was headed to the White House to kidnap Bo or Sunny. When they searched his Dodge Ram 1500, they found a 12-gauge pump shotgun, a bolt-action rifle, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, a machete with a twelve-inch blade, an eighteen-inch billy club, and a few other related items not found on the typical visitor to the nation’s capital.
He was arrested on gun-related charges and will be on the Secret Service’s radar for a long time.
While dogs of presidents are not on the list of Secret Service protectees, they are part of what some call “the First Family bubble.” If anyone tries to harm the dogs when they’re anywhere near the First Family, the Secret Service would be on it.
If someone tries to mess with the president’s dogs at the White House, there’s a good chance that at least one of their canine cousins who work on the Emergency Response Team would be called upon to help apprehend the perpetrator.
There’s nothing like having a relative on the police force to make you confident that someone’s got your back.