The fact that George W Bush is the most guarded president in the history of the USA is unremarkable. But as any Londoner who witnessed his motorcade last month will tell you, the lengths to which the Presidential Advance Team go to keep him alive are almost unimaginable.
On an overcast day in March, a group of men dressed in black suits and wearing Motorola Bluetooth sunglasses stood in a golf course bunker.
None of them had any golf clubs. Instead they held notepads.
When they climbed out of the bunker, they began inspecting the trees and bushes that lined the fairway.
U.S. President George W. Bush waves from his car which is heavily guarded
U.S. President George W. Bush waves from his car which is heavily guarded
In nearby Windsor Castle, 15 similarly attired men were moving with as much tact as they could muster through the 900-year-old landings and chambers. In central London, yet another detachment was tracing a route from Regent’s Park to Downing Street.
In each case, the men’s sunglasses had a rather special feature. They housed tiny cameras that beamed every image seen by the men back to an operations room in Washington DC.
The images were played out live on a large multi-screen display and watched intently by the Presidential Advance Team (PAT), headed by Spencer Geissinger.
The day had not started well and was getting worse by the minute.
With every second of footage being sent back from London and Berkshire by the highly trained team of secret agents, Geissinger could see another potential catastrophe – another possible hiding place for a would-be assassin.
The Presidential Advance Team is by far and away the most complex, expensive and thorough presidential or premier advance guard unit in the world, and made more complex still by George W Bush’s seven years of incendiary foreign policies.
An invitation to President Bush to take tea with the Queen at Windsor – the first time an American head of state had received such an invitation in 26 years – should have been a moment to savour.
Indeed, Bush’s team intended to make the most of this priceless piece of publicity. But the security issues the invitation threw up were Geissinger’s nightmare.
Already the Queen’s private office was making his job harder.
The American Secret Service had been refused a number of outlandish demands.
Requests to reinforce the Royal palace walls, to allow a military helicopter to be constantly airborne over the palace and for agents to watch over the preparation of George Bush’s food had all been denied.
Her Majesty had made just one concession: agents would be allowed to inspect the rifles held by the Yeomen Of The Guard.
And there was another problem. Where was the President’s helicopter, Marine One, going to land?
Not too close to the castle, the PAT was informed; the noise would blow out the 200-year-old windows.
A team of agents had been sent off to march their way across the Windsor countryside a full three months before Bush’s visit. They inspected the Castle golf course, nearby tennis courts and a bowling green for possible landing areas and general security measures. It was decided that the helicopter would land in Home Park to the east of the Castle.
The landing site wasn’t the only security headache.
In London, agents had trawled the route of the most obvious demonstration of Bush’s security needs – his 21-car motorcade, the most heavily armoured of any US president. Geissinger signed off what orders he could.
The Secret Service had classed the golf, tennis and bowling areas as being too close to the Windsor landing points and demanded they be declared off-limits to the public during Bush’s brief visit. Agents were directed to identify bushes and trees that needed to be swept for snipers on the day.
There are good reasons for the agents’ paranoia. Bush is under constant threat of assassination.
In 2003, he received 500 death threats every month, more than any predecessor. Many can be instantly discounted, but between 25 and 40 each month are taken seriously enough to have made him the most protected president in history.
The logistics and costs of transporting Bush are mind-boggling.
For his recent trip to London, the work called on the expertise of 904 civilian staff from the Department of Defense, 600 from the Armed Services, 250 Secret Service officers, 205 White House staff, 103 US Information Agency staff, 44 Department of State staff, 30 more from the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Labour, Transportation and Treasury, 18 Senior Advance Office staff, 16 members of Congress (to tick legal boxes) and 12 sniffer dogs.
Bush’s European trip alone cost £13 million, while staff costs for his Secret Service amount to £580 million a year; the total allocation of money to ‘domestic protection of persons’ was £403 million in 2006.
And yet the PAT is invisible to the public. Agents never appear in media photos, as the part-classified Presidential Advance Manual sets out in its rules of engagement: ‘You do not eat up an inch of the frame’.
‘To get the job done,’ says John Liebech, a 30-year veteran from the US Defense Department and former Advance Team member, ‘you need to have a glimmer of crookedness, because emergencies crop up that call for acts beyond the normal call of duty.
If they could, the Secret Service would have the President arrive after dark at a military airport, stick him in a tank and make him stay the night in the vault at the Bank of England.
‘As far as they’re concerned, on every balcony there lurks an Oswald, on every street corner a Hinckley, in every crowd a Sarah Jane Moore or Lynette Fromme [both of whom tried to shoot President Gerald Ford]. No one wants to be known for losing the President on their watch.’
And the quickest and most obvious way of not losing a President on one’s watch is to secure that most public of appearances, the drive through town.
It is safe to say that, three weeks ago, when the President drove from his Ambassador’s residence in Regent’s Park to meet Gordon Brown at Downing Street, the PAT did not compromise.
Industry sources describe Cadillac One as ‘a completely unique vehicle with no shared technology’.
They are referring to the fact that although it is based on a Cadillac DeVille, the vehicle has just three components from the DeVille: the headlights, the brake lights and the badge.
Cadillac One is also known as the Rolling Fortress.
It contains the President (codenamed Trailblazer for his London trip) and the First Lady.
It is driven on a rota basis by five military chauffeurs, which is apt; everything about Cadillac One is military grade.
It has five inches of armour under every single part of its skin – with the added height and length, it brings the presidential limo in at four tons – and the car’s windows are not windows at all. They are actually transparent armour, which is why they don’t open.
The dark-blue leather interior is hermetically sealed against chemical attack.
U.S. President George W. Bush limo is pictured in front of 10 Downing Street in London June 15, 2008.
U.S. President George W. Bush limo is pictured in front of 10 Downing Street in London last month
Lit by a fluorescent halo lighting system – the windows are so thick they block out most natural light – the President and his First Lady or fellow passenger sit in individually reclining rear seats, separated by a folding desk. Arranged around them are stores of breathing equipment and antidotes for biological and chemical agents.
But the real tricks are up front.
The dashboard has controls for an infrared night-driving system that identifies movement outside the range of the headlights, electronic counter measure (ECM) devices – such as scramblers usually used by USAF jets to fool incoming missiles – and switches for four jacks in the body armour to which speakers can be attached, should the President feel like making a speech from inside the car.
Connected to the boot lid are five antennae, one of which has a link to the Comms vehicle elsewhere in the motorcade, as well as Cadillac Two, carrying some of the 18 Senior Advance Office staff.
The London leg of Bush’s visit was the weak spot, as far as the Secret Service was concerned.
The capital provided plenty of chances for an ambush.
Their pulses must have been racing as they left the Ambassador’s residence for the 15-minute drive into central London. Had every box been ticked?
Had they checked every building on the route? Should they have bombarded the road with X-rays looking for freshly dug tunnels? One thing was for sure – if anyone was foolish enough to try anything, they’d be met with everything the Secret Service had.
At the rear of the motorcade (car 20), looking like it had just marched off the set of Starship Troopers, was the American counter-assault team on board a Chase Car, aka ‘War-wagon’.
This is a souped-up Range Rover supplied by the UK Police’s Special Escort Group.
The counter-assault forces are the elite of the elite and deadly efficient – but haven’t yet been put to the test.
They wear black jumpsuits and helmets, and carry Diemaco C8 CQB (Close Quarters Battle) short-barrelled assault rifles strapped to their chests.
More weaponry is on board, along with concealed gun-points through which shots can be fired without opening doors or windows. Other members of the squad are located inside an SUV further up the motorcade (car 8), closer to the President.
All of the agents had been handed the US Secret Service’s ‘Trip File’ of certain people who might pose a serious and deadly threat to the President. They must memorise the faces of any suspect individuals featured in the file’s photo album.
In 1998, the Secret Service completed a classified study into lone-wolf assassination called the Exceptional Case Study Project.
Officers interviewed 83 people who had tried to assassinate a president or public figure in the US, including Mark Chapman (John Lennon), John Hinckley Jnr (Ronald Reagan) and Arthur Bremer (Governor George Wallace).
The report concluded that attacks on public officials are not impulsive actions.
They typically occur after weeks or months of planning.
Understanding this ‘pathway to attack’ is the key to stopping assassins before they strike. Public appearances abroad are all the more dangerous because monitoring suspects is harder.
Permission was not given for one particular vehicle to ride in the motorcade, or even enter the UK: the Secret Service’s most lethal weapon, a very special SUV.
From the outside, the vehicle looks identical to all the others, but in the back is an agent crouching below a collapsible mini-gun.
One flick of a switch, and the top of the car opens up into a turret surrounded by bulletproof plating. The agent is able to release 4,000 rounds a minute of armour-penetrating bullets, enough to lay waste to any attack force. After five minutes of firing, the spent shells would literally fill the interior.
Watching the motorcade leaving the American Ambassador’s official residence on the Monday morning in June was the Met’s Deputy Assistant Commissioner, Chris Allison.
He oversaw Bush’s visit from the second floor operations room at New Scotland Yard using high-quality CCTV images.
A total of 2,000 armed and riot police were stationed throughout central London, and on the roofs of a traffic-free Whitehall, spotters were checking for trouble, as demanded by the Secret Service.
As Allison said, all he wanted was for it all to go smoothly: ‘He [Bush] comes into town, he does the stuff he wants to do, people who want to protest have their protest, then he goes.’
There have been several attempts on Bush’s life.
Many were stopped at an early stage and so never made it onto the news. But the most notable was the 2005 attempt in Tbilisi, Georgia, when 27-year-old Vladimir Arutyunian, an Armenian/Georgian, threw a live grenade at Bush.
The only thing that prevented the President from being wounded or killed was the safety pin getting caught in the attacker’s scarf.
The Georgian authorities played down the attempt.
At first they said it wasn’t a live grenade; but once the US Secret Service found out that it was, they flew to Georgia with the FBI’s mobile forensic lab and hunted down the would-be assassin, who had escaped the scene of the attack.
After a ferocious gun battle in which the head of Georgia’s counter-terrorism unit was killed, the Secret Service made sure that Arutyunian was put away for life in a Georgian prison.
Despite such threats, as the Presidential Advance Manual states, nothing makes a better ‘mediagenic [sic] moment’ than a ten-second film-clip of the US President meeting dignitaries such as the Queen.
The authors of the manual have a calculation of their worth: they state that 21.7 per cent of such trips are political, while 78.3 per cent are official.
So these events have to go ahead, but not without fierce arguments from the Secret Service.
They managed to get their own way over most of what the President could and couldn’t do on the London leg of his trip. There are, however, limits to their demands – on a previous Bush visit, the White House requested the closure of certain Tube lines.
British officials dismissed the idea.
But the pace and breadth of the Advance Team’s work is breathtaking.
As the manual states, ‘Advancing is an art’. In eight years, a US president makes about 3,000 public appearances, 800 of which will be abroad. Each foreign appearance requires a site survey by more than 100 Advance Team members, more if it’s a RON (Remain Overnight Visit).
The checklist for the UK Advance Team contains almost 500 items and stipulations covering 25 pages.
These include the effectiveness of the motorcade in rush-hour traffic, how to address the Queen, approval of presidential hand-shakers, no animals, no children (if possible), certainly no parachutists or balloons; then there are sketches, photos, 3D graphics of Heathrow, the Ambassador’s residence and grounds in Regent’s Park, departure points, corridors and walkways.
Ultimately, only 2,500 people showed up to the rally organised by the Stop The War Coalition, CND and the British Muslim Initiative.
A handful of them were snapped up by police snatch squads sent in to apprehend real or potential troublemakers, including one 60-year-old woman accused of indecent exposure.
After brunch with Gordon Brown and a press conference, Bush’s motorcade entered Whitehall.
A lone protester broke through the cordon but was quickly apprehended. It was just enough to make the Secret Service twitchy, and they whisked the President away at a blistering pace.
Was it worth the effort, the colossal cost, the blocking of basic mobile phone communications in patches of central London for two days?
In the curious world of Washington-think, the very fact that President Bush is alive and unmolested is taken as the final proof that every cent was well spent.
And now that the precedent has been set, the next President, be it Barack Obama or John McCain, will be burdened with the same level of security.
And what will that say about the foreign policies of the 43rd President of the USA?
President George Bush's Convoy drives down the Mall returning to Buckingham Palace.
Bush's convoy drives down the Mall returning to Buckingham Palace
Kris Hollington is a freelance investigative journalist who has worked for Panorama and Radio 4’s File On Four. He is the author of How To Kill, an investigation into the world’s most influential assassinations.
The first vehicles you need in any presidential motorcade are actually motorcycles. The six outriders from the Met’s Royalty And Diplomatic Protection Department, riding BMW R1200RTs, clear the way through traffic using whistles instead of horns (to reduce the noise that precedes a motorcade), ensuring the motorcade doesn’t have to stop moving at any point on the 2.3-mile journey from the US Ambassador’s residence in Regent’s Park to Downing Street. Note: the outriders carry firearms, the only motorcycle officers to do so.
British Range Rover containing four officers from Counter Terrorism Command, SO15 (previously known as SO12 Special Branch).
BMW 5 Series containing armed British officers. The BMW and a Jaguar XJ V8 (see No 4) drive either side of the first presidential limo, known as Cadillac Two.
Cadillac Two, a bomb-proof car (see also Cadillac One, No 6) containing the President’s Emergency Satchel – the ‘Nuclear Football’ – which houses the necessary equipment for the President to authorise the use of nuclear weapons while away from the White House Situation Room. The case itself is a metallic, bullet-resistant, modified Zero Halliburton briefcase carried inside a black leather case. The entire package weighs 18kg. A small antenna for the SATCOM radio protrudes from the bag near the handle. Cadillac Two also carries senior staff such as National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley and White House Chief Of Staff Joshua Bolten.
Jaguar XJ V8, containing armed British police officers.
American lead support armoured GMC Chevrolet Suburban 911EP SUV. This six-litre, 366-horsepower V8-powered wagon (which does just 15mpg) contains four Secret Service close protection guards, along with military SWAT officers sitting by the open back for rapid access. The guards are heavily armed with automatic weapons and handguns.
Cadillac One containing the President and the First Lady. Where the President goes, Cadillacs One and Two go (as does the presidential helicopter, Marine One, fully loaded with anti-missile systems, which ferried the President to Windsor Castle to visit the Queen).
American lead support armoured GMC Chevrolet Suburban SUV containing up to six Secret Service officers.
American lead support armoured GMC Chevrolet Suburban SUV containing members of the Quick Reaction Force, a team able to ram and shoot against any attacker at both close and long range. They carry Diemaco C8 CQB (close quarters battle) short-barrelled assault rifles. These are small enough to be easily handled in tight spaces. More weaponry is also on board along with concealed gun-points through which shots can be fired without opening the window. Additional Quick Reaction Force members are at the rear – see No 20.
Metropolitan Police Range Rover – the car is from the Met’s Special Escort Group (SEG), containing five Specialist Firearms Officers, armed with Glock 17s.
