The Cassandra Conspiracy (11 page)

“Sure.  Drive straight down the road about a quarter of a mile, and you’ll see the main building on your right.  You’re supposed to meet there.  There’s a parking lot across the street.  You can park in any space not marked ‘Reserved’.  Have a nice day,” the agent said smiling.

Thiesse drove down the road until he got to the parking lot. He didn’t find a parking space in the first section, but luckily he found a spot in the second.  He got out, locked the car, and crossed the road. 

When he got to the lobby,  a sign directed him to one of the classrooms down the hall to his right.  From the looks of things, the classes at the Training Center not only included those for the regular agents, but also for the Uniformed Division personnel.  These men and women would be assigned to guard the White House grounds.  When he got to the classroom, there were another dozen or so agents already standing around drinking coffee.  Allen Thiesse went over to the coffee machine and poured himself a cup of coffee.  He then found a seat in the front of the room.  A few minutes later, an instructor entered the room, and called the class to order.

“Good morning. My name is Donald Lynch. I’ll be responsible for your training for the next several weeks.” The instructor surveyed the group of eager young faces looking up at him.  Mentally, he counted heads.  Thirty-two new students.  At the current rate, maybe twenty of them would end up graduating.

“As you may have guessed by now, the Service trains all its law enforcement personnel here at the Rowley Training Center.  That includes the agents assigned to our field offices.  We also train the people assigned to PPD and VPPD.  In addition the Center provides training for the Counter Assault Teams, Counter Sniper Teams, and Uniformed Division personnel.  In fact you’ll even find some of our four legged trainees right next door.  You may have noticed the kennels and obstacle course on the right side as you drove in this morning.”  He paused to take a drink of his coffee before continuing on.

“Out here you’ll be trained in the elements of hand-to-hand combat as they apply to the role you’ll have in the Service.  You’ll also get extensive firearms training in small arms.  Your primary weapon is the Smith and Wesson model K19 .357 Magnum.  We’ll also teach you to shoot the Remington Model 870 twelve gauge shotgun and the Uzi 9 millimeter submachine gun. If you end up assigned to the Counter Assault teams, you’ll receive weapons training in the weapons they use.  No matter what weapon’s in your hands, we expect you to be able to hit the target and do so consistently.”

Thiesse carefully listened to Lynch’s opening comments.  He hoped his training would be more extensive than he got at ATF.  Thiesse felt he was proficient with the handgun, but had never had his skills tested in real life.  If he had to pick a single assassin out of a group of people, he wanted to make sure that he’d hit what he had aimed at.

“In between your physical and firearms training, we’ll work in classes on the law with emphasis on those laws the Secret Service upholds.  At one time or another in your career, you’ll be assigned to a case involving the counterfeiting of U.S. currency.  So that you all won’t fall on your respective faces, we’ll teach you more about United States currency than you thought possible.  And we’ll teach you how counterfeiters go about applying their craft.  We’ll also give you a thorough rundown on the kind of support you can expect from our Washington laboratory.  By the time you leave here, you’ll know how to put a counterfeiting case together in your sleep.  You’ll even learn a few things about diplomatic protocol, which you’ll need if you’re assigned to a detail protecting one of the countless foreign dignitaries visiting the States.”

Lynch wanted the trainees enthusiastic, but he also wanted them to know that as long as they were at the center, they’d be pulling a heavy load.  Between the course material and training sessions, each of them would be working harder than they’ve ever worked before.  Those that cut it would graduate.  The others would be cut loose.

“You’ll get a heavy dose of hand-to-hand combat some of which you’ll learn in the gym.  Other parts of that training will be out on the street where you’ll apply what you’ve learned.  For those of you who’re wondering, there aren’t any mats on the streets.”

“If and when you graduate, you’ll be fully versed in the crimes that the Service investigates, the techniques available to you for those investigations, and the correct manner of making apprehensions.  In short, gentlemen and ladies, you’ll be Secret Service agents.  I hope you’ll find your time here worthwhile.  I look forward to seeing each of you at graduation.”

Special Agent Thiesse got his wish and more.  He learned about the various Federal and state laws applicable to his work.  Experts briefed the trainees in the areas of nuclear, chemical and biological warfare.  Protocol experts from the State Department gave the agents lengthy talks on how State wanted their ‘guests’ handled.  They also learned the intricacies of diplomatic protocol.  The students even got a crash course in psychology by Secret Service instructors.  Thiesse paid careful attention as the class explored the theories on crowd dynamics.  Agents protecting the President or Vice President had to be able to  read the signs that indicated their protectee was in danger.  The instructors taught them how to gauge a crowd so that they could anticipate danger.  Thiesse and his fellow students learned how the United States makes its currency, and all about the latest forgery techniques.  They were taught how to spot a counterfeit bill, and equally important, how to identify the genuine article.

The Service held true to its word.  The intricacies of hand-to-hand combat were first explained, then  practiced repeatedly.  In each case, the would-be agents learned how to move so their actions would attract the least amount of attention while getting the desired effect.  When it became necessary to subdue an individual, the Service wanted to do it with the least amount of activity.  All their hand-to-hand training was first performed on padded mats.  Later, they moved to simulated street scenes where there were no padded mats to prevent the bruises and ease the falls.

The firearms training was also extensive.  Agents moved from the standard rifle and pistol ranges to specialized ranges modeled after the FBI Academy’s Hogan Alley.  The agents went up against pop-up targets, some of which were ‘bad guys’ while others were civilians.  The instructors frowned on agent-trainees shooting the ‘civilians’.  The students were also taught how to fire against an adversary standing in the middle of a crowd, a likely scenario for those going into Protective Operations.  They learned by heart the three commandments of Protective Ops:  sound off, arm’s reach consideration, and cover & evacuate. Anytime an agent saw a threat to the protectee, the first step was to ‘sound off’ alerting the rest of the protection detail to the threat.  Unless the attacker was within ‘arm’s reach’, the agent was to ‘cover’ the protectee and ‘evacuate’ getting the protectee back to a safe harbor.

Agents selected to drive the Presidential limousine were trained in evasive driving.  They practiced evasive maneuvers by driving out-of-commission limousines through a maze of rubber traffic cones. The agents learned how to handle scenarios in which the attacking vehicle blocked the road in front of the President's car.  Various types of road surfaces and shoulders allowed the agents to hone their driving skills.  Most of the agent/drivers soon found themselves able to handle the huge car.  They also learned how to cope with the stress that went with the job.  The drivers who couldn’t deal with the nerve wracking stress of driving down a street constantly alert for an attack ended up in other assignments.

With the rest of the student/trainees, Thiesse took the Assault on the Principal course, which schooled the agents in what to do when things went wrong-like how to deal with Murphy’s Law in action.  During the course, the instructors set up mock scenarios where one agent played the role of the protectee while a cadre of the trainees served as his protection staff.  Other instructors played the ‘bad guys’.  The Center’s instructors graded the students  on how well they handled the attack by the ‘bad guys’.  In some cases, the protectee was ‘hit’ by gunfire.  When that occurred the students were evaluated on how well they covered the protectee, while others neutralized the ‘bad guys’.  They also had to provide immediate medical attention to the ‘wounded’ protectee, and get him out of danger.

In other instances, the protectee would trip and fall.  Certain team members were responsible for giving first aid while the rest established a defensive perimeter around the fallen man.  Another mock attack ended with the protectee succumbing to a heart attack.  The scenarios were as varied as the Training Center’s instructors could dream up. After the exercise, the instructors graded the performance of the student protection team as well as each trainee on the team.  Later, the instructors and students reviewed the team’s performance from the start to finish.  The trainees performed these protection exercises repeatedly.  Once they graduated and were on the street, their movements had to be automatic. 

The Kennedy assassination, although the saddest day in the  annals of the Service, also served a purpose in the training course.  Most of the students were the right age to have vivid memories of that bleak day in Dallas in 1963.  After which, the Secret Service vowed they would never lose a protectee again.  

When Kennedy arrived in Dallas, he was plunged into a political whirlpool.  The Lone Star state didn’t like Kennedy, and although the Vice President was from Texas, Johnson was viewed as one of the Kennedy’s hacks rather than a power in his own right.  With an election coming up, it was imperative that Texas, a crucial state in any campaign, be won over.  To do that, the President's staff wanted Kennedy to appear closer to the crowds than usual.  He could get closer to the people if he wasn’t hidden away in an armored limousine.  With that objective in mind, the bubble top was removed from Kennedy’s Lincoln Continental.  President Kennedy agreed with the staff’s recommendation, but took it one step further.  He decided not to have the agents on the car’s running boards.  All the agents assigned to protect the President therefore were on the Secret Service follow-up car, nicknamed the Queen Mary because of its weight.  Those assigned to jog along beside the limo couldn’t keep up with the car.  It was going eleven miles an hour faster than it should have been.  The factors set the stage for the assassination. 

There were several lessons to be learned from their review of the assassination.  One was that the Secret Service agents assigned to protect the President had to make certain they were heard when the interests of the President's staff conflicted with good security practice.  It was the staff members’ job to worry about the President's reelection chances, but it was the Secret Service’s responsibility to ensure that nothing happened to the President while he went about getting reelected.  In the end, if the President overruled his security team, then even the best security procedures were to no avail.

Finally, the students ‘graduated’ from the Training Center, and Thiesse received his custom-made earphone.  Each agent working a protection detail had an earphone attached by a wire to a jack that in turn plugged into their belt-mounted communications transceiver.  A second wire connected the small clip-on microphone to the plug and thus to the radio unit.  The agent clipped the skin colored microphone  to his shirt sleeve.  Fully equipped, Allen Thiesse was ready to take on his first assignment.
In addition to a thorough grounding in the laws that the Service upholds, the agent-trainees received expert training in the handling of various firearms. These included their primary weapon, the Smith & Wesson K-19 .357 magnum as well as the Remington 870 twelve gauge shotgun and the Uzi 9 millimeter submachine gun. When they weren’t honing their skills on the firing range, they were practicing the hand-to-hand combat techniques necessary to subdue an attacker, first on padded mats and later on simulated streets where there were no mats to prevent bruises or ease the falls.

In the classroom, Thiesse learned more about the manufacture and counterfeiting of U.S. currency than he ever thought possible. The instructors carefully explained how counterfeiters go about applying their craft, as well as how to spot counterfeit greenbacks.
Thiess’s instructors emphasized the scientific evaluation of counterfeit bills by the Secret Service’s Washington labs, and how to put a counterfeiting case together for trial.

Protective Ops training included a crash course on psychology that explored the theories of crowd dynamics. The men and women assigned to protect the
President or vice President had to be able to read the signs that indicated that their protectee was in imminent danger. The tenets of Protective Operations were drilled into each would-be agent’s head: sound off, arm’s reach consideration, cover and evacuate.

Agents selected to drive the
Presidential limousine got trained in evasive driving. They practiced evasive maneuvers by driving out-of-commission limousines through a maze of rubber traffic cones. They learned how to handle scenarios in which the attacking vehicle blocked the road in front of the President's car. Various types of road surfaces and shoulders allowed the agents to hone their driving skills. Handling the limousine was one thing; learning how to cope with the stress that went with the job was something else. Drivers who couldn’t deal with the nerve-racking stress of driving down a street constantly alert for an attack ended up in other assignments.

Finally the students “graduated”, and Thiesse received his custom
-made earphone. Agents working a protection detail had earphones attached by a wire to a jack that in turn plugged into his belt-mounted communications transceiver. A second wire connected the small clip-on microphone, which generally was attached to the agent’s cuff, to two-way radio. Fully equipped, Allen Thiesse was ready to take on his first assignment.