Ronald Kessler > Quotes

“You can easily judge the character of others by how they treat those who can do nothing for them or to them,”
― Ronald Kessler, The First Family Detail: Secret Service Agents Reveal the Hidden Lives of the Presidents

“In May 1993, Clinton ordered the presidential plane to wait on the tarmac at Los Angeles International Airport while he got a haircut from Christophe Schatteman, a Beverly Hills hairdresser. Schatteman’s clients have included Nicole Kidman, Goldie Hawn, and Steven Spielberg. “We flew out of San Diego to L.A. to pick him up,” recalls James Saddler, a steward on the infamous trip. “Some guy came out and said he was supposed to cut the president’s hair. Christophe cut his hair, and we took off. We were on the ground for an hour. They closed the runways.” While Christophe cut Clinton’s hair, two runways at LAX were closed. That meant all incoming and outgoing flights had to be halted. Clinton’s thoughtlessness inconvenienced passengers throughout the country. Like”
― Ronald Kessler, The First Family Detail: Secret Service Agents Reveal the Hidden Lives of the Presidents

“Wherever she spoke, Laura never failed to thank the military for their patriotism and their courage and to express sympathy for those who lost their loved ones. In private, Laura was the same way.”
― Ronald Kessler, Laura Bush: An Intimate Portrait of the First Lady

“Boys will be boys," he said.
When the door of the elevator shut, Reagan said to Hresko, "But boys will not be president.”
― Ronald Kessler, In the President's Secret Service: Behind the Scenes with Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents They Protect

“At one point, Bush and his wife, Barbara, were staying at their Kennebunkport home in the winter, and they went out for a walk in the freezing cold. “I had a hat on, and two of the other agents had a hat on, but the one agent assigned to the first lady didn’t bring a hat with him,” says former agent Patrick F. Sullivan, who was on the President’s Protective Detail from 1986 to 1990. “So the president came out with Mrs. Bush, and we started to walk.” “Where’s your hat?” Mrs. Bush asked the hatless agent. “Oh, Mrs. Bush, I didn’t bring one. I didn’t realize it was going to be so cold here,” he said. “George, we need to get this agent a hat,” Barbara Bush—code-named Tranquillity—said. “Okay, Bar,” he replied. She walked back into the house, got one of President Bush’s furry hats, and gave it to the agent. “No, Mrs. Bush, that’s fine,” the agent said. “Hey, don’t argue with Mrs. Bush,” Bush said. The agent put on the president’s hat. “That was Mrs. Bush,” Sullivan says. “She was everyone’s mother, and she didn’t want this forty-year-old man walking around at Kennebunkport without a hat on. She was a sweetheart.” “Barbara and George Bush were genuinely in love,” Albracht says. “They share a special bond of being married and being each other’s best friend that you don’t really see a lot of.” Today”
― Ronald Kessler, The First Family Detail: Secret Service Agents Reveal the Hidden Lives of the Presidents

“Just before Obama’s nationally televised campaign kickoff rally last Feb. 10, the candidate disinvited Wright from giving the public invocation. Wright explained: ‘When [Obama's] enemies find out that in 1984 I went to Tripoli’ to visit Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, ‘a lot of his Jewish support will dry up quicker than a snowball in hell.’

According to Wright, Obama then told him, ‘You can get kind of rough in the sermons, so what we’ve decided is that it’s best for you not to be out there in public.’ But privately, Obama and his family prayed with Wright just before the presidential announcement.”
― Ronald Kessler

“Agents say Hillary’s nastiness and contempt for them and disdain for law enforcement and the military in general continued, both when she was secretary of state and now that she is protected as a former first lady, earning her the distinction of being considered the”
― Ronald Kessler, The First Family Detail: Secret Service Agents Reveal the Hidden Lives of the Presidents

“Perhaps the explosion is a distraction from the real threat.”
― Ronald Kessler, The First Family Detail: Secret Service Agents Reveal the Hidden Lives of the Presidents

“Other agents say magnetometers have also been waived for events attended by President George W. Bush and every recent leading presidential candidate. Agents attribute such blatant lapses in security to the fact that the Secret Service does not have enough manpower to screen everyone properly.”
― Ronald Kessler, The First Family Detail: Secret Service Agents Reveal the Hidden Lives of the Presidents

“Was it what we would call a good shoot, versus a bad shoot?”
― Ronald Kessler, The First Family Detail: Secret Service Agents Reveal the Hidden Lives of the Presidents

“Laura also tried to comfort her staff (after 9/11), but Kathi Card never saw fear in her. "Someone with a strong faith is not a fearful person." Card said.”
― Ronald Kessler, Laura Bush:An Intimate Portrait of the First Lady

“Kashoggi's father had taught him how to negotiate. Kashoggi wanted to buy a shiny flashlight at the souq, or market. His father taught him to point out the imagined deficiencies- the metal is cheap or the switch is rusty. Then he taught him to pretend to walk away. p38”
― Ronald Kessler, The Richest Man in the World: The Story of Adnan Khashoggi

“No one can imagine the kind of pressure being president of the U.S. imposes on an individual and how easily a president can be corrupted by power. To be in command of the most powerful country on earth, to be able to fly anywhere at a moment's notice, to be able to grant almost any wish, to take action that affects the lives of millions, is such a heady, intoxicating experience that only people with the most stable personalities and well-developed value systems can handle it.”
― Ronald Kessler, Laura Bush: An Intimate Portrait of the First Lady

“Trainees learn to respond to threats and take turns playing the protectee.”
― Ronald Kessler, The First Family Detail: Secret Service Agents Reveal the Hidden Lives of the Presidents

“It has façades of a hardware store, a hotel, a restaurant, a bar, and a bank. Real cars are parked in front.”
― Ronald Kessler, The First Family Detail: Secret Service Agents Reveal the Hidden Lives of the Presidents

“In Hillary Clinton’s case, because she is so nasty to agents and hostile toward law enforcement officers and military officers in general, agents consider being assigned to her detail a form of punishment. In fact, agents say being on Hillary Clinton’s detail is the worst duty”
― Ronald Kessler, The First Family Detail: Secret Service Agents Reveal the Hidden Lives of the Presidents

“Here, new agents receive a total of sixteen weeks of training, combined with another twelve and a half weeks of training at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) at Glynco, Georgia. To apply to be a Secret Service agent, an individual must be a U.S. citizen. At the time of appointment, he or she must be at least twenty-one years of age but younger than thirty-seven. Agents need a bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university or three years of work experience in the criminal investigative or law enforcement fields that require knowledge and application of laws relating to criminal violations. Agents’ uncorrected vision can be no worse than 20/60, correctable to 20/20 in each eye. Besides passing a background examination, potential agents must take drug tests and pass a polygraph before they are hired and given a top secret security clearance.”
― Ronald Kessler, In the President's Secret Service: Behind the Scenes with Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents They Protect

“Joe Biden’s irresponsibility and colossal lack of judgment in refusing to let the nuclear football near him in Delaware, and his hypocrisy and arrogance in claiming to be the sheriff who cuts government waste while incurring costs of a million dollars for personal trips on Air Force Two, are early signs of potential disaster were he to become president.”
― Ronald Kessler, The First Family Detail: Secret Service Agents Reveal the Hidden Lives of the Presidents

“Each CAT team member is equipped with a fully automatic SR-16 rifle, a SIG Sauer P229 pistol, flash bang grenades for diversionary tactics, and smoke grenades. CAT agents also may be armed with Remington breaching shotguns, a weapon that has been modified with a short barrel. The shotgun may be loaded with nonlethal Hatton rounds to blow the lock off a door.”
― Ronald Kessler, In the President's Secret Service: Behind the Scenes with Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents They Protect

“Since 1917, threatening the president has been a federal crime. As later amended, the law carries a penalty of up to five years in prison and a fine of $250,000, or both. The same penalty applies to threatening the president-elect, vice president, vice president–elect, or any officer in the line of succession to become president. Threats against the first lady and first children are evaluated in the same way as threats against the president and vice president, but the number of threats against them is far lower.”
― Ronald Kessler, The First Family Detail: Secret Service Agents Reveal the Hidden Lives of the Presidents

“He always approached things with big ideas and objectives," Dan Evans said, "Find the best people you can to pursue those goals. Lead them in that direction. Give them leadership through your trust in them, your determination, your courage. You commit yourself to it a hundred percent. And when it's over, it's over, and you move on...”
― Ronald Kessler, Laura Bush: An Intimate Portrait of the First Lady

“Biden seems to care more about his image than carrying out the only significant responsibility required of him as vice president: to launch retaliatory strikes in the event of a nuclear attack. That dwarfs the only duty the U.S. Constitution assigns to him—choosing whether to vote in the Senate to break a tie. Yet despite the obvious danger to the country, no one in Secret Service management has blown the whistle on Biden. “We drive the vehicle with the military aide,” an agent says. “If the president goes down and we can’t locate the military aide to take military action, that’s on us. We don’t have the backbone to say, ‘Mr. Vice President, we can’t separate the control vehicle with the military aide and the doctor from you.’ ” As a result, “unfortunately what’s going to happen is either you’re going to have a dead vice president in Delaware or you’re going to have agents killed in Delaware because Secret Service management refused to stand up to the vice president and say, ‘No sir, we can’t roll with this many assets short,’ ” an agent notes. “He wants to be Joe, and he does not want the vehicles around him. The situation is alarming, but the culture of Secret Service management is to go along, in hopes of getting a”
― Ronald Kessler, The First Family Detail: Secret Service Agents Reveal the Hidden Lives of the Presidents

“Even though the training center is in Laurel, agents refer to it as “Beltsville,”
― Ronald Kessler, The First Family Detail: Secret Service Agents Reveal the Hidden Lives of the Presidents

“At one point during his second term, agents say Clinton managed to lose the plastic authenticator card with the codes he would need to verify his identity to launch nuclear weapons. “He has to keep those codes with him at all times, at all costs,” says a former agent. “With the codes, the White House Communications Agency can set up communications through the nuclear football and hit the satellites.” Retired general Hugh Shelton, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed in his book Without Hesitation: The Odyssey of an American Warrior that in Clinton’s last year in office, the required codes for launching a nuclear strike were missing for months. “This is a big deal—a gargantuan deal—and we dodged a silver bullet,” Shelton wrote. As the Secret Service sees it, Hillary and Bill Clinton have a business relationship, not a marriage.”
― Ronald Kessler, The First Family Detail: Secret Service Agents Reveal the Hidden Lives of the Presidents

“Thus, the countersnipers are observers and can respond to a distant threat with their .300 Winchester Magnum—known as Win Mag—rifles. The rifle is customized for the shooter who is assigned the weapon. Each team is also equipped with one Stoner SR-25 rifle. Counter-snipers are required to qualify shooting out to a thousand yards each month. If they don’t qualify, they don’t travel or work.”
― Ronald Kessler, In the President's Secret Service: Behind the Scenes with Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents They Protect

“Agents say that, whether at the vice president’s residence or at his home in Delaware, Biden has a habit of swimming in his pool nude. Female Secret Service agents find that offensive. Because of Biden’s lack of consideration as evidenced by that habit and his refusal to give agents advance notice of his trips back home, being assigned to his detail is considered the second worst assignment in the Secret Service after being assigned to protect Hillary Clinton. “Biden likes to be revered as everyday Joe, and that’s his thing,” an agent says. “But the reality is no agents want to go on his detail because Biden makes agents’ lives so tough.”
― Ronald Kessler, The First Family Detail: Secret Service Agents Reveal the Hidden Lives of the Presidents

“the sounds of training Secret Service agents and Secret Service”
― Ronald Kessler, The First Family Detail: Secret Service Agents Reveal the Hidden Lives of the Presidents

“spiky agave, and luscious kalanchoe”
― Ronald Kessler, The Season: Inside Palm Beach and America's Richest Society

“...she quoted (E.B.) White as saying "I love the world." Laura said, "I think all writers and artists love the world, and that's why they're so curious.”
― Ronald Kessler, Laura Bush: An Intimate Portrait of the First Lady

“When Bush—code-named Timberwolf—was vice president, agent William Albracht was on the midnight shift at the vice president’s residence. While agents refer to the President’s Protective Detail as the Show, they call the Vice President’s Protective Detail the Little Show with Free Parking. That’s because, unlike the White House, the vice president’s residence provides parking for agents. Albracht was new to the post, and Agent Dowling filled him in. “Well, Bill, every day the stewards bake the cookies, and that is their job, and that is their responsibility,” Dowling told him. “And then our responsibility on midnights is to find those cookies or those left from the previous day and eat as many of them as possible.” Assigned to the basement post around 3 A.M., Albracht was getting hungry. “We never had permission to take food from the kitchen, but sometimes you get very hungry on midnights,” Albracht says. “I walked into the kitchen that was located in the basement and opened up the refrigerator. I’m hoping that there are some leftover snacks from that day’s reception,” the former agent says. “It was slim pickin’s. All of a sudden, there’s a voice over my shoulder.” “Hey, anything good in there to eat?” the man asked. “No, looks like they cleaned it out,” Albracht said. “I turned around to see George Bush off my right shoulder,” Albracht says. “After I get over the shock of who it was, Bush says, ‘Hey, I was really hoping there would be something to eat.’ And I said, ‘Well, sir, every day the stewards bake cookies, but every night they hide them from us.’ With a wink of his eye he says, ‘Let’s find ’em.’ So we tore the kitchen apart, and sure enough we did find them. He took a stack of chocolate chip cookies and a glass of milk and went back up to bed, and I took a stack and a glass of milk and went back to the basement post.” When Albracht returned to the post, Dowling asked, “Who the hell were you in there talking to?” Albracht told him what had happened. “Oh yeah, sure, right,” Dowling said. When”
― Ronald Kessler, The First Family Detail: Secret Service Agents Reveal the Hidden Lives of the Presidents