This info was also in a book

Posted on: March 3, 2023 at 11:29:50 CT

Chapter 10 of “In The President’s Secret Service”

https://erenow.net/common/in-the-presidents-secret-service/10.php

Deacon
IF THE SECRET Service considered Richard Nixon the strangest modern president, Jimmy Carter was known as the least likeable. If the true measure of a man is how he treats the little people, Carter flunked the test. Inside the White House, Carter treated with contempt the little people who helped and protected him.


“When Carter first came there, he didn’t want the police officers and agents looking at him or speaking to him when he went to the office,” says Nelson Pierce, an assistant White House usher. “He didn’t want them to pay attention to him going by. I never could understand why. He was not going to the Oval Office without shoes or a robe.”

“We never spoke unless spoken to,” says Fred Walzel, who was chief of the White House branch of the Secret Service Uniformed Division. “Carter complained that he didn’t want them [the officers] to say hello.”

For three and a half years, agent John Piasecky was on Carter’s detail—including seven months of driving him in the presidential limousine—and Carter never spoke to him, he says. At the same time, Carter tried to project an image of himself as man of the people by carrying his own luggage when traveling. But that was often for show. When he was a candidate in 1976, Carter would carry his own bags when the press was around but ask the Secret Service to carry them the rest of the time.


“Carter would have us carry his luggage from the trunk to the airport,” says former Secret Service agent John F. Collins. “But that is not our job, and we finally stopped doing it.” On one occasion, says Collins, “We opened the trunk and shut it, leaving his luggage in the trunk. He was without clothes for two days.”

As president, Carter engaged in more ruses involving his luggage.

“When he was traveling, he would get on the helicopter and fly to Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base,” says former Secret Service agent Clifford R. Baranowski. “He would roll up his sleeves and carry his bag over his shoulder, but it was empty. He wanted people to think he was carrying his own bag.”


“Carter made a big show about taking a hang-up carry-on out of the trunk of the limo when he’d go someplace, and there was nothing in it,” says another agent who was on his detail. “It was empty; it was just all show.”

On the first Christmas morning after his election, Carter strode out of the front door of his home in Plains, Georgia, to get the newspaper. Instead of saying “Merry Christmas” to the Secret Service agent standing post, he ignored him. After church and a Christmas brunch, Carter’s wife, Rosalynn, put some leftovers out for their Siamese cat. According to agent John Collins, the detail had befriended a stray Jack Russell terrier and given him the code name Dolphin. “Dolphin” conformed with the Secret Service code names beginning with D assigned to the Carters.

Seeing the food, Dolphin began gobbling it up, pushing away the cat. According to another agent who was there, Carter got a bow saw—the kind that is used to saw down trees—and actually tried to attack the dog with the saw.


“Carter got the bow saw off a woodpile near the family room patio and in full view of his family—including his mother, Miss Lillian—tried to kill the dog,” says the agent who was there. “Dolphin, who was much faster than Carter, playfully dodged the president-elect’s efforts. Carter then called the detail leader and demanded that the dog be removed from Plains. The Secret Service gave the dog to the press corps covering Carter.”

Incredibly, Carter refused to carry out the biggest responsibility a president has—to be available to take action in case of nuclear attack. When he went on vacation, “Carter did not want the nuclear football at Plains,” a Secret Service agent says. “There was no place to stay in Plains. The military wanted a trailer there. He didn’t want that. So the military aide who carries the football had to stay in Americus,” a fifteen minute drive from Carter’s home.

Because of the agreed-upon protocols, in the event of a nuclear attack, Carter could not have launched a counterattack by calling the aide in Americus. By the time the military aide drove to Carter’s home, the United States would have been within five minutes of being wiped out by nuclear-tipped missiles.

“He would have had to drive ten miles,” an agent says. “Carter didn’t want anyone bothering him on his property. He wanted his privacy. He was really different.”

Through his lawyer, Terrence B. Adamson, Carter denied that he refused to keep the nuclear football near him in Plains and that he instructed uniformed officers not to say hello to him in the White House. But Bill Gulley who, as director of the White House Military Office, was in charge of the operation, confirmed that Carter refused to let the military aide stay near his residence. “We tried to put a trailer in Plains near the residence for the doctor [who travels with the president] and the aide with the football,” Gulley says. “But Carter wouldn’t permit that. Carter didn’t care at all.”

Carter—code-named Deacon—was moody and mistrustful.

“When he was in a bad mood, you didn’t want to bring him anything,” a former Secret Service agent says. “It was this hunkered-down attitude: ‘I’m running the show’ It was as if he didn’t trust anyone around him. He had that big smile, but when he was in the White House, it was a different story.”

“The only time I saw a smile on Carter’s face was when the cameras were going,” says former agent George Schmalhofer, who was periodically on his detail.

“Carter said, ‘I’m in charge,’” a former Secret Service agent says. “‘Everything is my way’ He tried to micromanage everything. You had to go to him about playing on the tennis court. It was ridiculous.”

One day, Carter noticed water gushing out of a grate outside the White House.

“It was the emergency generating system,” says William Cuff, the assistant chief of the White House Military Office. “Carter got interested in that and micromanaged it. He would zoom in on an area and manage the hell out of it. He asked questions of the chief usher every day: ‘How much does this cost? Which part is needed? When is it coming? Which bolt ties to which flange?’”

At a press conference, Carter denied reports that White House aides had to ask him for permission to use the tennis courts. But that was more dissembling. In fact, even when he was traveling on Air Force One, Carter insisted that aides ask him for permission to play on the courts.

“It is a true story about the tennis courts,” says Charles Palmer, who was chief of the Air Force One stewards. Because other aides were afraid to give Carter the messages asking for permission, Palmer often wound up doing it.

“He [Carter] approved who played from on the plane,” Palmer says. “Mostly people used them when he was out of town. If the president was in a bad mood, the aides said, ‘You carry the message in.’ On the bad days when we were having problems, no one wanted to talk to the president. It was always, ‘I have a note to deliver to the president. I don’t want him hollering at me.’”

Palmer says Carter seemed to relish the power. At times, Carter would delay his response, smugly saying, “I’ll let them know,” Palmer says. “Other times, he would look at me and smile and say, ‘Tell them yes.’ I felt he felt it was a big deal. I didn’t understand why that had to happen.”

Early in his presidency, Carter proclaimed that the White House would be “dry.” Each time a state dinner was held, the White House made a point of telling reporters that no liquor—only wine—would be served.

“The Carters were the biggest liars in the world,” Gulley says. “The word was passed to get rid of all the booze. There can’t be any on Air Force One, in Camp David, or in the White House. This was coming from close associates of the Carter family.”

Gulley told White House military aides, “Hide the booze, and let’s find out what happens.”

According to Gulley, “The first Sunday they are in the White House, I get a call from the mess saying, ‘They want Bloody Marys before going to church. What should I do?’ I said, ‘Find some booze and take it up to them.’”

“We never cut out liquor under Carter,” Palmer says. “Occasionally Carter had a martini,” Palmer adds. He also had a Michelob Light. Rosalynn—code-named Dancer—would have a screwdriver.

Lillian Carter, Carter’s own mother, contradicted her son’s claim. In a 1977 interview with The New York Times, she said that, even though the White House was officially “dry,” she managed to have a nip of bourbon every afternoon when she stayed there.

“She said one evening to one of the butlers, ‘I’m kind of used to having a little nip before going to bed. Do you think you could arrange to give me a little brandy each night?’” says Shirley Bender, the White House executive housekeeper.

When Vice President Walter “Fritz” Mondale visited Carter at Plains for the first time, Miss Lillian knocked on the door of a Winnebago the Secret Service was using as a command post.

“I opened the door, and there’s Miss Lillian standing there with a paper bag with two six-packs of beer in it,” says David Curtis, an agent on the Mondale detail.

“I’ve got something for the boys,” Lillian Carter said. “Don’t tell Jimmy.”

“I appreciate that, Miss Lillian, but we can’t accept that,” Curtis said.

When he was in the White House, Carter would regularly make a show of going to the Oval Office at five A.M. or six A.M. to call attention to how hard he was working for the American people.

“He would walk into the Oval Office at six A.M., do a little work for half an hour, then close the curtains and take a nap,” says Robert B. Sulliman, Jr., who was on Carter’s detail. “His staff would tell the press he was working.”

Another agent says that at other times, he could see Carter through the Oval Office windows dozing off in his desk chair while pretending he was working.

Carter claimed to the press that he was saving energy by having solar panels installed on the roof of the White House to heat hot water. “It would not generate enough hot water to run the dishwasher in the staff mess,” Cuff says. “It was a fiasco. The staff mess had to go out and buy new equipment to keep the water hot enough. That blew any savings.”

Carter even tried to cut back the crew on Air Force One.

“Air Force One is an airplane, and you need a minimum number of people to fly it,” Cuff notes. “You have to have a pilot, copilot, and others. They never understood that. The presidential pilot and the vice chief of staff of the air force had to argue with them.”

Carter found out that after a catering company put on parties at Blair House for foreign dignitaries, instead of throwing away any leftovers as it normally would, the company would offer the food to Secret Service agents standing post.

“The guys were working shifts of twelve to fourteen hours a day,” a former agent says. “Sometimes you could not break away to get food.”

Carter insisted that the catering firm figure out the cost of the extra food and charge agents for the leftovers they ate in the future, the former agent says.

Gulley the head of the military office, says Carter became so involved in micromanaging the White House that he would veto the replacement of carpets.

“He wouldn’t allow them to change the carpeting where the public went through the White House,” Gulley says. “The White House looked like a peanut warehouse when I left,” referring to Carter’s business enterprise. “Thousands of people pass through there, and it requires a high degree of maintenance. Carter himself got involved in that. It [the carpeting] was worn and dirty.”

Carter thought of himself as a better runner than his Secret Service agents and would challenge them to races. The Secret Service began assigning its best runners to his detail. One day at Camp David, Carter collapsed into the arms of an agent as he was trying to outrun them.

“He wasn’t in bad shape, but he never warmed up,” agent Dennis Chomicki says. “It was an exceptionally hot day, and he took off real fast and kind of burned himself out. He basically lost it.”

On another occasion, agents warned Carter that cross-country skiing at Camp David would be dangerous because there was not enough snow on the ground and there were a lot of bare spots. Carter ignored the advice.

“Yeah, okay, I’ll decide on that,” Carter said, according to agent Chomicki.

“He went out, and sure enough, he fell on his face and broke his collarbone,” Chomicki says.

In Washington, the Secret Service tried to find secluded routes so Carter could run. One beautiful fall morning, Carter went running on the towpath along the C&O Canal. He planned to run from Key Bridge to Chain Bridge, then back to Fletcher’s Boat House, where Secret Service agents had been instructed to wait in their vehicles to pick him up. Because of a miscommunication, when Carter and his detail got to the boathouse, agents were nowhere to be seen.

Stephen Garmon, the detail leader, and other agents had been following Carter on bicycles. Garmon, who later became deputy director of the Secret Service, tried to radio to the Secret Service vehicles, but his transmission was not getting through.

“The president said he was getting cold,” Garmon recalls. “I asked if he would mind running back to Key Bridge, and we could flag a cab if necessary. Then I saw a pay phone, but I didn’t have any change.” Garmon decided to try calling the 911 emergency number. Identifying himself as a Secret Service agent, he asked to be connected to the White House Communications Agency switchboard.

“The 911 operator connected me, and I was able to communicate to the vehicles so agents would pick us up,” Garmon says.

Besides seeing what presidents and first families are really like, Secret Service agents get to see the real face of the White House political staff. When Carter was meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat at Camp David, former agent Cliff Baranowski heard a strange noise in the woods around midnight.

“Then Hamilton Jordan, Carter’s chief of staff, came out of the woods with a pretty intern,” Baranowski says. “They were parked in the woods, and his car got stuck. The noise was the spinning of wheels.”

As a micromanager, Carter gave his vice president, Walter Mondale, few duties. So Mondale was able to spend much of his time playing tennis and traveling.

Toward the end of his term, Carter became suspicious that people were stealing things and eavesdropping on his conversations in the Oval Office.

Carter and his staff were becoming “very paranoid,” says a General Services Administration (GSA) building manager in charge of maintenance of the West Wing. “They thought GSA or the Secret Service were listening in.”

One afternoon, Susan Clough, Carter’s secretary, insisted that someone had stolen a vial of crude oil from the Oval Office. The vial was a gift to Carter from an Arab leader.

“Susan Clough swore up and down that someone poured some of it out,” a GSA manager says. Even though the vial was sealed, “There was a big fuss over it. The Secret Service photographs everything in the president’s suite. They photographed it [again], and it hadn’t been touched. It shows the paranoia.”

Before going on a fishing trip in Georgia one morning, Carter accused a Secret Service agent of stealing fried chicken that stewards had prepared. In fact, White House aides Jody Powell and Hamilton Jordan had eaten it.

After Reagan was inaugurated, GSA discovered that the Carter staff had left garbage in the White House and had trashed furniture in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

GSA saw “furniture, desks, and file cabinets turned over,” a GSA building manager says. “They shoved over desks. We had to straighten it out. It was fifteen or twenty desks in one area. It was enough to look like a cyclone had hit.”

After he was voted out of office, Carter occasionally stayed in the townhouse GSA maintains for former presidents at 1716 Jackson Place. On the walls of the townhouse are photos of former presidents.

Checking the premises, GSA managers found that when Carter was visiting, he would take down the photos of Republican presidents Ford and Nixon and decorate the townhouse with another half dozen sixteen-inch by twenty-four-inch photos of himself. Each time, Charles B. “Buddy” Respass, then the GSA manager in charge of the White House, became irate because GSA had to find the old photos and hang them again.

Through his lawyer Adamson, Carter denied this. He also denied that he thought people were listening to his conversations in the Oval Office.

But Lucille Price, the GSA manager who then reported to Respass, says, “Carter changed the photos…. He didn’t like them [Ford and Nixon] looking down at him. We would find out he would put photos of himself up.” Then, she says, Carter “would take the photos of himself back with him.”

For all his bizarre behavior and shams, Carter was genuinely religious, did not swear, and had a loving relationship with his wife, Rosalynn, who acted as an adviser.