Carter was the chief executive most detested by Secret Service agents
I did a lot of reading over the holidays. One of the books was this one: First Family Detail, by Ronald Kessler. I won’t link to it because my link would go to the UK Amazon page (okay, I could get around that, but it’s effort and I’m lazy).
“Carter was just very short and rude most of the time,” an agent recalls. “With agents, he’d just pretend like you were not around. You’d say hello, and he’d just look at you, like you weren’t there, like you were bothering him.” Carter actually told Secret Service agents and uniformed officers he did not want them to greet him on his way to the Oval Office. It was apparently too much bother for him to have to say hello back to another human being.
Nor did Carter have much use for the military. Even though he was a Naval Academy graduate, Carter “talked down to the military, just talked like they didn’t know what they were talking about,” a former agent says. “Carter didn’t want military aides to wear uniforms,” former agent Cliff Baranowski recalls. Not surprisingly, of all the presidents in recent memory, Carter was the chief executive most detested by Secret Service agents.
Agent John Piasecky was on Carter’s detail for three and a half years. That included seven months of driving him in the presidential limousine. Aside from giving directions, Carter never spoke to him, he says. Carter tried to project an image of himself as man of the people by carrying his own luggage when traveling. But that was another charade. When he was a candidate in 1976, Carter would carry his own bags when the press was around but would ask the Secret Service to carry them the rest of the time. As president, Carter — code-named Deacon — orchestrated 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 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 carryon 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.”
It’s a series of anecdotes, if you’re into that. Hillary’s chapter was fun, though. And hoo boy was Bill a horndog!
January 7, 2025 — 4:45 pm
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