The Executive Protection Racket
Kurtz, Howie
The Executive Protection Racket by Howie Kurtz The light blue squad cars, looking like regular police patrols to the uninitiated, are a familiar sight in certain parts of northwest...
...police in nearby patrol cars...
...But it’s far more common for EPS guards to assume the role of traffic cop whenever anembassy function threatens to tie up traffic...
...To top it off, theEPS is not empowered to investigate any crime, even an embassy crime, after it has been committed...
...In the past year, the force has made arrests for indecent exposure, purse snatching, defacing embassy property, driving under the influence, and assault with a deadly weapon...
...A few years ago, the officers rotated between shifts of two hours working and two hours off-a cushy routine designed to dispel unnecessary daydreaming...
...The inescapable irony is that the nation’s taxpayers, many of whom live in high-crime areas without adequate police protection, are paying over $17 million ayear to support aspecialpolice force in the one area of the nation’s capital that needs it the least...
...Then, when you get into the job, the glamor that the media build up just isn’t there...
...But incidents of this kind were handled adequately enough before 1970, when the Secret Service had the security responsibility for the White House...
...But EPS officials havetakenexactly the opposite approach-they point with pride to the lack of crime in their area as indisputable evidence that the Execytive Protective Serviee is on the job...
...That’s why we vary their duties to keep them alert...
...There had been a couple of embarrassing incidents in the papers-one ambassador was robbed, another envoy’s wife was mugged-and Nixon convinced Congress it was time to extend his law-and-order campaign to the diplomatic community...
...We changed the name because the press and public has been confused about our role,” says Ken Lynch, a public affairs officer with the Secret Service...
...If you’re standing guard on the midnight shift and no one comes by to say hello for hours-well, that can get very boring...
...But how much is that investment worth...
...In addition, EPS officers can retire after 20 years on an extraordinarily lucrative pension plan that’s even better than the one for other federal workers (which, in turn, is far superior to the Social Security program that the rest of us are stuck with...
...EPS officers can make arrests and try to stop any crime committed in their immediate presence, however...
...The EPS officers have most of the powers of regular D.C...
...Some people viewed us as a private guard force...
...Up the street a bit, a lone officer is shootingthe breeze with two diplomatic-looking gentlemen in front of the Lithuanian embassy on 16th Street...
...Six hundred new policemen were added to the force, and at the next White House state dinner, some of them weredressed up in ridiculous-looking chocolate brown uniforms with white tunics, gold braid, and steeply sloping hats...
...The officers don’t live as dangerously as city cops-none has been seriously injured in the eight years since the service was expanded...
...We’d only make an arrest if the crowd tried to run into the embassy...
...The Executive Protection Racket by Howie Kurtz The light blue squad cars, looking like regular police patrols to the uninitiated, are a familiar sight in certain parts of northwest Washington...
...There’s no heavy lifting, the starting salary is $13,794, and families are eligible for federal health benefits...
...EPS officers don’t strike fear in the hearts of Washington drivers, who have learned they generally don’t give parking or speedingtickets...
...The officers get much higher benefits than other federal workers, even though they make lesser payments over a shorter period of time...
...Whether they coulcj achieve the same results with a less expensive effort is a question t h a t nobody i p Washington has even bothered to ask...
...And the program has grown, in typical Washington fashion, without so much as asidewaysglance from thelegislators who approve the money...
...On one corner, two uniformed officers are sitting double-parked outside the all-night “7- 1 1”grocery onConnecticut Avenue, sipping coffee and chatting about the high cost of living...
...The EPS officer must stand his guard no matter what happens...
...We try to be a low-profile agency,” he says with agrin...
...When you first look at the Secret Service, you think of chasing the President around...
...It’s sort of an investment to make the diplomatic community feel safe...
...It is this “fixed-post’’ duty, statiohed in front of an embassy like some royal British guard, that drives some of them crazy...
...But the Executive Protective Service has survived intact, except that its name recently was changed to the more awkward Uniformed Division of the Vnited States Secr’et Service, which doesn’t even have a catchy acronym...
...There is obviously a need for extra police protection along Embassy Row, but no one has ever demonstrated why 900 officers are needed in a neighborhood so well off that property values have nearly doubled in the last three years...
...People just weren’t sure why we were out there:” But the unit’s obscure image, Lynch admits, is somewhat intentional...
...The inexplicable arrangement has cost the taxpayers as much as $700,000 a year...
...A closer look reveals that these are not District of Columbia policemen, but part of an obscure yet growing federal force called the Executive Protective Service...
...In fact, they tend to be young, intelligent, and highly motivated people looking for an advanced career in police work...
...Although EPS officers occasionally ride into Maryland or Virginia to check on ambassadors who havemovedtothe suburbs, theonlyothercity withan EPS presence is New York, wheretheservice has been guarding some of the more sensitive United Nations missions, such as those of the Middle East countries, on a “temporary” basis since 1973...
...No Heavy Lifting The EPS naturally beefs up its patrols during political demonstrations at the embassies, but its main concern is keeping the protestors at least 500 feet from the embassy...
...In February 1974, for example, a soldier who flunked out of flight school commandeered an Army helicopter and, after a frenzied airborne chase, landed on the White House lawn in a blaze of gunfire...
...Now they put in a full eight hours, but switch off into squad cars and scooter patrols after standing in front of an embassy for two hours...
...It’s just a job, but it sure gets lonesome out here sometimes,” says one tired-looking officer...
...Boredom is a real problem,” says Craig Ash, a veteran EPS officer...
...Youwon’t see these officers near the burnt-out buildings and abandoned lots of Shaw, an inner-city corridor still scarred from the 1968 riots, and you won’t see them in the slums of Anacostia or southeast Washington...
...We were misunderstood...
...One of the worst problems they face is monotony,” Lynch concedes...
...But these dramatic moments are few and far between, and most of the time is spent waiting for something to happen...
...Oddly enough, it’s usually the D.C...
...The only hint of dispute, predictably, is whether the State Department should take over the force from the Treasury Department, which runs the Secret Service...
...Sometimes you just wish that something would happen so you could see some action...
...We don’t want to spend a million dollars on PR to pat ourselves on the back . ” ‘Gets Lonesome Out Here’ While you often see the EPS officers driving aimlessly around the embassy area or gabbing with each other on street corners, it isn’t because they’re especially lazy or incompetent...
...For the official mission of these 900 officers of the Executive Protective Service is to guard not just the White House, but the foreign embassies and ambassadors’residences that are scattered throughout one ofthe Howie Kurtz is an investigative reporter for Jack Anderson...
...It’sjust that, well, there isn’t that much todoon the job...
...po1iceortheU.S...
...The federal government somehow got by with only 250 White House policemen from the days of Warren Harding until 1970, when President Nixon decided to create a more imperial force to look after both his family and the foreign chanceries...
...The name evokes the presidentialguard duty ofthesecret Service, ofwhichthis outfit is apart, but its beat is the posh residential area which stretches about three miles north and west ofthe WhiteHouse...
...But the pension plan appears to be getting no more scrutiny than the Executive Protective Service itself...
...The ornate outfits, which are still an embarrassing memory to the EPS, were retired ds soon as Nixon was...
...The General Accounting Office recently blasted the special pension plan as too generous and costly and said it should be abolished...
...If a burglary is being committed down the block from the embassy, EPS policy forbids him from leaving his assigned post to chase after the burglars...
...Our job is to protect the embassy,” explains Lynch...
...Instead hemust radio other EPS officers or D.C...
...Most members feel it’s ajob that has to be done,” says his counterpart on the House side...
...No one is quite sure why the New York patrol hasn’t been made permanent, as EPS admits that it’s far more costly to pay the daily expenses, the food and housing expenses, for example, of a “temporary” detail...
...EPS officials say they’re already “strapped” with over 400 diplomatic locations to protect and would like more manpower but are willing to let Congress decide whether or not it’s needed...
...A Blaze of Gunfire When something finally does happen, it can become a highly publicized incident, particularly if it takes place at the White House...
...Park Police, not the EPS, who arrest unruly protestors...
...policemen, although they rarely exercise them...
...There hasn’t been any controversy whatsoever about the organization in the four years that I’ve been here,”says thestaffman on the Senate subcommittee that routinely rubber-stamps the EPS budget...
...The extra protection is just a residual benefit for the people who happen to live in those areas,” Lynch contends...
...city’s most affluent neighborhoods...
...Outside of the boredom, EPS can be an attractive place to work...
...Sometimes an officer will expel an insistent protestor, such as the South Korean priest who refused to abandon his prayer vigil on the lawn of his country’s embassy...
...Most federal agencies try to justify their existence by exaggerating the problems they were created to solve-the Energy Department climbed to Cabinet status with dire warnings about the impending oil shortage, while the National Institute on Drug Abuse paints a grim picture of rising drug addiction at budget time...
...And a few blocks away, another patrol car is cruising ever so slowly up the steep hills of Massachusetts Avenue, past the glittering facades of foreign chanceries, its occupants looking vaguely bored...
...Every October, for instance, the Iranian embassy holds a big birthday bash for the Shah which never fails to create a massive rush-hour jam for miles along Massachusetts Avenue...
Vol. 10 • October 1978 • No. 7
