PRESIDENTIAL SECURITY: BODIES, BUBBLES, & BUNKERS Chad B. Newswander A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Center for Public Administration and Policy at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY: PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS Timothy W. Luke, Co-Chair Patrick Roberts, Co-Chair Karen M. Hult Brian J. Cook April 15, 2009 Blacksburg, Virginia Keywords: United States Secret Service, President of the United States, organizational power and politics, Foucault, Schmitt Copyright 2009, Chad B. Newswander ii PRESIDENTIAL PROTECTION: BODIES, BUBBLES, & BUNKERS ABSTRACT The purpose of this research is to show how the idea of presidential security is a construct that has taken on several different meanings and rationalities in the American context due to shifting power relations, new practices of presidential security, and the constant re- formulation of the friend/enemy distinction. The United States Service has had to continually think and re-think the concept of presidential security in order to provide suitable protection for the President of the United States. In creating these spaces of protection, the practices of the Secret Service have slowly contributed to re-constituting the sovereign to fit the agency’s particular logics and rationalities. The capturing of the Chief Executive Officer does not only rest on disciplinary techniques that restrict, but are also founded on the truth production of the Secret Service: presidents begin to accept and internalize the modus operandi of the Secret Service. They begin to self-monitor their own desires and actions related to security concerns. The walls of protection are coupled with a conscious capitulation to accept the barriers of protection. The cage is no longer only imposed from without, but also emerges internally. By problematizing how this evolving security bubble encapsulates the president, this dissertation is able to examine how the Secret Service begins to reshape and reformulate key democratic governance values by protecting the public and private body of the president through a disciplinary apparatus that seeks to control and contain as well as display and deliberate. Democratic norms that privilege openness have to be challenged, if not curtailed, to adequately protect the Chief Executive Officer. Everyone and everything is a risk that must be inspected, catalogued, and watched, even the president cannot be trusted with his own safety. With its mission to protect, the Secret Service has constructed an organizational operation to ostracize the other, permanently put the president behind protective procedures, and present a pleasing public persona fitting to the status of the POTUS. These overt actions have allowed an administrative agency to redefine key democratic governance values. The agency has been able to delineate who is a suspicious other, justify the placement of barricades that separate the president from the people, instill a preventive/security ethos in the Office of the President, and display the president as the apex of a constitutional order. Because of its successes and failures, presidential protection has become normal, acceptable, legitimate, and absolutely necessary, which has provided the Service the ability to give shape to a particular rationality concerning what the president can and cannot do. This constitutive role of a public agency has had a dramatic impact on how the people come to experience and interact with the POTUS. The development of the Secret Service and its protective procedures, however, has been sporadic and tenuous. For the past 100 years, this emerging rationality was produced by a multitude of sources that have helped construct the idea and practice of presidential iii security. The subjects of insecurity and security mutually created the idea of POTUS endangerment and safety. Enemies of the state have helped mold state action while friends of the president have sought to project an image of presidential grandeur. In this context, the Service has had to secure territorial spaces in order to conceal and confuse threats while simultaneously having to display and disclose the presidential body to the public. The capacity to control threats and to coordinate the presidential spectacle has enabled the Service to direct the body and mind of the POTUS. With this disciplinary apparatus in place, the Secret Service is able to construct bubbles and bunkers that are designed to protect and trap the president’s two bodies. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The dissertation is a funny process. It requires one’s families and friends to support a state of massive self-absorption for an extended period of time. Over the past two years of researching, writing, and rewriting the dissertation, I have several people I wish to thank. First and foremost, I want to thank Nita, my wife, who not only provided emotional, physical, and spiritual support, but also took the time to engage with my ideas and thoughts. Having two academics in one household provided the stability and means to finish the project. But above the minute details, she was there when I needed encouragement and rest. I could not have done this or graduate school without her. Over the past six years, I am a different person because of her refinement and love. Second, I want to thank my parents. I am deeply indebted to my dad for our talks and his inquisitive critical mind and to my mom for her active interest, love, and support. The person I am today in so many ways reflects who they are. Finally, I am grateful to the many professors who have shaped my academic life. I owe a great deal to my committee: Brian Cook who was willing to join the committee on short notice, Karen Hult who spent a lot of time reading and providing wonderful feedback on many of my ideas over the years, and Patrick Roberts who has introduced me to a whole new set of ideas. I also want to provide special thanks to my two mentors in graduate school: Tim Luke and John Rohr. Tim literally saved my academic life by hiring me and teaching me political philosophy. Although I was a foreigner to the Political Science Department, he spent hours with helping me understand the breadth and depth of political ideas. His critical insights have deeply influenced how I see and experience the world. He truly was the catalyst behind my dissertation. Rohr has taught me what it means to be both a scholar and a saint. With his precise insights and example, he taught me how to think. Both of their ideas have had an indeterminable impact on me. v TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: ADMINISTERING BODIES, BUBBLES, & BUNKERS: 1 AN INTRODUCTION OF CLOSE PROTECTION Two Bodies of the President 11 The Presidential Bubble 27 The Presidential Bunker 35 Preview of Study 37 CHAPTER 2: GENEALOGY & CASES 41 Methodology 41 CHAPTER 3: POWER & POLITICS: THE CRAFT OF 60 IMPRISONMENT Frameworks of Power 61 Foucault’s Power Relations 65 The Political 73 Circuits of Power 80 CHAPTER 4: ALIEN PRACTICES: THE FORMATION OF 88 PRESIDENTIAL PROTECTION A New Body Emerges 90 Ideas of Presidential Protection 101 Practices of Presidential Protection 120 Bodies of Service: The Growth of Protection between Taft and Hoover 146 Conclusion 193 CHAPTER 5: A CITADEL OF SECURITY: 196 THE LEGITIMIZATION OF PRESIDENTIAL PROTECTION Assassins, War, and Enemies: The Securitization of Protection 199 The Rebellion of Harry S Truman 229 Conclusion 252 vi CHAPTER 6: BUBBLE BUILDING: 256 MOVING THE SECRET SERVICE INTO THE MODERN AGE Warriors & Mobility: The Cold War Problem 257 The Two Bodies of JFK 267 Copy Cat: LBJ’s Crowds and Carelessness 291 Politicization: The Special Case of Richard Nixon’s Secret Service 321 Fending Off Foes: Gerald Ford’s New Enemy 349 Conclusion 366 CHAPTER 7: CAMPUS, COMPOUND, AND CASTLE: 370 THE CREATION OF A WHITE HOUSE FORTRESS Stages of Shields and Screens: Protecting and Presenting Reagan 372 The Transformation of the White House: The Bubble Becomes a Bunker 406 The Ideal and Practice of Prevention: Managing Protective Bunkers 435 Conclusion 456 CHAPTER 8: A REGIME OF PROTECTION 460 The Genealogy of the Bubble 461 The Shielding and Shackling of the POTUS 466 The Future of Presidential Protection 473 REFERENCES 479 1 CHAPTER ONE ADMINISTERING BODIES, BUBBLES, & BUNKERS: AN INTRODUCTION TO CLOSE PROTECTION The nature of policing in modern day America has reached a point where the government often has to ignore democratic and constitutional principles to preserve normality and order. To ensure safety and order, policing has expanded in the post-9/11 context to encompass critical individuals and events where such protection had been deemed unnecessary before, especially regarding presidential security. As a result, the Secret Service, like many other police agencies, is seeking to expand, modernize, and update the concept of security. The most effective method to secure potentially dangerous zones is to quarantine high risk-areas by creating a sterile and risk-free environment or at least an isolated pocket of quiet, safety, and stillness. To ensure that the President of the Unites States is protected in these zones, the Secret Service creates an extensive disciplinary apparatus that monitors every action and movement. Presidential protection evolves into a siege mentality; the Service has built an extensive, but also an adaptive, mobile, and complex fortress that surrounds the president These situations, in particular, emerge when the Secret Service classifies an event as a National Special Security Event such as the U.S. Presidential Inaugurations in 2005 and 2009. The Service had to protect and monitor a series of events from the prayer service at St. John’s Church to the procession from the White House to the Capitol to the swearing in ceremony to the myriads inaugural balls in the evening. In and during these events, the Service reshaped the built environment: it sealed off streets, covered manholes, restricted airspace, watched the underground Metro, and implemented security measures to process and filter people, installed advanced listening devices and hidden cameras, and placed undercover operatives among the people.