The author of a new tell-all book about Hillary Clinton could never have seen any of what he claims he was too low-ranking say several high-level members of Secret Service presidential details, including the president of the Association of Former Agents of the United States Secret Service.
On Tuesday, AFAUSSS, which is strictly nonpartisan, is set to release a statement blasting Gary Byrne author of Crisis in Character, saying members strongly denounce the book, which they add has made security harder by eroding the trust between agents and the people they protect.
There is no place for any self-moralizing narratives, particularly those with an underlying motive, reads the statement from the groups board of directors, which says Byrne has politics and profit on his mind.
AFAUSSS rarely issues public statements of any kind.
The book has rankled current and former members of the Secret Service, who dont like anyone airing their business in public but who also take issue with Byrne inflating his role. Byrne was a uniformed officer in Bill Clintons White House. But thats the lowest level of protection within the White House and around the president.
People familiar with West Wing security laugh at the idea that Byrne or any uniformed officer ever would have walked in on Bill Clinton anywhere, whether in a meeting or, as a New York Post article over the weekend claims, in the middle of a make-out session in the Map Room with the late daughter of former Vice President Walter Mondale. The Secret Service presidential detail would have stopped him. (That affair was a well-worn rumor during the Clinton years, though strongly denied by Eleanor Mondale, who died of brain cancer in 2011.)
The inner perimeter is 100 percent controlled by the presidential protective division, said a former supervisor of the presidential protective division, who asked not to be identified by name.
And if Byrne or any uniformed officer had been posted near a room the president entered, he would have been moved at least 15 yards away, to the outer edges of the security bubble not quite what Byrne describes in his book: I stood guard, pistol at my hip, outside the Oval Office, the last barrier before anyone saw Bill Clinton, according to the Post, which has been teasing excerpts of the book.
Operationally, one who has the working knowledge of how things are done there would realize that certain of those statements do not coincide with the operational plan, said Jan Gilhooly, AFAUSSS president and a 29-year Secret Service veteran.
The groups statement, which POLITICO obtained in advance of its release, very carefully calls Byrne a liar.
One must question the veracity and content of any book which implies that its author played such an integral part of so many [claimed] incidents. Any critique of management by one who has never managed personnel or programs resounds hollow. Additionally, why would an employee wait in excess of ten years after terminating his employment with the Service to make his allegations public? it reads.
The closest contact that Byrne could have had, according to Gilhooly and others, is seeing the president or the first lady pass in the hallway far from the intimate access he would have needed to catch Bill Clinton in the act or see Hillary Clinton fly into the cursing rages he now writes have convinced him that she doesnt have the integrity and temperament to be president.
