MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
When the White House announced the plan to host Vladimir Putin for a summit in Alaska with just a week to sort everything, it got us wondering, can the Secret Service pull that off? What actually goes into planning a last-minute trip for two of the most powerful people in the world, not to mention the enormous entourages that travel with them? Well, we're going to put that to someone with first-hand experience of protecting a president out and about in the world. Bill Gage was a Secret Service agent during George W. Bush and Barack Obama's terms as president. Bill Gage, welcome.
BILL GAGE: Hi. Thanks for having me.
KELLY: How long would it typically take to plan security for a trip like this - a presidential summit?
GAGE: Well, the standard in the Secret Service for a foreign trip is usually about two, 2 1/2 weeks for a presidential or vice presidential trip.
KELLY: Why? What all is involved in that?
GAGE: There's a lot. You know, the military calls it kind of beans, bullets and Band-Aids. The Secret Service kind of calls it rental cars, flights and hotel rooms because, you know, agents have to be assigned, they have to travel, they have to get there. You know, a foreign trip - so in this case, for Alaska, this is a domestic trip, so we don't have to worry about country clearances and visas and weapons permits. But, you know, there's so much that goes into a presidential visit that - behind the scenes that a lot of people don't realize. So, you know, the major political conventions here in the United States, those take about a year, 18 months' worth of planning.
KELLY: Well - and I'm thinking of details that might not immediately come to mind. Yes, there's booking the travel. There's figuring out the motorcade route. But you also are figuring out, look, if things go off the rails, like, where's the closest hospital? Is it staffed? How would we get there? All kinds of things that you hope you're never going to need, but you have to have a plan.
GAGE: That is very true. And when I hear the - or heard the news they were going to Alaska, I was - it brought me back to when I was on an advance trip for Obama to Mumbai, India. So many things went into planning for that trip, and also other foreign trips that I was involved in. You know, Alaska is far away from the continental United States. They still have to plan for all sorts of eventualities - natural disasters, earthquake, volcanic eruptions, and the list goes on.
KELLY: So when you heard the news, President Trump, President Putin are going to meet in Alaska and, oh, by the way, we're going to do that next week, what went through your mind?
GAGE: (Laughter) Well, sort of the pessimism in me, and just sort of the former agent, I thought to myself, man, there's probably a couple of hundred agents that had some summer plans that they were told, you got to cancel them and get to Alaska - you know, also the poor advance agents that have this compressed amount of time to plan this. And, you know, especially in a place like Alaska, this isn't like New York City, probably, with thousands and thousands of hotel rooms.
KELLY: If all goes to plan - knock on wood. If all goes to plan on Friday, might one takeaway be you guys don't need all this advance legwork? You can pull off a presidential summit in a week.
GAGE: (Laughter) No, because being on the end of that, I've been on several trips where we had short - last-minute notice, it makes it much more difficult for the advance team to pull that off. And behind the scenes, there's probably so much that goes wrong. Two weeks is not enough time for a foreign advance, so you actually need more than that.
KELLY: Last question - the highest stakes for a summit like this are, of course, keeping everybody safe. But I am curious what the stakes are for the Secret Service itself. I mean, after the two assassination attempts on Donald Trump last summer, there was massive criticism. The agency's been working to regain public confidence ever since.
GAGE: Yeah, absolutely. And for every agent you see around the president and the sort of stereotypical image of a Secret Service agent - you know, dark suit, sunglasses, earpiece, a stern look - you know, there's four in an underground parking garage. There's three in a hot kitchen. I say all that to say that, you know, the Secret Service as a whole is a very solid agency with incredible Americans, very professional. You know, even though mistakes were made in Pennsylvania, some of the criticism of the agency as a whole, but even members of Congress, was totally out of bounds and not fair.
KELLY: Bill Gage, former Secret Service agent, currently security consultant for SafeHaven Security Group, thank you.
GAGE: Thanks for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
