My Presidential Motorcade, Part 2

Riding in the one of the two press Suburbans in the Presidential motorcade, I was flanked on my left by a man in his fifties with glasses, balding and of little consequence to this story or to the world in general (ooo, ‘moted!). On my right was a fat man, nearly bursting out of his suit, who was busying himself with the interior of a newspaper. In the row of seats in front of me, there sat two nondescript newspaper men and a vaguely European-looking photographer with dreamy, wavy blonde hair, a five o’clock shadow and an accent that I couldn’t place, certainly it was a sexy one, though. These three seemed to know each other and spent the trip recounting war stories from their decidedly un-war-like profession.
Exerpts:
“…I had to wait forty five minutes for the return call to do the interview. [Scoffs] I was like, ‘Hello? Washington Post here…’”
(in the sexy accent) “Then the shutter jammed and as I went for the spare camera I had slung ‘cross my back, but the bird had already flown away and the Prime Minister had already brushed it off.”
“…didn’t you used to know Sebastian Bach?”
And while these men shared their stories, our motorcade sped through the shut down streets of Washington DC, on our way to the Pakistan Embassy.

That was the reason for the trip, to visit the embassy. At the time this was taking place in late 2005, Pakistan had just suffered an enormous earthquake. As a sign of support and fraternity, President Bush elected to take a trip across Washington to the embassy to sign an official book of condolences and pose of a photo op with some of the Pakistani officials who work at the embassy. And while this may seen like a hollow and meaningless gesture (which it is, to be sure), the amount of effort that goes into undertaking an operation like ferrying the President across town surely has to count for something, because it would have been immeasurably easier for him to just make a phone call or send a fax.

Our motorcade was fifteen cars long, three or four limousines in the front, carrying the President and his aides and whoever other administration people, and eleven or twelve specially designed Suburbans following, occupied by many, many Secret Service agents and the press. And that number fifteen is not counting the six motorcycles that ride up front or the ambulance that pulls up the rear.

And that’s just the actual motorcade, itself.

In addition to all of that, the Washington DC police also close down the route on which the motorcade will be driving, and they have officers posted every so often working crowd control as the motorcade speeds past. Because, keep in mind, the motorcade driving by makes quite a scene, and the people on the street, often because they are tipped off by the conspicuous closing of the street, mill around, waiting to see the President drive by and wave. And let me tell you, those people are very indiscriminant about whom exactly they wave to in the motorcade. They would get just as excited if the President waved back to them or a radio intern. To this I can attest.

So we flew along through streets normally clogged with traffic in the middle of the day that were for these precious, Presidential minutes, free and clear and frankly quite pleasurable to travel through. Our Secret Service driver drove our Suburban unsettlingly close to biological weapons lab in front of us, but because no one else seemed to mind, I tried to rationalize a sense of security. But I didn’t have long because we arrived at our destination in less than ten minutes.

The Pakistan embassy was a large building that sat at the end of a cul-de-sac. Our motorcade parked down the right side of the street, with the limousines in the front being closest to the building and our orientation to the embassy being quite a ways down the block.

Now, the President waits for nobody, so as soon, and I mean the instant, that we came to a stop, the sliding door of the Suburban rocketed open and we all hustled out into the sunlight and began running to catch up to the President. And we were running. I didn’t have a problem with it, and neither did the sexy European, but the others, including my very fat seatmate, were wheezing and sucking and choking during our entire sprint. But as we approached the center of the cul-de-sac, very near our destination of the embassy, a female Secret Service agent stepped directly in front of us, held her hand in front of her, indicated that we needed to stop, and put her other had up to her ear, listening to her ear piece.

We screeched to a halt and were suddenly waiting, stopped dead by this woman in sunglasses. The fat man was displeased, obviously miffed that his exertion in running had been for nothing.

Just as he had timed his gasps for breath well enough to open his mouth to speak, we all heard screeching tires behind us. Down the block, making a left hand turn onto the residential street we were standing in the middle of, another Suburban was coming back down onto four wheels and was headed right for us at a very fast speed. We all quickly shuffled to the right side of the street, near the other cars in the motorcade as the new Suburban blew past us and hopped up into the driveway of the embassy.

In one fluid motion, the Suburban came to a stop and all of its doors opened at the same time, including the back tailgate. From within emerged nine Secret Service agents, all dressed in SWAT gear: flack vests, fingerless gloves, hand guns and knives strapped to either thigh, enormous semi-automatic rifles in their hands, double ear pieces and sunglasses. One agent even popped out of the back, as if he had been crouched in the back of the Suburban the entire ride, just waiting to make the baddest entrance possible.

Needless to say, I was confused and scared. What were those guys doing here? As they exited their vehicle they all paused for an action movie instant to gather their surroundings, before running one after another into the embassy, just seconds behind the President.

My Presidential Motorcade, Part 1

So there I was, right. At work in the White House Press Briefing Room, doing the things that White House reporters do.

That is, sitting around.

I sat in the chair marked for the Philadelphia Inquirer with a little engraved metal plaque and smoothed down my tie. To my left, reporters and cameramen huddled across the aisles of chairs around a man with a computer in his lap. He had just gotten Photoshop and he was fiddling with different filters. To my right, two cameramen had their feet up on the back of the chairs talking politics. When are people not talking politics in Washington?

And me? I was smoothing my tie. Over and over again. And this is the White House Press Briefing Room. These reporters and cameramen are all assigned to the White House by their news outlets. The way copyright works in Washington, if you attend an event and record it, then your outlet owns it and may use it in whatever capacity it wishes. However, if you were to miss an event, getting a tape from another outlet would then invoke licensing fees, which explains the multiplicity of redundant cameras and minidisk recorders at press events.

So all of these people have been assigned to cover the White House by their outlets full time. The only problem is, news does not happen in the White House full time. Scott McClellan comes out to give his sweaty, bug-eyed briefings in the morning and afternoon (and sometimes more often) but the rest of the time consists of a lot of sitting around.

Especially for the cameramen. The reporters at least have to worry about forming a coherent report for their outlet during the day. Cameramen are simply on-call to record the things the reporter or outlet has told them to record. Thus, when nothing is happening, they have no responsibilities. Even more thus: Photoshop.

From behind me, I eavesdrop on a conversation two men are having about the sad state of the light bulbs in the room. They debate the wattage of the overhead bulbs. One maintains 60 watt the other insists 75. I look up and immediately burn my eyes. They’re bright. I think 75.

But then over the PA system comes, for me, a wonderful repeal from the boredom: the announcement for travel pool.

And what is travel pool, do you ask? Well let me pull down this chart and point to various places on it with this stick. Travel pool is the term used to describe the group of reporters from the four different media genres (print, TV, radio, newswire) that accompany the President at all times. While the President is in the White House, all the press is in the briefing room, dicking around on Photoshop, and easily accessible. But if the President were to venture out into the city, or into the country, then a group of press comes along for the trip, recording anything the President does or says.

Now, this position is something of an annoyance to the individuals who actually work in the industry, because they have gotten very used to sitting around and doing the New York Times crossword puzzle, so often, I was told, travel pool presents an excellent opportunity for interns to be able to hang around the President, which is a cool gig for those of us who don’t see the President in person, every day.

When Talk News Radio’s time came up to do travel pool (it’s a rotating assignment, because, like I said, the real reporters do not like it) I jumped, nay, leapt into the air to snatch it from the hands of my superiors. That is, I would have done that if our assignments came out on pieces of paper, which would be more dramatic, but really all I said was, “Ok, I’ll do it.”

So back in the briefing room, I stood up and investigated those around me, attempting to quietly ascertain where I should be headed. I caught sight of a cameraman fiddling around in his camera bag, and I knew that would only happen if he had an assignment. And sure enough, he put his camera on his shoulder and walked out of the back of the briefing room, and I followed several steps behind.

We walked through the press bullpen, where the reporters have access to internet and phones, and past the snack machines and the sadly broken espresso maker that Tom Hanks donated after his visit to the briefing room several years ago. We walked out an unmarked door to the outside somewhere, then back inside, through a very nice foyer, and out onto the back lawn, where the Presidential motorcade was all lined up in the circular driveway and snipers were positioned every hundred yards, leaning against trees, long rifles in hand.

I walked behind my cameraman past the three or four black limousines in the front, and then past black Suburban after black Suburban, until we arrived at what I counted to be the twelfth vehicle back, a black Suburban. I showed a Secret Service agent my press credentials and my travel pool pass and piled into the car. It wasn’t until I was inside, however, that I realized that although all the Suburbans all looked the same, they all had subtle modifications and customizations to make them better suited for their specific role in the motorcade.

Take the Suburban I was sitting in, for example. The press Suburbans (there were two, I was in the first one) had large, double-wide sunroofs, not in the front, but over the back row of seats and the trunk, so that cameramen and photographers could stand while still in the car and catch all the action. Pretty neat, huh? And the Suburban directly in front of me (that would be vehicle number eleven), it had what looked like a very tall snap-tight back canopy, giving it a distinct resemblance to a paddy wagon that could be used to haul off pesky protesters who were ruining a Presidential photo-op. Which is exactly what I said the fat man in a suit who was sitting next to me. But he corrected me, and said that while, yes, he did see how someone could gather that impression from looking at the vehicle in front of us, it was, in fact, a mobile biohazard treatment laboratory and would be used if the motorcade encountered chemical or biological weapons. “Oh,” I said, “Right.”

We waited around for another five or ten minutes, under the glaring surveillance of the sniper Secret Service agents with their fingerless gloves and knives strapped to their thighs, until our Secret Service driver showed up, got in the driver’s seat, and, as the six police motorcycles at the front of the motorcade fired up their sirens, followed the paddy wagon/mobile biological weapon treatment facility at quite a crisp pace and we made our way out of the White House grounds and out in Washington, DC.