Gary J. Byrne - Crisis of Character: A White House Secret Service Officer Discloses His Firsthand Experience with Hillary, Bill, and How They Operate

In training we always said, We dont rise to our expectations; we fall to our level of training. The same can be said of character.

To Genny

For reminding me so sincerely to just do the right thing, because character is the only thing that matters.

To Elizabeth and Ethan

For reminding me, even before you were born, that character is the only thing that we can hope to pass on after were gone.

I dreamed of becoming an elite White House Secret Service officer, a member of its Uniformed Division.

Nothing moreand certainly nothing less.

My dream came true. I stood guard, a pistol at my hip, outside the Oval Office, the last barrier before anyone saw Bill Clinton.

The last barrier before Monica Lewinsky saw Bill Clinton.

Yes, Im that Secret Service officer.

I saw Monica, and I saw a lot more.

I saw Hillary, too.

I witnessed her obscenity-laced tirades, her shifting of blame, how she berated Vince Foster until he could stand no more, how minor incidents involving blue gloves and botched invitations sent her into a tizzy. It was like watching Humphrey Bogart in The Caine Mutiny obsessing about a quart of missing strawberriesand losing sight of the world war raging about him. I saw Hillary scheming with Dick Morris to undermine White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta. FBI agents confided in me about her emerging Filegate scandal; they were just as frustrated with Hillarys methods as we were.

Life at the Clinton White House careened from crisis (manufactured or not) to even greater crisis, the participants often unable to catch their breath and certainly incapable of learning from them. The Clinton White House atmosphere alternated from hilarity to bitter anger, lurching from nerves-on-end tension to sheer boredom, its most important residents painfully trapped between illusion and reality.

When I joined the Secret Service, I knew my body would be put to the test, that my knees would buckle from rigorous training, and I hoped that the extent of my ethical choices would be Body armor or no body armor? (Those damn vests weighed down my gun belt and me.) We were supposed to lay our livesnot our conscienceson the line.

But at the Clinton White House, I soon recognized a disturbing and pervasive crisis of character. Boots on the ground, the men and women at the lowest part of the totem polethose who faced death head-onwere measured by the highest of ethical requirements. Those at the very pinnacles of power held themselves to the very lowest standardsor to none whatsoever.

I saw how the Clinton Machines appalling leadership style endangered law enforcement officers, the military, and the American people in general. And with Hillary Clintons latest rise, I realize that her own leadership stylevolcanic, impulsive, enabled by sycophants, and disdainful of the rules set for everyone elsehasnt changed a bit.

What I saw in the 1990s sickened me. I departed first to other White House duties (which didnt take me far enough away) and then to the Federal Air Marshal Service, still working to protect those who cant protect themselves.

Over a twenty-nine-year career serving my country in the military and in federal law enforcement, Ive encountered both heroes and villains. Ive observed human character at its greatest heights and lowest depths. In any organization, character is defined at the top; it percolates down to the top executives of an organization, to the middle managers, and to the grunts at the front lines. Hillary Clinton is now poised to become the Democratic nominee for president of the United States, but she simply lacks the integrity and temperament to serve in the office. From the bottom of my soul I know this to be true.

So I must speak out.

Though portrayed as the long-suffering spouse of an unfaithful husband, whose infidelities I personally observed or knew to be true, the Hillary Clinton I saw was anything but a sympathetic victim. Those loyal to her kept coming back for her volcanic eruptions.

I witnessed firsthand the Clintons personal and professional dysfunction: So consumed were they by scandal, so intent on destroying their real or imagined enemies, that governing became an afterthought. The First Couple wasted days obsessing over how to kill a forthcoming book (one alleging that Bill Clintons mother ran a brothel) or in squashing yet another tabloid revelation. Their machinations and their constant damage control diverted them from the nations real business. Good people like Leon Panetta, Betty Currie, and Evelyn Lieberman had to pick up the slack and bear it for as long as they could.

I have not written a word of this book with a political agenda. Whether the Clintons were Democrats or Republicans, I saw what I saw; I heard what I heard.

Politics do not change unpleasant truths.

Politicians only think they do.

I now close nearly three decades of military and law enforcement service, protecting the citizens of a country I love. My sense of service compels me to share with you the real-world, often harrowing experiences that career law enforcement professionals face every day. At the same time, Im revealing the unvarnished true story of the Clintons, the real damage they inflicted via the presidency and, in my view, the threat they again pose to the future of our nation.

During the Clinton administration, I swore myself to secrecy but not because government lawyers demanded it (though they later did). I kept silent not just because my superiors insisted on it. My own conscience also demanded it. Duty required it. But it was hard. Sometimes Id trudge home to my wife, Genny, and just hug her without explanation.

Whats going on? shed ask.

Id say, Im so glad we arent like those people. I didnt want to live in their crazy world.

I had no animosity toward the Clintons. Out of a sense of loyalty to our First Family I even secretly disposed of sordid physical evidence that might later have been used to convict the president. The blue dress wasnt the only evidence of his misdeeds. But I could not keep from asking myself how our nations leaders could be so reckless, so volatile, and so dangerous to themselves and to our nation.

And yes, to me and my family.

Only under federal subpoenaand later a ruling by U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquistdid I reveal to Ken Starrs prosecutors the true story of President Bill Clintons false testimony and misstatements.

Ive retired now from public service, from safeguarding the Bush and Clinton families as well as from protecting passengers at the Federal Air Marshal Service.

Maybe I havent seen it all, but Ive seen enough.

I want you to hear my story. Its about the men and women risking their lives to protect this nation. And more important, its about how the Clintons must never again be allowed to put themor you and your childrenat risk.

Gary J. Byrne

March 2016

Nobody knew everything that was going on at the Clinton White House.

Not even President Clintons press guru, George Stephanopoulos. He wasnt there at night, and some of the best (or worst) moments happened after hours. People like George didnt hear and see what we did around the Executive Mansion, so my guess is they didnt know how Hillary battled her husband in the West Wing.

One morning in late summer 1995, I entered the White House to assume my post just outside the Oval Officeofficially Secret Service Post E-6.