By Mary Beth WILKAS
Once upon a time, I was a United States Secret Service Agent during the Bush Sr. Administration. Not only did I get some of the best training in the world, but I also lived, learned, and was exposed to many invaluable experiences that, even today, I appreciate. I was one of the fortunate ones to be posted in WFO (Washington, DC Field Office) which is the nucleus of Presidential, Vice Presidential, and Foreign Dignitary activity. Plus, this was 1991 – a campaign year – so that created a completely different dimension of exposure and experience. Interestingly, I was the only Spanish speaker in the entire DC office. Add all that up and you have a formula for a hell of an exciting year on the job. I kid you not when I tell you that I might have had five days off during that entire year.
When I left government service, I became a self-employed contractor, going back and forth between a variety of domestic and international Executive Protection gigs and a series of intriguing private investigations. My motto was, “have gun, will travel.” So cliché, but it was true – I had a bag packed at all times, ready to head out the door within hours of getting a phone call or a signal on my beeper. Shut up! I know beepers are passé, but at the time, if you did not have a beeper you missed out on a lot of work. I loved life as a contractor and it was definitely another world from the U.S. Secret Service. What no one in Federal service could have prepared me for was life as a protection agent in the private sector.
My first protection job in the private sector was a five-month assignment based in Lima, Peru. This was October 1992 and Abimael Guzman, the supreme leader of the Maoist terrorist group, Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path), and Peru’s most wanted man for over a decade, had just been captured three weeks earlier on September 12.
I was one of two EP Agents assigned to protect an Organization of American States (OAS) Ambassador during Peru’s Congressional and Municipal elections. Never had the OAS hired protection for any of their election missions in the past and they were apprehensive about having to spend a chunk of their budget on security. However, they had organized and were responsible for a group of 120 international observers heading to Peru during a time when the Sendero Luminoso (SL) was fervently campaigning against “Yankee intervention.” In fact, earlier in the year, the SL had car-bombed the US Ambassador’s residence in Lima. During our five-month mission the SL car-bombed two Coca Cola plants, truck-bombed the Lima headquarters of IBM, fired three rifle shots at an American Airlines jet as it taxied into Lima’s airport, and bombed a building next to a hotel where a group of Canadian election observers were staying, just three blocks from our hotel. Bomb threats at our offices were a weekly occurrence, electricity was a luxury, and it was common for the city to virtually shut down in response to the fear the SL had put into working class people.
Before I was ever hired, my protectee had already completed an advance trip of sorts to Peru to discuss the mission. During this visit, he was offered all the bells and whistles that went along with a high profile, high-threat dignitary in Peru – three main motorcade vehicles, police lead and tail cars, motorcycles, an ambulance, and nearly an army of Peruvian police protection agents. However, the principal had his own ideas. He politely refused the bells and whistles package, stating his belief that this style of protection would be more of a magnet to attack. He agreed to a two-car motorcade with two Peruvian drivers and that was it.
The principal went back to DC, informed the OAS that they would be hiring a security team to accompany him and the mission, and then he began to interview potential candidates for his own protection team. I was one of those candidates. When our interview finished, he stood up and said, “There is nothing like the protection of a woman… hire her.” Sorry, but I still smile when I hear that in my head. You probably want to throw up, but what he realized was that, in a country as chauvinistic as Peru, I was the last person anyone was going to think was his security. I lost count of how many times during my five-months in Peru I heard, “Oh, are you the Ambassador’s secretary?” or, “You must be the Ambassador’s mistress.” Or, “Are you the Ambassador’s daughter?” and so on. The answer every time was, “Yes,” accompanied by a smile.
There are a few lessons worth sharing at this point:
- A high threat, high profile dignitary does not necessarily equate to high profile protection and a high-profile motorcade. Conversely, a low profile, low-threat principal does not necessarily equate to low profile protection and a low-profile motorcade. I have been in 100-car motorcades in Washington, DC for dignitaries that no one would have a clue who the protectee was. And I have been in two-car motorcades where the person I was protecting was very well known and a likely target of terrorism.
- A security expert can make all the recommendations he/she wants but in the end, the principal and his/her desires are what typically take precedence.
- Environment and threat level are important factors to consider when forming any security program; a program must be tailored to fit the client, the situation, and everything else that goes along with that. Do not make the mistake of believing that an “off the shelf” protection program will work for any and everyone. It doesn’t and it won’t.
So, there I am with just one other colleague protecting a high-threat principal in Lima, Peru. Talk about professional culture shock. I admit, during my time as a Secret Service Agent I may have gotten a little cocky and used my badge for all it was worth. And I thought it was my charm and good looks that aided me in being so successful in my advance work. Ahem… In Peru, I learned what life was like in the world of EP without a badge. I actually had to recognize and develop my skills as an advance agent. Talk about a huge learning curve.
I know, so many of you out there are saying, “welcome to my world.” Perhaps true. However, this is how my world was being formed and there are many lessons to learn here. As I said, the Individual I was protecting was based in the capitol, Lima. This was logical because, as an OAS Ambassador on an election mission, he had obligations to speak with the current President and his party along with every other presidential candidate and their political parties. In addition, due to the nature of an OAS election mission, he also had plans to travel all over the country before and during election time to assure that the entire election process was “free and fair.” During his travel, our protectee planned to only bring my colleague and me. He left the rest to us to figure out.
Understand that Peruvians, at least in 1992, were accustomed to accommodating President Fujimori’s security agents and their special requests and favors. However, other than for “El Jefe” or a high-level police official, any special accommodations for VIPs were not commonplace. I still remember the look on the General Manager’s face of the Hotel Las Americas when I told him that, for security reasons, I needed him to switch my room, my fellow agent’s room, and my principal’s room and that my room and my colleague’s room needed to be next to the principal’s room. Of course, I never mentioned that my protectee was, indeed, my protectee or that my colleague or I were security agents. Sure, he knew who the OAS Ambassador was, but far as he was concerned the rest of us were OAS election observers. I knew he was thinking, “For security reasons, huh? How stupid does this woman think I am?”
During my five months in Peru, I learned that being a good protection agent and a crack advance agent in a “developing country” entailed a multitude of factors and required a long list of character traits. It meant respecting and learning the language and culture of the country. It meant using diplomacy at every corner, even when the people who were supposed to be helping you were the ones putting up the endless obstacles. It meant that I had to work outside the box and enlist the cooperation of people I thought I could trust, including airport security, police and military officers, hotel and restaurant staff, OAS observers, and even my protectee. It meant that I had to do as much as possible with the few resources I had – one other security agent, two Peruvian security drivers, two vehicles, and two radios. It meant that I spent a lot of my free time “training” the Peruvian security drivers so that they understood their purpose and could do their job to my standard. It meant I had to plan as much as I could prior to traveling anywhere because the most likely situation was that we would end up with no functioning means of communication. In sum, it meant that I had to prepare for the worst and, typically, expect a little bit better.
At this point, I think it is appropriate to share with you what I have conveyed to every class of protection agents I have ever instructed – there is not one protection agent on earth that can do every job, every position, or every post on a security team well. Not one. Some agents are great drivers, some run an amazingly efficient Command Post, some manage people really well, and some make solid Advance Agents. I have seen protection agents who operate impressively under great pressure in New York City but fall apart in countries where English is not spoken. You just have to find what your strengths are and, perhaps more importantly, where your weaknesses lie. There is no one star on any protection team; each member is equally responsible for the success of the team.
Let us leave Peru and fast-forward two and a half years. I am now in Port-au-Prince, Haiti on assignment as a contractor with the US State Department to protect the president of Haiti, Jean Bertrand Aristide (and later his successor, Rene Preval). Haiti may have once been “The Pearl of the Antilles,” but there was not one remnant of that beauty left that I saw during my nearly one year there. In fact, a little trivia to set the scene – Haiti’s largest export prior to the AIDS epidemic was… human cadavers. Why? Because it was a medical phenomenon as to how humans could survive in such poor conditions. People lived within feet of their own and their neighbor’s garbage; they bathed, washed their cars, and cleaned their clothes all in the same filthy water. Anyway, you get an idea of the conditions that we were working under – a third world country with little functioning infrastructure, extremely poor hygiene, a grossly overcrowded capital city, and an 85% illiteracy rate. In fact, Haiti was and is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.
During my time in Haiti, I was part of an eleven-person protection team with an Agent-in-Charge (AIC), Deputy Agent-in-Charge (D-AIC), Shift Leader (SL), and the rest of us rotated duties as inner ring agents, CP agents, etc., depending on the day. Dave Johnson, the President of ITG® and my Detail Leader in Haiti, took a liking to my style of doing advances. To this day, I am not sure if that was a curse or a blessing. Conducting advances outside the capital city of Port-au-Prince meant that I survived on MREs, slept in a fold-up military cot, typically in a dilapidated old school house with no running water or electricity, draped a mosquito net over me and burned mosquito coils at night, and maybe got a cold shower (if there was even running water). I also adapted to the, um, shall we call it lack of privacy in the restroom category (translated that means Mother Nature was typically our toilet). Before you even ask, communications were non-existent. This was a few years before cell phones came into play and seldom did our radios ever work. Haiti was so poor and underdeveloped that no one had landlines where we traveled except maybe the local police. On top of all of that, add resentment, or perhaps a lack of understanding, on the part of the Haitian security toward the Americans protecting their president, which translated to a lack of communication with us period, especially during our advances. Did I mention that I am always up for a challenge?
Honestly, once we left Port-au-Prince with the advance team, due to the complete lack of communication, I just set out to conduct an advance that I hoped the President of Haiti and my counterparts would show up for. There was no way to know. The very little English every Haitian admitted to speaking did not stop me from asking anyone and everyone, repeatedly, for all the information I needed to set up the mission from the U.S. end. I am certain that the Haitians thought I was annoying as hell but I had a job to do and was not going to let anything go wrong on a mission I was advancing. Obviously, my stubbornness and inability to ever give up came in handy.
Lessons learned in Haiti:
- Tenacity is a must in any advance agent, particularly in third world countries;
- Pride is a great character trait in a protection agent, especially in an advance agent;
- Cultural sensitivity and understanding are key to getting a job done anywhere, especially in third world countries;
- Lack of language skills is no excuse for a poorly done advance;
- Lack of any communications equipment is no excuse for not being prepared for the arrival of your protectee.
Fast forward to April 2003. I am now in Bogota, Colombia under the auspices of the U.S. Embassy. I was hired as the U.S. Security Advisor to the Minister of Defense (MOD) and Vice President (VP) of Colombia. What started out as a 2-month contract turned out to be 2.5 years of employment. In the first year as a contractor, I traveled with the MOD and VP in and around Bogota as well as to guerrilla-dominated areas (mostly those of the FARC – Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). I assessed the MOD’s and VP’s security teams, surveyed their residences and offices, wrote cables back to DC, and purchased hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of security equipment for the Colombians – everything from armored vehicles, ballistic vests, weapons and flashlights to computers, desks, cameras, and cell phones.
Colombia is much more sophisticated and developed than both Peru and Haiti – they have solid infrastructure (at least in the main cities), good communications equipment and systems, and established security teams consisting of police, military, and plain clothes Federal types. On the other hand, as much terrorism as they have experienced in the past and continue to experience in the present, their protection teams and security mentality were just plain weak. The best way for me to explain this to you is by giving you a real-life case study example so that you understand just how advances and security operations are carried out in Colombia.
On August 18, 1989, Luis Carlos Galan, a presidential candidate from the Liberal Party, was assassinated while campaigning in a poor part of town called Soacha, just south of Bogota. Galan had declared himself enemy to the Colombian drug cartels, mainly the Medellin cartel run by Pablo Escobar, and he was becoming popular for his open criticism and denouncement of drug cartel violence. Galan was also backed by the United States, mainly because he supported an extradition treaty on drug dealers with the US.
The security situation on August 18, 1989:
- All of Galan’s bodyguards were his friends and relatives and none of them had any formal protection training.
- Eleven bodyguards were assigned to work Galan’s speech in the Plaza de Soacha – six were sent ahead the day before to do the advance and five traveled with Galan.
- The advance was nonexistent… unless you consider an all-nighter, drinking in a local bar, to be an advance. Neither the plaza (the site), nor any route, nor any hospital was ever visited, studied, or assessed.
- The morning of the event, advance agents requested police support and were assigned twenty officers. They were given no instruction except to help protect Galan during his speech in the plaza. They did manage to post themselves on the four corners of the stage while the others loitered in and around the crowd.
- There were no crowd control or containment measures implemented for a throng that numbered over 7,000.
The assassination in of Carlos Galan:
- Galan arrived in Soacha at approximately 8pm in an armored vehicle. He got out of that vehicle and jumped on the bed of a small truck to greet his supporters in the open until he reached the Plaza, where he stepped up on the stage.
- The armored vehicle shadowed Galan and positioned itself next to the stage.
- Galan was wearing a ballistic vest.
- Three shooters, street punks hired by Pablo Escobar’s Medellin Cartel, positioned themselves right in front of stage. They began firing as soon as Galan was up on the stage.
- With the armored car right under the stage, security was able to perform a quick evacuation but…
- …No one had advanced any hospitals. They drove to THREE hospitals before they found one that had a trauma unit. Over 75 minutes has passed since the attack and Galan had already bled out.
- Eight bullets hit the candidate – five in the vest, two in the abdomen and one under the left armpit.
- Results: Galan assassinated, two bodyguards killed, one advisor dead – ten others injured and twenty hospitalized for shock.
Lessons Learned
- Advances – a thorough advance has four tiers – the site advance, transportation advance, route advance, and hospital advance. A good advance can either lessen the effectiveness of an attack plan or prevent it entirely.
- Training – the mere presence of “bodyguards” is not enough to prevent attack. The biggest difference between a bodyguard and a protection agent is training. A bodyguard who has had no training is, at best, an escort. A trained, professional protection agent is, at worst, only utilized as an escort.
- Police support - coordination with police is vital; they are not there as decoration. Use them to their maximum benefit – as a middle ring of security; as a deterrent; as a local resource on customs, culture, and language; and as a uniformed presence with arrest authority.
- Purpose – the primary purpose of any protection team is to protect the principal, not to accompany them, even if you are a one-agent detail.
So, you are saying to yourselves, “Mary Beth, come on! That was 1989, almost twenty years ago.” And my response to you is to tell you that, when I first got to Colombia in 2003, protection teams still operated the exact same way. The biggest difference is that “official” security units had been established within the national police, the military, and at the federal agent level. Nonetheless, at that time, the president and each presidential candidate still hand-picked their security teams. Formal training was rare and their idea of doing an advance was exactly the way Galan’s bodyguards did their advance – show up and look good.
By the time I left Colombia at the end of 2005, I can proudly say that, along with four other colleagues, I had trained every protection agent on the security teams of the President, Vice President, and Minister of Defense of Colombia. Thanks to your tax dollars and mine, they each went through a two-week protection course that included both classroom theory and practical exercises in advances, firearms, defensive tactics, anti-terrorist driving, concentric rings of security, motorcade operations, explosives, emergency medicine, vehicle armoring, AOPs (attacks on principal), etc.
Every single leader of a protection team, at least at the level of shift leader or above, attended the training. The idea was, obviously, to make sure the agents at the top were trained along with their team members so that, when they returned to the field together, they worked as a team and everyone understood why they were operating the way there were. We definitely engaged in many discussions on how to do things but, amazingly, they were interested in the debate, people were learning, ideas were being shared and techniques, tactics, and procedures were being modified. Of course, not all of the new concepts were incorporated; some just did not fit the environment of Colombia. Transition takes time and every team had to take what worked for them and their protectee and let go what did not fit the situation. Most importantly, they learned the value of a security advance, having trained agent drivers, and to understand they are only as good as their weakest link.
Whether you have spent your protection career in garden spots like Peru, Haiti and Colombia or you prefer the star-studded worlds of Los Angeles and New York City, the challenges can be very different but the lessons for a professional protection agent are the same:
- Training – training is fundamental and must be continuous throughout the life of the job, not just a one-time thing. Do not ever think that you can walk into the field of protection and be successful without ever having graduated from a reputable training course.
- Advances – if you have only two people working together on a protection team, use one of them as an advance agent. Advances prevent attacks, embarrassment, and surprises - plus they save lives, one of them being yours.
- Driving skills – since between 70-80 percent of security-related incidents and attacks take place during vehicular/motorcade movements, logic states that any agent in the field needs to have excellent driving skills.
- Diplomacy – tact, humility, and confidence open more doors than any other trait you might attempt to use when working as a protection agent anywhere in the world.
- Communications – do not assume you will have functioning communications; in fact, don’t assume anything.
- Physical Fitness – whether fair or not, a huge part of the field of protection is image. Physical fitness is imperative for a solid image and to maintain the endurance to work the long and demanding hours the job requires.
- Pride, knowledge, courage, discipline, bearing, endurance, judgment, integrity, honesty, loyalty…
As a protection agent, if you can conduct effective advances, learn the lessons from the events that surround you, and possess these traits you can succeed anywhere in the world.
Mary Beth Wilkas is an independent consultant currently supporting various US State Department Anti-Terrorism Assistance Program initiatives and entering doctoral studies in Psychology at Widener University.