Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [287]
Eljay Bowron, who had preceded Merletti as director, raised his hand and made a painful confession. Several years earlier, Starr’s office had pressed him, when the missing Rose Law Firm billing records had mysteriously appeared in the White House, to have Secret Service agents testify about things they had seen and heard in the First Family’s living quarters. Eventually, Bowron had capitulated and agreed to have his agents voluntarily submit to interviews by OIC prosecutors, to avoid having them testify in front of the grand jury. Now, Bowron was plagued by guilt that he had allowed Starr to open the door by permitting even this incursion into the confidentiality of the Secret Service’s protective web. “The only regret I have in my entire time as director,” he told Merletti, “is that I did not resign right then.”
When the next hand rose, the room fell silent; all eyes were focused on former special agent Clint Hill. A rugged, tough-looking man with a deep look of sadness and concern in his eyes, Hill had experienced many personal difficulties after that fateful day in Dallas, when he had been instructed to protect the First Family and watched President Kennedy murdered in cold blood just feet away from him. “He was only recently coming back into the family of the Secret Service, coming back into the fold,” Merletti recalled, “because he had felt for years that he failed.” Merletti quickly added: “He didn’t realize we held him as a hero. But we did. He did everything right that day in Dallas. He was prevented from doing his job by the president.”
Seated at the table, Hill strongly urged Director Merletti to resist Starr’s strong-arm tactics. Allowing this sort of outside force to disrupt the Secret Service’s essential duty when it came to protecting the life of the president, said the retired agent, would be potentially disastrous.
When the meeting broke up, Merletti took Hill aside and thanked him for his support. What happened next was a moment that burned itself into Merletti’s memory: Clint Hill stood close to the director and confided “how every night the demons come and visit him—and how he relives that.”
As he finished recounting Agent Hill’s private confession, Merletti became choked up. “And he begged me—and I don’t even know if the word ‘beg’ is wrong, I mean he told me in no uncertain terms, ‘You will fight this.’” The former agent, dark circles still engulfing his eyes, had told Merletti, clamping a hand on the director’s shoulder, “I will be by your side.”
DURING this dark period, Merletti could not avoid thinking back to the middle of the Persian Gulf War. He had frequently sat in the room with George H. W. Bush as the president was being briefed on highly sensitive matters, including strategy and military movements. Generals and intelligence officials would glance uncomfortably at Merletti and say, “Mr. President, …” allowing their eyes to linger on the unknown Secret Service agent. President Bush would say, “They repeat nothing. Continue the briefing.”
As Merletti saw it: “The fight is what’s going to be important.” If the Secret Service lost this battle, future presidents would never again allow them into their private spheres.
This didn’t mean, however, that if agents witnessed criminal conduct like murder or theft, they would remain mum. “If there’s a crime, you’re not going to have to ask us about it,” Merletti would later say. “We’re going to come forward and tell you about it. But if you have an investigation, then you’re going to have to investigate it otherwise. Because it’s compromising Secret Service trust and confidence, which then compromises proximity, and it’s all over.”
Deputy Attorney General Holder asked Merletti to make his presentation to Ken Starr a second time, just to “make sure that he [Starr] is hearing the same things that we heard.” On this occasion, Merletti felt that Starr was even more dismissive.
The special prosecutor began lecturing Merletti on 28 United States Code Section 535(b), which required officers of