Life Inside the Bubble: Why a Top-Ranked Secret Service Agent Walked Away From It All by Dan Bongino

was going to be, Texas governor George W. Bush or Vice President Al Gore. This decision had potent ramifications for me both politically and personally. The Clinton staff was confidently telling me that Gore “had it,” but some of the skeptical ones were quietly saying that it was “not over.” When Florida was declared for Gore by some media outlets, I was devastated. I felt that the obituary for the Republican Party had just been written.
    I awoke the following day thinking that the first lady had won her race for New York’s Senate seat and that our new president was Al Gore. To my astonishment when I turned on the television cable news channel, Florida was back in the “undecided” column. What followed was nearly a month of speculation and well-documented political theater, which had very real consequences for the Secret Service. With no margin for error in their planning, the Secret Service was forced to plan for a presidential security footprint for two presidents-elect, George W. Bush and Al Gore.
    Planning for one presidential transition is difficult enough, within both the White House and the Secret Service, but planning for two was a situation that had never been considered. The chaos ended in mid-December 2000 when the Supreme Court halted the recount of the presidential ballots and George W. Bush was declared the winner.

5
9/11
    S EPTEMBER 11, 2001 , was a quiet, calm morning in our Long Island office. Tony, Joe, and I were planning a search warrant and arrest for an Internet fraudster who was “selling” diamonds on eBay (without the actual diamonds). While discussing the arrest logistics of the operation, Tom, a senior agent within the office who had developed a reputation for calm and who loved to say, “Take it easy” every time he felt an agent was getting emotional, rushed into my office shouting, “Someone just bombed the World Trade Center.” He had been on the phone with our New York office located in 7 World Trade Centeras the first plane struck the North Tower, and the New York dispatcher he was speaking to believed it to be a bomb.
    Collectively stunned that the World Trade Center had been attacked again (Muslim terrorists had detonated a truck bomb in its underground garage in 1993), we dropped our arrest paperwork and rushed into the rear of the office where Marty had a cable news channel on … and nothing. There was no mention of any bomb at the World Trade Center. Marty began to change the channels and I remember as he stopped at the show
The View
he looked up and said, “I don’t see anything.”
    At that point, we saw the dreaded “Breaking News” scroll across the screen and a live newscaster interrupt the program, clearly unprepared for what he was about to say. I don’t recall any of his words or the words of anyone else in the room at that time, as I was transfixed on the television screen. There was a live image of a gaping hole in the side of the North Tower of the World Trade Center that appeared surreal. I had just been with some Secret Service friends at the Windows on the World restaurant on the top floors of the North Tower the week prior and had been marveling at the incredible 360-degree views. I also began my career with Tom, Lisa, and Don in the lobby of our 7 World Trade Center New York field office, and I frequently reflected on the moment when I ascended the escalator into the World Trade Center plaza on the day I was hired. It was one of my proudest moments, and the plaza always brought back feelings of renewal and goodwill. So it was a surreal image to watch papers and pieces of the building fall into that plaza below. Marty, who rarely showed any emotion and had chastised me many times during my time working for him for wearing my emotions on my sleeve, was clearly as shaken by the attack as the rest of us. His normally stoic face telegraphed the anger we were all feeling but not saying.
    The news began reporting that a plane hit the building, and the