Life Inside the Bubble: Why a Top-Ranked Secret Service Agent Walked Away From It All by Dan Bongino Page B
Authors: Dan Bongino
Tags: Non-Fiction
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We did not speak of their potential demise openly; we only guessed at possible reasons why they were not answering the pages we sent out. Finally, we received a call from an agent telling us the location of a large block of the missing agents, and we crossed off a swath of names. Some of the agents had evacuated people in boats and made it to New Jersey, but their pagers had fallen off, becoming casualties of the chaos.
Despite the relief that accompanied locating the agents, we still had two names remaining on the list. One was a friend of mine, Kevin, whom I worked with in the Melville office for a brief period. Kevin and Marty were not the best of friends during Kevin’s time in Melville, but they learned to coexist. Kevin was a grizzled veteran who rarely withheld what he was thinking—the exact opposite of Marty, who was difficult to read. I had come to respect Kevin, and the thought of what had potentially happened to him was tough to bear. I was relieved when we received a call notifying us that he had been on assignment in Lagos, Nigeria, and was fine.
There was one name on that list that was never crossed off. As the evening hours approached, it was apparent that Craig Miller was going to be the only member of the Secret Service to never return home after the terrorist attacks. Master Special Officer Craig Miller perished on that fateful day, and given his history of service to this country in both the US Army and the Secret Service, it is thought that he died in the World TradeCenter plaza rendering medical aid to victims when the South Tower collapsed. Craig Miller died a hero in service to his country in a time of need.
Although the planes struck only the North and South Towers, the damage to the surrounding buildings after the collapse was substantial. The New York field office was located on the ninth floor of 7 World Trade Center. As the fires raged in the building it became structurally unsound and by 5:00 p.m. that day it collapsed, taking everything with it. All of the criminal case files, weapons, equipment, radios, armored vehicles, and agents’ personal effects were gone. As I drove home that night from the JFK office, I made one final stop at the Melville office and saw Marty talking to an agent I knew from New York. The agent was coated in the now-infamous white dust from the collapse of the towers and was holding a bag with a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun. I asked him why he had the MP5 and he responded, “It may be the only thing that made it out of the building.”
In the days and weeks following the attacks, the pain and horror were compounded by the bitter feelings the special agents of the New York office felt regarding the Secret Service management’s response. As the days passed and our detached leaders, who rarely left their insulated offices in our DC headquarters, did not visit the site of the attack, the anger grew into an open fury rarely seen in an agency proud of its culture of both discipline and secrecy. It was my first taste of the divide between the emotional response of the working-class Secret Service agents and the “cocktail party” managerial class’s callous attitude. Bureaucracy spawns a lack of accountability, and that lack of accountability spawns an indifference that I would later come to learn is endemic within the entire US government.
One leader from Washington who did come to New York was Representative Steny Hoyer. The congressman had a reputation for supporting the Secret Service, and he made multiple visits to our New York office personnel, now scattered around Manhattan in various facilities, to personally express that support. This was my first contact with Representative Hoyer, whom I would later come into contact with in my political career when I endorsed his opponent in the 2012 general election for Maryland’s Fifth Congressional District. Although I disagreed with Representative Hoyer politically, I never forgot his admirable dedication to our
Despite the relief that accompanied locating the agents, we still had two names remaining on the list. One was a friend of mine, Kevin, whom I worked with in the Melville office for a brief period. Kevin and Marty were not the best of friends during Kevin’s time in Melville, but they learned to coexist. Kevin was a grizzled veteran who rarely withheld what he was thinking—the exact opposite of Marty, who was difficult to read. I had come to respect Kevin, and the thought of what had potentially happened to him was tough to bear. I was relieved when we received a call notifying us that he had been on assignment in Lagos, Nigeria, and was fine.
There was one name on that list that was never crossed off. As the evening hours approached, it was apparent that Craig Miller was going to be the only member of the Secret Service to never return home after the terrorist attacks. Master Special Officer Craig Miller perished on that fateful day, and given his history of service to this country in both the US Army and the Secret Service, it is thought that he died in the World TradeCenter plaza rendering medical aid to victims when the South Tower collapsed. Craig Miller died a hero in service to his country in a time of need.
Although the planes struck only the North and South Towers, the damage to the surrounding buildings after the collapse was substantial. The New York field office was located on the ninth floor of 7 World Trade Center. As the fires raged in the building it became structurally unsound and by 5:00 p.m. that day it collapsed, taking everything with it. All of the criminal case files, weapons, equipment, radios, armored vehicles, and agents’ personal effects were gone. As I drove home that night from the JFK office, I made one final stop at the Melville office and saw Marty talking to an agent I knew from New York. The agent was coated in the now-infamous white dust from the collapse of the towers and was holding a bag with a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun. I asked him why he had the MP5 and he responded, “It may be the only thing that made it out of the building.”
In the days and weeks following the attacks, the pain and horror were compounded by the bitter feelings the special agents of the New York office felt regarding the Secret Service management’s response. As the days passed and our detached leaders, who rarely left their insulated offices in our DC headquarters, did not visit the site of the attack, the anger grew into an open fury rarely seen in an agency proud of its culture of both discipline and secrecy. It was my first taste of the divide between the emotional response of the working-class Secret Service agents and the “cocktail party” managerial class’s callous attitude. Bureaucracy spawns a lack of accountability, and that lack of accountability spawns an indifference that I would later come to learn is endemic within the entire US government.
One leader from Washington who did come to New York was Representative Steny Hoyer. The congressman had a reputation for supporting the Secret Service, and he made multiple visits to our New York office personnel, now scattered around Manhattan in various facilities, to personally express that support. This was my first contact with Representative Hoyer, whom I would later come into contact with in my political career when I endorsed his opponent in the 2012 general election for Maryland’s Fifth Congressional District. Although I disagreed with Representative Hoyer politically, I never forgot his admirable dedication to our
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